I get asked roughly once a quarter whether a client should sign up with the latest R&D boutique that has cold-emailed them. My answer has been the same for five years, and it gets longer every time. A tribunal decision published this month is the cleanest example yet of why.
In Beer Express Ltd v HMRC, the First-tier Tribunal dismissed an R&D tax credit claim of almost £500,000 in full (AccountingWEB, 2026). The company had paid a specialist to prepare it, and by the time HMRC's enquiry reached the tribunal, that specialist had vanished.
TL;DR: The cost of a contingent-fee R&D boutique was never the percentage they take. It is the fragility of the evidence chain they build. When the boutique disappears, you are left defending the claim alone, and a tribunal will not accept a report that no competent professional is there to stand behind. Build the evidence around your own people, not the advisor.
What happened in Beer Express Ltd v HMRC?
Beer Express claimed enhanced R&D relief totalling £492,000 across two periods, the years ended 30 June 2020 and 30 June 2021 (AccountingWEB, 2026). The projects ran from an AI-led demand-forecasting and inventory system to a new pale lager and a B2B trading platform.
The claim was prepared by a boutique advisor, RDT Active, on the usual contingent-fee basis. When HMRC opened its enquiry and the case went to the First-tier Tribunal, the director tried to contact the firm and found it had effectively disappeared (YesTax, 2026). He was left to defend a half-million-pound claim on his own, for work he had paid someone else to document.
Why did the claim collapse completely?
Because nobody with the right expertise was there to speak to the work. The director was the only witness, and he had not designed or built the technical projects. The one person who could have spoken to the technological uncertainty was never called.
That is fatal under R&D rules. The "competent professional" is the person who actually did the science or engineering, the one who can explain what was uncertain and why a skilled person could not readily resolve it. The tribunal held that without that evidence, even a well-structured report is a bare assertion that carries no weight. HMRC's own claim process now demands these details up front: the Additional Information Form, mandatory since 8 August 2023, requires the name, qualifications and experience of the competent professional behind every claim (ICAEW, 2023).
The fee was never the real cost
R&D relief is a big number and a big target. Companies claimed £8.2 billion in 2024 to 2025, and HMRC still puts error and fraud across the schemes at 5.9%, around £481 million, with the SME scheme running at 10.6% (BDO, 2025). HMRC has staffed up to match, moving from roughly 100 R&D compliance officers in 2021 to more than 500 by 2024 to 2025.
The contingent-fee model rewarded volume over evidence for years, and the enquiries now land two and three years after the claim went in. By then the boutique has often moved on. I have watched this market behave like the PPI claims firms did a decade ago, and Beer Express is the bill arriving.
What should you do if a boutique built your claim?
Ask one question first: do you hold direct, contemporaneous notes from the people who did the work, or only the advisor's report? If it is only the report, the claim is structurally exposed regardless of merit.
So keep the technical record yourself. The project lead, the developer, the person who designed the formulation, they are your competent professionals, and their notes are the asset. If a client is already mid-enquiry and the advisor has gone, there is still a defensible route, but it runs through your own technical people, not a chase for a firm that no longer answers the phone. This is the same discipline I wrote about with the ICAEW credible-basis test and with HMRC's network-analytics tooling: the standard now is contemporaneous evidence you can produce on demand, not a tidy report you cannot defend.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a "competent professional" for an R&D tax credit claim?
It is the person who actually carried out the work and can speak to the technology, not the advisor who interviewed them. Think the technical director, the lead developer, the person who designed the process. They explain what was scientifically or technologically uncertain and why a skilled professional could not readily resolve it. HMRC's Additional Information Form requires their name, qualifications and experience on every claim.
What happens to my R&D claim if the advisor who prepared it has gone out of business?
The claim does not automatically fail, but you lose the person HMRC and a tribunal expect to explain the work. As Beer Express showed, a report on its own carries no evidential weight without a competent professional to stand behind it. You defend the claim through your own technical staff and contemporaneous records, so keep those regardless of who wrote the report.
How do I know if my R&D claim is strong enough to survive an HMRC enquiry?
Check whether you hold direct, dated notes from the people who did the work, describing the uncertainty they faced and how they tackled it. If your evidence is only the advisor's narrative, treat the claim as at risk and rebuild the technical record now, while the people involved still remember the detail.
If a boutique built your last R&D claim and you are not sure the evidence would survive an enquiry, get in touch. I am happy to look at what you actually hold, where the gaps are, and what to rebuild before HMRC asks.