Funding made easy – the digital R&D application

The background

You can benefit from the research allowance of the Bescheinigungsstelle Forschungszulage GbR (BSFZ) (Certificate office for research allowance) if you are a commercial institution that is planning, conducting or have already completed research and development activities. Since 01/01/2020, the Act on the Fiscal Promotion of Research and Development (FZulG; Federal Gazette | P. 2763) has enabled tax-liable companies to benefit from a tax allowance in such cases [1].

The application procedure

If you as a commercial institution wish to claim expenses for research and development services for tax purposes, there are only two steps to follow thanks to the fully digitalised application procedure [2]:

1. Applying for the certificate at the BSFZ: An application for a certificate must be submitted to the BSFZ. The BSFZ checks whether the subject of the application is actually a research and development service. Every commercial institution can submit one or more applications for planned, ongoing or even completed projects.
2. Application for research allowance to the tax office responsible: In the second step, an application for the research allowance is submitted to the tax office. Now the tax office will determine the amount of the research allowance.

The answers to your questions

For the most important key points on tax incentives for research and development and on the application procedure, we recommend the four-minute explanatory video [3] and the answers to the most frequently asked questions [4].

As of 2021-11-12

List of references
[1] Bundesfinanzministerium. Gesetz zur steuerlichen Förderung von Forschung und Entwicklung. URL: https://www.bescheinigung-forschungszulage.de/forschungszulage
[2] Bescheinigungsstelle Forschungszulage. Antragsverfahren. URL: https://www.bescheinigung-forschungszulage.de/antragsverfahren
[3] Bescheinigungsstelle Forschungszulage. Video zur Forschungszulage. URL: https://www.bescheinigung-forschungszulage.de
[4] Bescheinigungsstelle Forschungszulage. FAQs zur Forschungszulage. URL: https://www.bescheinigung-forschungszulage.de/faq