Frame everything to the statutory test
HMRC’s questions, however phrased, resolve to four: what was the advance sought, what was the uncertainty, why was it not readily resolvable by a competent professional, and what work addressed it. Answers that map explicitly onto those words do double duty: they answer the caseworker and they build the record that a review officer or tribunal would later read. Answers about how hard the team worked, how novel the product felt, or how big the market is do nothing, because the guidelines give them no weight.
The single most effective defensive document is a baseline exhibit: what the field offered at the time, standard tools, published methods, known limits, with the evidence the team consulted it. It converts “we believe this was uncertain” into “here is why it was uncertain”, which is the whole game.
Use the competent professional properly
HMRC’s guidelines define who counts: knowledgeable in the relevant principles, aware of the current state of the field as a whole, with accumulated experience and a track record. And they expressly say that having worked in a field, or having an intelligent interest, is not enough. So put the right person forward, prepare them to speak to the field rather than the product, and anchor their evidence in their written opinion, which HMRC recommends keeping precisely because professionals move on.
A prepared professional on a call with HMRC’s technical adviser is often the turning point of a check, in either direction. Preparation means: knows the statutory words, knows the baseline exhibit, answers the question asked, says “I do not know” rather than improvising.
Sequence the response
- Audit your own claim first, against the red flags, before defending any of it. You need to know which parts are load-bearing.
- Triage: sound core, arguable middle, weak tail. Consider conceding the tail early and explicitly; it costs a little money and buys a lot of credibility.
- Answer in evidence, not essays: each response leading with documents, each document tied to a statutory element.
- Keep the ledger: every concession, agreement and open point recorded in your letters, so the end-state is negotiated once, not re-litigated.
- Escalate deliberately when a substantive point deadlocks: statutory review, ADR, or tribunal, each covered on if your claim is rejected.
Frequently asked questions
HMRC says our work was "routine". How do we answer that?
With the baseline. "Routine" is a claim about what a competent professional could readily do, so the answer is evidence of what the field offered at the time, what was tried from it, and why it failed. Adjectives do not move caseworkers; baselines do.
Our competent professional has left the company. Are we sunk?
Not necessarily, and this is exactly why HMRC recommends keeping their written opinion on file. Contemporaneous records plus a successor professional who can speak to the field are a workable second-best; silence is not.
Should we concede the weak parts to protect the strong ones?
Often yes. A considered concession on a genuinely weak sub-project, made early, buys credibility that protects the defensible core. Conceding everything under pressure, or nothing on principle, are both worse strategies than triage.
When should we escalate past the caseworker?
When positions have genuinely hardened on a point of substance: statutory review is quick and independent of the case team, ADR can unstick stalled facts, and tribunal exists for the points worth its cost. Escalation is a tool, not an insult.