Tax incentives for R&D and innovation

OECD indicators and analysis on the use, cost and impacts of R&D tax incentives

Governments worldwide increasingly rely on tax incentives to promote business R&D and encourage innovation and economic growth.

The OECD has developed measurement guidelines published in the Frascati Manual and a dedicated data infrastructure – the OECD R&D tax incentives database – to provide qualitative and statistical evidence on the use, cost and impacts of R&D tax incentives. 

The OECD INNOTAX portal

The OECD INNOTAX portal is a new and interactive OECD tool to explore and compare the design and administration of R&D incentives in OECD and other major economies. It provides a single access point to the latest policy design information, quantitative indicators and OECD analysis on R&D tax incentives. 

Featured indicator

Tax incentives play a key role in the business R&D support policy mix in the OECD area and beyond

In 2022, 33 out of 38 OECD countries gave preferential tax treatment to business R&D expenditures at central and/or subnational government level, up from 19 OECD countries in 2000.

Some countries, which appear to give little support on the sole basis of direct funding, are in fact providing significant assistance through the tax system.

Made with Flourish

MICROBERD: An OECD study on the impact of R&D tax incentives

The OECD is working on a micro-data project which applies a “distributed” approach to the empirical analysis of micro-data. The "microBeRD" project investigates and models the incidence and impact of public support for business R&D in collaboration with national experts with access to confidential R&D and public support micro-data. This approach facilitates a co-ordinated statistical analysis of the impact of tax relief design features and their interaction with direct forms of public R&D funding by exploiting variation in support within and across countries.

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