Fresh on the heels of the Federal Budget, Freehills is to host a seminar on product development and the hidden steps to a successful product. Despite dire economic conditions, the Federal Government’s announcement last night of an R&D Tax Credit is good news for product designers, product development managers, engineers and R&D professionals.
An R&D Tax Credit will be introduced for the 2010–11 income year. It is a broad-based, market-driven package to replace the R&D Tax Concession with a tax credit system. It offers a 45 per cent refundable tax credit for Australian companies turning over up to $20 million per annum which is equal to 15 cents in the dollar of R&D spend. In the meantime there is an interim measure, whereby the Federal Government will increase the R&D expenditure threshold for the R&D Tax Offset to $2 million for 2009–10 and provide a tangible demonstration of increased government support for eligible small companies.1
‘This is outstanding for R&D at a time where people are tightening their purse strings. Start-up companies are big winners,’ said Greg Noonan, Partner.
The primary aim of next week’s seminar is to discuss how businesses can maximise the commercial benefits from new product development. Ben Mott, Patent Attorney from Freehills Patent & Trade Mark Attorneys, Alan Garcia, Partner in the KPMG Melbourne R&D tax team and Travis Hardy, Business Manager of the Tooling & Production department at AARK, will be speaking.
‘The seminar will cover accessing government funding for R&D and how to make the most of what’s available for your business,’ said Mr Mott. ‘In addition, the seminar will review how to accelerate products to market through embracing Design for Manufacture (DFM) techniques. Current day global scenarios will be used to highlight the DFM process, with the expectation that you will be able to apply these principles to better achieve your product development objectives,’ said Mr Mott. A final area of discussion will be how to implement strategies to guard new products from imitators, including a review of lessons from recent developments in patent and design law affecting Australian manufacturers.
Alan Garcia is eager to speak next week especially after the outcomes of the Federal Budget. ‘The R&D Tax Credit is great for companies with tax losses because they will be able to “cash out” the R&D Tax Credit when lodging their income tax return. For example, if a company spends $1 million they will get back $450,000 which is no bad thing.’
‘Companies will always need new products and this goes way beyond biotechnology and ICT,’ said Noonan. ‘Based in Melbourne, the capital of Australia’s manufacturing industry, we want to continue to energise business in R&D initiatives.’
Endnotes
1. Outline of R&D Tax Credit by AusIndustry, a division of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
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