HMRC has published official statistics on the number of companies claiming tax relief under the UK Patent Box. The Patent Box allows qualifying companies to apply a lower 10% Corporation Tax rate on profits arising from patent exploitation. The benefit was phased in from 1 April 2016 with the full benefit of the Patent Box available from 1 April 2017. The newly published statistics include figures for 2017-18 together with partial figures for 2018-19.
The statistics show that in 2017-18, 1,305 companies applied the lower Corporation Tax rate (on a phased basis) to profits attributable to patents and other qualifying intellectual property claiming relief of £1,101m. In 2018-19, 1,230 companies have so far claimed relief under the Patent Box of £992m. These figures are expected to be revised upwards when more data becomes available.
28% of the companies were classified as large but together they claimed the vast majority (over 92%) of the total relief. Most of the claims were made by the manufacturing sector but there were also claims from other industries including those defined as falling under the ‘Wholesale and Retail’ and ‘Scientific and Technical’ sectors.
