R&D tax relief essentials: Three critical insights every accountant should know

Kelly is an associate director at ForrestBrown. She is a chartered tax adviser with more than a decade of experience, and a key part of our business growth team.

Since joining the company, Kelly’s skill and hard work have helped to deliver millions of pounds in R&D funding for ForrestBrown’s clients. Her focus is now on developing relationships with our accountant partners to help support clients’ goals. 

Kelly works closely with a wide range of the UK’s leading accountants, including top 50 firms, tailoring each relationship to optimise the value we can add to our partners and their clients. With specialist experience supporting firms with their own R&D tax service line, Kelly brings years of knowledge working on complex R&D claims. In addition to supporting claims raised by our partners, Kelly helps ensure they can accurately identify all the R&D activity within their client base. 

Kelly is passionate about working with ForrestBrown’s clients to access R&D tax relief and explore opportunities across the wider innovation toolkit.

After earning a BSc in Mathematical Sciences from the University of Birmingham, Kelly trained with a top accountancy firm and went on to specialise in R&D tax advice. She joined ForrestBrown as a tax manager in 2014 and progressed quickly into a senior tax manager role. Less than four years later, she became an associate director.

James leads our tax advisory practice, FB Consulting, providing award-winning R&D tax relief expertise to businesses and accountants. This can include modelling and forecasting, risk profiling and benchmarking, and advice on compliance and methodology for large corporates.

With a legal background and extensive experience dealing with HMRC, James brings incisive insights to tax disputes, developing strategies to achieve the best possible outcome for clients. For example, he successfully led ForrestBrown's support for Quinn (London) Limited in a 2021 landmark tribunal case challenging the interpretation of subsidised R&D expenditure.

James and the FB Consulting team provide specialist advice, working alongside a company's general advisers, including due diligence relating to R&D tax relief pre and post transactions and R&D in complex, international groups.

A solicitor who specialises in tax advice for corporates and individuals, with a focus on cross-border and international issues, James trained and qualified at a top London law firm before relocating to Geneva to help set up the firm’s Swiss office. On returning to the UK James worked in the tax team of a leading Bristol and London-based law firm, before joining ForrestBrown in 2019.

James has contributed commentary on R&D tax relief and tax disputes to publications including Bloomberg Law and International Tax Review.

Tom is an ATT qualified tax professional who trained at a Big Four firm and brings more than a decade of experience to the team. He leads client-facing teams in ForrestBrown’s R&D tax practice. 

Before joining us in 2016, Tom was part of the global mobility team at PwC where he worked with a range of clients from fast-growth SMEs to large multinationals. He also helped organisations manage tax and compliance risks when sending staff overseas or into the UK. 

Tom originally joined us as a tax manager, before progressing to director in 2022. One of the first people to graduate from the ForrestBrown Learning Lab, Tom now leads teams that support companies in preparing robust R&D tax relief claims to achieve the full benefit in line with HMRC's compliance measures.

As well as leading a team of qualified tax advisers and accountants, Tom can also call on sector specialists with industry experience to ensure effective project descriptions are provided.

Tom builds long-term relationships with clients to understand their innovation and how it contributes to business objectives. This enables him to provide clear, practical and timely advice to clients, optimising R&D investment while reducing financial risk.