R&D Tax Credit Finance Ireland: Borrowing Against Your Claim (2026)

Your R&D tax credit is some of the best money your company will ever get. It's also some of the slowest. Spend €400,000 on qualifying R&D in 2026 and you're due €140,000 back, but the first cash won't land until late 2027 and the last of it not until 2029.

For a profitable company, that's an accounting detail. For a software or medtech business burning cash to build its product, it's the difference between hiring two engineers now and hiring them after your runway has shrunk.

Search this topic and you'll find page after page from advisers explaining how to claim. Useful, but none of them tell you how to fund the wait. That's what this guide is for.

How the Irish R&D Tax Credit Pays Out in 2026

Quick refresher. The credit is a percentage of your qualifying R&D spend: staff costs, materials, some plant and machinery, and qualifying outsourced work. It went from 25% to 30% for accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2024, and Finance Act 2025 pushed it to 35%. The start date for 35% matters if you've an unusual year-end, so check which rate applies to your period with your adviser.

For accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2023, the credit comes back in three fixed annual instalments:

• First instalment: the greater of €87,500 (or the whole credit, if it's smaller) and 50% of the credit. Finance Act 2025 raised that floor from €75,000.
• Second instalment: three-fifths of what's left.
• Third instalment: the balance.

For each one, you choose: take it as cash, or treat it as an overpayment and offset it against other taxes. Remember that choice. It matters a lot to lenders, and we'll come back to it.

Two deadlines catch people. You must claim within 12 months of the end of the accounting period the spend falls in. And if it's your first claim, or you haven't claimed in the last three years, you have to notify Revenue on the pre-filing form at least 90 days before you claim. Miss that and you can miss the window altogether.

The Cash Gap: Why 2026 Spending Becomes 2027, 2028 and 2029 Cash

Let's put real numbers on it. Say your company has a 31 December 2026 year-end and €400,000 of qualifying spend, so a €140,000 credit at 35%.

You paid those salaries monthly through 2026. The first euro back arrives about a year after the year-end. The last arrives more than two and a half years after it.

Now look at what the €87,500 floor does for smaller claims. Spend €200,000 and your credit is €70,000. That's under the floor, so the whole lot comes in the first instalment.

For you, the funding question is just bridging from year-end to the refund. That's a much smaller, much cheaper problem than funding three years of instalments.

How R&D Tax Credit Lenders Size an Advance

There's a small group of specialist lenders who'll advance cash against an expected claim. The market's more developed in the UK than here, and some Irish alternative lenders will also factor an expected credit into a wider working capital facility. Either way, the sizing logic is much the same.

They start with the instalment, not the headline. A €140,000 credit isn't €140,000 of security when only €87,500 is due in the next year. The rest depends on you still trading and compliant in 2028 and 2029, so most advances are sized on the first instalment.

They apply a haircut. Advances commonly land somewhere between half and three-quarters of the expected instalment. The top of that range goes to companies with accepted claims behind them, prepared by a recognised adviser. A first-time, in-house claim sits at the bottom, if it gets funded at all.

They control how they get paid. The lender's repaid from the refund, so expect a charge over the company and a requirement that the refund lands in an account they can see or control. Remember the cash-or-offset choice? If you elect to offset the instalment against your corporation tax or VAT, no cash arrives to repay the lender. Most facilities insist you take the cash.

Here's what that looks like in practice. Take the €140,000 claim above, with an established adviser and two earlier claims accepted. A lender might advance 70% of the €87,500 first instalment, so about €61,000, drawn in early 2027 once the claim is prepared. It's repaid when Revenue pays the first instalment, hopefully late 2027. You get the cash roughly ten months early, for one fee and the interest over that period.

Is that worth it? If the €61,000 pays for two engineers who ship the product a quarter sooner, often yes. If it just plugs a hole in next month's payroll, you've got a bigger problem than timing.

One more thing. Price the facility in euro, not as a headline rate. Ask what it costs if Revenue pays on time, and what it costs if the refund is four months late because of a query. The second number tells you whether it's worth it.

