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Credit for increasing research activities

Program Information

Popular name

N/A

Program Number

TC.008

Program objective

The baseline tax system would uniformly tax all returns to investments and not allow credits for particular activities, investments, or industries. In contrast, the Tax Code allows an R&E credit of up to 20 percent of qualified research expenditures in excess of a base amount. The base amount of the credit is generally determined by multiplying a “fixed-base percentage” by the average amount of the company’s gross receipts for the prior four years. The taxpayer’s fixed base percentage generally is the ratio of its research expenses to gross receipts for 1984 through 1988. Taxpayers can elect the alternative simplified credit regime, which equals 14 percent of qualified research expenses that exceed 50 percent of the average qualified research expenses for the three preceding taxable years.

Program expenditures, by FY (2023 - 2025)

This chart shows obligations for the program by fiscal year. All data for this chart was provided by the administering agency and sourced from SAM.gov, USASpending.gov, and Treasury.gov.

For more information on each of these data sources, please see the About the data page.

Additional program information

OMB is working with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and agency offices of inspectors general to include links to relevant oversight reports. This section will be updated once this information is made available.

Program details

Program types