HMRC compliance check · R&D tax relief
An enquiry letter has a clock on it.
HMRC has opened a compliance check into your R&D claim and given you about 30 days. The firm that filed it may be gone, and specialist defence starts at £3,000. The response itself is document work — and that, we can do for £499, fixed.
R&D claims now draw an HMRC compliance check under the volume enquiry model.
the going rate for specialist enquiry defence — often from the same industry that caused the problem.
the typical response window on the letter. Silence makes everything worse; extensions exist but must be asked for.
What you receive
Enquiry letter analysis — within 48 hours of your deposit and documents
What HMRC is actually asking, which parts of your claim are under pressure, what the letter's questions signal about their concern, and the realistic range of outcomes.
Response strategy
What to concede, what to defend, and in what order — including whether to request an extension, and how cooperation affects any penalty position.
Technical narrative, drafted to the statutory definition
Your project's advance and uncertainties rewritten in the structure HMRC caseworkers assess against — the DSIT guidelines and HMRC's own manual — built from interviews with your competent professional, in their words, not marketing copy.
Cost reconciliation workings
Your claimed costs traced back to payroll, invoices and contracts, category by category, with the arithmetic shown — the part enquiries most often stall on.
Response letter for your signature
The complete reply, assembled and referenced, ready for you or your accountant to review, sign and send. You stay the correspondent; nothing goes to HMRC except from you.
The fee
- No percentage of the claim, no contingency games. The incentive problems of the R&D boutique model are the reason you're reading this page.
- We draft; you sign. We do not act as your tax agent and nothing is sent to HMRC by us.
- If the analysis shows your claim is genuinely not defensible, the pack says so and shows the least-damaging way to concede — with the deposit as the full fee, balance waived.
- The full pack follows within 3 working days of your competent professional’s questionnaire coming back, and arrives with the payment link for the £300 balance — we deliver first.
Who does the work
Enquiry defence is reading and writing: the letter, the claim, the Additional Information Form, payroll data, the statutory definition. Greyledger pairs AI systems that read all of it exhaustively with a human operator who is accountable for the service. A specialist firm bills the same work by the hour; here it carries a fixed fee.
Every assertion in the pack cites its source — your documents, the DSIT guidelines, HMRC's published manuals — so your accountant can verify all of it before anything is signed. Since May 2026, advisers who deal with HMRC on a client's behalf must be registered with HMRC; we never correspond with HMRC at all. You stay the correspondent, which also means nothing reaches HMRC that you haven't read and signed.
Start your response
- Pay the £199 deposit by card through Stripe; your receipt arrives by email within a minute.
- Reply to the receipt with your file — the full enquiry letter, the Additional Information Form as submitted, and the CT600/computations. Password-protect anything sensitive and send the password in a separate email. We confirm everything has arrived and is readable before the 48-hour clock starts.
- Analysis within 48 hours; the full pack follows, and the £300 balance is due only on its delivery.
Our free checklist: the first 7 days after an HMRC R&D enquiry letter — what to do, what not to say, and when the 30-day clock can be extended. By email, once, no sequence.
Prefer it by email, or have a question first? [email protected] — replies same day.
Fair questions
Why is this £499 when firms quote £5,000?
Because the work is reading and drafting, done here by AI systems with a named human accountable, priced by the job rather than the hour. The specimen is public precisely so you can judge the quality before paying anything.
What if my claim turns out to be indefensible?
The analysis says so plainly and shows the least-damaging way to concede — and the deposit stands as the entire fee. We have no incentive to tell you everything qualifies; that incentive structure is what caused this mess industry-wide.
Do you deal with HMRC for me?
No — deliberately. Everything is drafted for your own signature; you stay the correspondent and your accountant stays the adviser of record. Nothing reaches HMRC that you haven’t read and signed.
What happens if HMRC writes back after my response?
Most enquiries of this shape close after one well-built response; where HMRC comes back, it is usually one short further letter. Follow-up letter rounds are a fixed £199 each — never hourly, never a percentage. If positions genuinely harden, the pack’s route map (statutory review, ADR, tribunal) tells you the escalation options and costs.
Can I cancel?
Any time before we start, for a full and immediate refund. After delivery of the analysis, the deposit is earned; the £300 balance is only ever due on delivery of the full pack.
Where do my payroll and tax documents go?
Used solely to produce your deliverable, deleted after six months or on request, never used for marketing, passwords stored separately. Chapter and verse on the privacy page.
- Industry estimates of HMRC's enquiry rate on R&D claims under the volume compliance approach adopted from late 2025, c. 17–20% of claims (accountancy trade press, 2025–26).
- Published and quoted ranges for specialist R&D enquiry defence engagements, 2025–26.
- HMRC’s Enquiry Manual (EM1580) treats the 30-day response window as an administrative minimum, not a statutory deadline; extensions are granted on reasoned request.