Revenue R&D Tax Credit for AI development

What this scheme funds

A 30% credit on qualifying AI R&D spend — the most under-used support in the Irish mid-market.

• Staff costs directly engaged in qualifying R&D
• Qualifying subcontracted and outsourced R&D within statutory limits
• Materials and overheads attributable to the R&D activity
• Certain cloud and compute costs used in the R&D activity

What it does not fund

These costs are routinely ruled ineligible under this scheme.

• Routine configuration of off-the-shelf AI tools
• Standard software integration with no technological uncertainty
• Market research, sales and marketing
• Work with no documented experimental record

Who is eligible

Eligibility is decided by Revenue, not by Digital Bridge.

• A company within the charge to Irish corporation tax
• Activity is systematic, investigative or experimental in a field of science or technology
• The activity seeks to achieve scientific or technological advancement
• It involves the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty
• Contemporaneous records are maintained throughout

How to apply

Typical end-to-end timeline: The claim follows your corporation tax cycle, so the important work is contemporaneous. Start the record-keeping at project kick-off; deciding to claim at year end and reconstructing the evidence afterwards is how good projects fail a Revenue query.

• Identify which project activities meet the statutory science test
• Keep contemporaneous technical records from day one — this is where most claims are lost
• Track qualifying expenditure separately in your accounts
• Prepare the technical and financial claim documentation
• Claim through the corporation tax return within the statutory time limit
• Retain evidence in case Revenue raises a query

Evidence you will need

Applications are usually delayed by missing paperwork rather than by weak projects.

• Technical narrative stating the uncertainty and the advance sought
• Project records: hypotheses tested, iterations, results, dead ends
• Timesheets or a defensible allocation of staff time
• Expenditure records mapped to qualifying categories

Why applications get rejected

The recurring reasons assessors give under this scheme.

• No technological uncertainty — the work was known-solution engineering
• Records reconstructed after the fact
• Qualifying and non-qualifying time not separated
• Applying an existing model with no experimental element

What Digital Bridge delivers under this scheme

Illustrative net cost applies the published rate (30% credit on qualifying R&D expenditure) to our published engagement bands. It is arithmetic, not an offer of funding.

• Novel AI capability development with a documented experimental record — list a fixed quote, illustrative net cost Effective cost reduced by 30% on the qualifying portion only

Who decides this grant, and what we are responsible for

Revenue decides eligibility, approval and payment under this scheme. Digital Bridge supplies the work and the documentation an assessor asks for from the supplier side.

• Digital Bridge does not administer, assess, approve, pay or appeal any grant. Every decision is made by the funding body named on the scheme, under its own published rules.
• This section is general information, not financial, tax, legal or grant-writing advice. It is not an application, a pre-approval, or any form of assurance that you will be funded.
• Scheme rates, ceilings and eligibility change without notice and several supports are administered locally, so your Local Enterprise Office or agency may apply different rules to the ones published here. Confirm everything with the funder in writing before you commit.
• Our questionnaire is a deterministic guide based only on the answers you give. It cannot see your accounts, your sector classification, your state-aid position or your previous awards, so it can suggest a scheme you are ultimately found ineligible for.
• If an application is refused, delayed, reduced or clawed back, our fees for work you have instructed remain payable. We recommend you do not instruct chargeable work until your funder confirms in writing what it will support.
• Costs incurred before a funder receives your application are almost always ineligible. Timing is your responsibility, and we will always tell you when we think you should wait.

How the R&D Tax Credit works in practice

The R&D tax credit is not a grant and does not behave like one. There is no application to approve, no committee and no prior permission; the company claims through its corporation tax return and stands over the claim if Revenue examines it. That inverts the usual risk. With a grant, the risk is being refused before you spend. With the credit, the risk is claiming for work that does not meet the statutory test and being assessed later. The test turns on scientific or technological advancement and the resolution of uncertainty. Configuring off-the-shelf software, integrating documented APIs and building a conventional website do not qualify, however difficult the work felt.

What we do as the supplier on the quote

Where our work forms part of a claim, our contribution is contemporaneous evidence rather than an opinion on eligibility. That means dated technical notes, records of approaches tried and abandoned, and time records tied to specific technical questions. We do not tell a company whether its project qualifies — that is a matter for its tax adviser, and a supplier's assurance carries no weight with Revenue. We also warn against the reverse-engineered claim, where a year's invoices are reviewed afterwards to see what might be reclassified as research. Claims built that way are exactly the ones that struggle under examination.

Does building an AI chatbot qualify for the R&D tax credit?

Usually not. Wiring an existing model into a website is applied engineering with a known solution path. What can qualify is the part where the outcome was genuinely uncertain — for example developing a novel retrieval or classification approach for a data type that available tools handled poorly, with the experiments documented as you went.

Can I claim the credit and a grant on the same project?

Grant-funded expenditure is generally excluded from the qualifying base, so the same euro cannot be supported twice. Companies commonly grant-fund the deployment while claiming the credit on the genuinely experimental portion. Take advice from your tax adviser on the split — we are engineers, not tax advisers, and we will not pretend otherwise.

What does Digital Bridge provide toward a claim?

The technical record. We keep an engineering log of hypotheses, experiments, iterations and dead ends across the build, and we hand it over. Your accountant decides what qualifies; our job is to make sure the evidence exists rather than being reconstructed from memory in March.

Can a company claim the credit and receive a grant for the same project?

Grant-aided expenditure is generally excluded from the qualifying cost base, so the same euro cannot be funded twice. The interaction rules are technical and change; have your tax adviser work through the treatment before assuming both routes are open.

Source and last review

Scheme parameters checked against Revenue — Research and Development Tax Credit (https://www.revenue.ie/en/companies-and-charities/reliefs-and-exemptions/research-and-development-rd-tax-credit/index.aspx) on 2026-08-18. Reviewed quarterly. Next scheduled review: November 2026. Digital Bridge is a supplier, not the awarding body. Eligibility, approval and payment are decided solely by the funding body named on each scheme. Figures below are the published scheme parameters as at the review date shown, and net costs are arithmetic illustrations of the published rate applied to our published prices. Always confirm current rules with the funder before you commit to any spend, because expenditure incurred before an application is received is almost always ineligible.