What Lenders Worry About: Claim Quality and Revenue Audit Risk

A lender funding stock can go and look at the stock. A lender advancing against an R&D claim is lending against a technical argument Revenue hasn't tested yet. So here's what they'll dig into:

• The science test. The work has to seek a scientific or technological advance and resolve real uncertainty. Revenue can, and does, bring in independent experts to review it. Routine software development dressed up as R&D is the classic weak spot.
• Records made at the time. Project notes, technical reports and timesheets for the people whose salaries make up most of the claim. Timesheets rebuilt after the fact don't reassure anyone.
• Who prepared it. An established adviser whose claims hold up under review carries real weight. A firm promising unusually big claims on a contingency fee has the opposite effect.
• Grant overlap. Spend funded by State grants generally doesn't qualify. If Enterprise Ireland or your LEO part-funded the project, it needs careful separation from the claim.
• Outsourcing limits. Payments to universities and third parties are capped relative to in-house spend, and over-claiming here is a common audit adjustment.
• Your wider tax record. Revenue sets refunds against other tax debts. VAT or PAYE arrears can swallow an instalment before your lender sees a cent, so they'll want tax clearance and a clean statement of account. If a tax bill is what's causing the arrears, our guide to funding a tax bill covers your options.

So what should you have ready before you apply? The technical report for each project, the expenditure schedule behind the claim, your last two years of filed accounts and CT1s, a ROS statement of account, tax clearance, and any correspondence with Revenue on earlier claims. A company that hands that over in one go gets a faster answer and, usually, a better advance.

What the lender's really pricing is the risk of a Revenue compliance check that delays or cuts the refund, or a later clawback with interest and penalties. A clean, well-evidenced claim will lower your cost of finance more than any haggling.

Budget 2027: Why It Changes the Borrowing Decision

Budget 2027, announced in October 2026, proposes several R&D changes, expected from 1 January 2027 and subject to the Finance Bill now going through the Oireachtas:

• The first-instalment floor goes from €87,500 to €105,000. At 35%, a company with roughly €300,000 or less of qualifying spend would get its whole credit in year one.
• Outsourcing limits rise to 20% for universities and €200,000 for unconnected third parties.
• A 5% uplift on qualifying wage costs, with the conditions still to be clarified.
• Better recognition of the credit when you calculate preliminary corporation tax.

So what does that mean for you? If most of your credit will soon come in the first instalment, borrowing against later instalments makes less sense. A short bridge from year-end becomes the main use case.

Don't sign a multi-year facility on rules that are about to change. Confirm the final position with your tax adviser once the Finance Act is passed.

Better Alternatives: Revenue-Based Finance, Term Loans, Grants and Equity

An R&D advance is a narrow tool. In a lot of the cases we see, something else does the job better.

Got recurring revenue? Look at revenue-based finance. If you're a SaaS or subscription business, a lender can advance against your monthly income instead of a claim Revenue hasn't assessed. Revenue-based lending is repaid as a share of revenue, so it flexes with a slow month. Our revenue-based lending needs at least €15,000 a month in revenue and six months of trading.

Profitable? Borrow on your trading record. If you're making money and claiming the credit, you can often get a term loan on your accounts alone. That's simpler and cheaper than an advance against a claim. Our fixed-term loans run from €30,000 to €300,000 over 12 to 48 months, and the schemes in our SBCI loan guide offer longer terms through participating lenders.

Fund the R&D itself with grants. Enterprise Ireland's Research, Development and Innovation Fund, the Agile Innovation Fund and innovation vouchers can pay for the work directly. Just remember the grant-funded part then comes out of your tax credit claim. Our government business grants guide sets out the main schemes.

Pre-revenue deep tech? It's probably equity. Honestly, if you've no revenue and a long build ahead, debt is the wrong tool. A convertible loan or equity round, or an early cheque from angel investors, funds the whole programme, and the tax credit stretches your runway instead of being borrowed against. Simplí doesn't arrange equity investment, but we'll tell you straight if that's where your case belongs.

Turn Your R&D Claim Into Runway Without Betting the Company on It

The R&D credit is generous, it's refundable, and it's now worth 35% of what you spend. But that three-year payment schedule means cash-hungry companies are funding the gap one way or another. The only question is whether you do it on purpose.

Get the claim right first. A recognised adviser, proper records and a clean Revenue file make every funding option cheaper.

Then match the tool to the gap: a short bridge to the first instalment, revenue-based finance if you've subscriptions, a term loan if you're profitable, equity if you're deep tech. Borrow against the claim when it's the cheapest route to runway, not because it's the only one you've heard of.

Frequently Asked Questions