Most R&D credits are not calculated. They are negotiated.

There is a reason the old accounting joke still lands. When accountants are asked what two plus two equals, the punchline is not four. It is, “What do you want it to be?”

That mindset quietly drives many traditional R&D credit studies.

The Industry’s Dirty Secret

In a traditional R&D credit study, accountants do not determine Qualified Research Expenses. Your employees do.

They are asked to decide:

• Whether projects qualify

• Whether activities qualify

• How much time qualifies

Those are tax determinations. Not opinions. Not estimates. Not gut checks.

Yet the answers get typed into a spreadsheet and treated as truth. The spreadsheet produces a number. The number gets filed. And everyone hopes it holds up.

This is not analysis. It is abdication.

Spreadsheets Create Comfort, Not Accuracy

Spreadsheets are not neutral. They hard-code assumptions, hide judgment calls, and make subjective inputs look precise.

Once something is in the model, it feels authoritative. Until the IRS asks how you got there.

At that point, “this is what our employees said” is not a defense. It is an admission.

The Contrarian View

Your R&D credit should not depend on what your employees think qualifies.

It should depend on what actually qualifies under the tax code.

That requires independent analysis, primary data, and rules applied to facts. Not interviews turned into estimates. Not SALY. Not spreadsheet folklore.

Our Position

At SPRX Technologies, we do not ask what you want your QRE to be.

We gather data from source systems.
We analyze the work performed.
We apply the law.
We compute the credit.

If the answer is smaller, so be it. If it is larger, it is defensible.

Because the goal is not a number that feels good.
It is a number that holds up.