Author
Alex Simmons - Co-Founder & CEO, Kashcade
With a background in big-bank product strategy at CommBank and management consulting at Accenture, Alex now works directly with Australian founders to unlock R&D funding at speed. Under his leadership, Kashcade has raised ~$100M in capital, served hundreds of companies, and built a profitable lending business from the ground up.
Last week, I convened an online roundtable between a handful of members from the R&D Tax Advisers Association (RDTAA) and Aaron Violi MP, the Shadow Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation and Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy. Joining the call were RDTAA President Stephen Carroll and a group of practising R&D tax advisors from across the country - the people who between them assist the vast majority of Australia's roughly 14,000 RDTI claimants to access the program and comply with it.
The purpose was simple. The advisor community and the claimants they serve are seeing the same things we see at Kashcade every week: a program under strain, not from its design, but from how it's being administered and changed. We wanted to put that evidence in front of someone who could act on it. This article covers why we called the meeting, what we raised, what we learned, and what happens next.
Why we called the meeting
The RDTI is the single most important bridge between Australian innovation and commercial success. It's broad-based, it's proven, and unlike almost any other program - the economic evidence shows it is a multiplier, not a cost. The most rigorous Australian study on the question, from Swinburne University's Centre for Transformative Innovation, found that every dollar of tax revenue forgone through the program generates up to $1.90 in additional business R&D spending.
The economic case
Every dollar forgone generates up to $1.90 in additional business R&D
The most rigorous Australian study on the question — from Swinburne University's Centre for Transformative Innovation — found the RDTI works as a multiplier, not a cost.
Broad-based, proven, and unlike almost any other program, backed by evidence that it returns more to the economy than it costs the budget.
But three things are currently working against it, and they were the three items on our agenda:
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1
The proposed Budget changes are counterproductive
The 2026-27 Federal Budget proposes the most radical structural shakeup to the RDTI in over a decade, taking effect from 1 July 2028. Some elements are genuinely welcome - lifting the refundable offset turnover threshold from $20M to $50M is a long-overdue improvement.
But the package also removes eligibility for supporting activities (making Australia the only OECD country to do so, in direct conflict with the internationally recognised Frascati framework), introduces a 10-year age limit on refundability, and lifts the minimum expenditure floor in a way that locks out early-stage founders while saving almost nothing.
Our own analysis of the FY23 claimant data shows the 10-year rule would hit hardest in manufacturing, mining, hardware and agriculture - capital-intensive industries where more than two-thirds of R&D spend comes from companies past the ten-year mark.
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2
The fraud narrative is causing real damage
References to fraud in the Budget, and a sustained fraud-focused message from the regulators, have created a climate of fear across the claimant base - without any published data, statistics or evidence showing fraud in the RDTI has actually increased, or how it compares to other tax programs. Directors are asking whether they should claim at all. New applicants are self-selecting out. Meanwhile, on the ground ,advisors report review and audit activity in which the highest penalty categories - recklessness and intentional disregard - are being applied in the first instance to taxpayers who relied in good faith on registered professionals. There is a meaningful difference between a claim the ATO disagrees with, an honest error, and fraud. Conflating them harms the legitimate claimants the program exists to support.
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3
The regulators have disengaged from the community
The advisors who prepare the overwhelming majority of claims can no longer get a conversation. Engagement has narrowed to periodic one-way presentations and a mailbox. The collaborative roundtables that characterised the program's best-run periods have disappeared. When advisors can't check a borderline activity with a case manager before a claim is lodged, everyone loses - the claimant, the advisor, and the regulator, who ends up spending far more resources on reviews that a five-minute conversation could have prevented.
What we heard
The Shadow Minister engaged seriously with all three topics, and a few themes from the discussion are worth sharing.
The risk framing matters
He made the point that R&D is, by definition, investing in an idea with no guarantee of success - and that public debate is dominated by what he called "hindsight heroes" who point to the Atlassians without acknowledging the hundreds of similar companies that failed along the way. A good incentive prices in that risk. That framing aligns exactly with why refundability matters for pre-profit companies, and why pulling support mid-journey is so damaging.
Timing compounds the harm
As Aaron Violi MP drew on his own private-sector and startup experience, he observed that when conditions tighten, R&D is among the first spending companies cut - which means these changes arrive at the worst possible moment, when runway and cash flow already dominate every board conversation. Several advisors on the call echoed this from the front line: more client failures in the past twelve months than at any point in their careers.
Broad-based beats picking winners
There was strong agreement that the RDTI's greatest strength is that it lets businesses - not government - decide where R&D capital earns the best return. Carving the program up by sector or preference erodes the very mechanism that makes it a multiplier. Targeted support has its place; that's what grant programs are for.
On fraud, the distinction landed
When we walked through how the system actually works - that claims prepared through registered tax agents and R&D advisors carry professional obligations, TPB reporting requirements, and multiple layers of review, and that genuinely fraudulent structures are typically visible "clear as day" in the financials - the conversation shifted to the right question: where is the data?
The Shadow Minister committed to exploring the parliamentary avenues available, including Senate estimates and questions on notice, to press for the fraud statistics that the regulators have so far not published: how R&D fraud rates compare to other tax and cash programs, and whether they have actually changed over the past two, five, or ten years.
Regulators need a growth mandate, not just a risk mandate
His broader policy observation was that regulators across the economy have drifted to an almost exclusively risk-and-compliance posture, and that rebalancing toward growth and innovation - while keeping appropriate integrity settings - is apriority the Coalition intends to build into its platform.
Stories move policy.
Perhaps the most practical advice of the session: case studies are more valuable than data. Politicians and the public connect with the de-identified story of a real company pushed to the wall by a delayed refund or a heavy-handed review in a way they never will with a statistic. The R&D community is sitting on hundreds of these stories, and until now nobody has asked for them.
What happens next
We left the meeting with a concrete set of actions, and we're getting on with them:
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A bipartisan letter to the Minister
The RDTAA, with Kashcade's support, will formally write to the Minister for Industry and Innovation setting out the industry's concerns and proposed solutions - copying the Shadow Minister. This puts the issues formally on the record with both sides of politics, demonstrates the industry is acting in good faith, and creates accountability: once the Minister's office has the industry's position in writing, the government can be asked directly why it was or wasn't taken up. The Shadow Minister has committed to following up with the Minister's office to seek genuine bipartisan engagement on the back of it.
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Low-hanging-fruit savings options
If the Budget's goal is to reduce program cost, there are far simpler ways to do it than a structural redesign that will cost both government and industry heavily in legislation, guidance and compliance. The advisor community will provide the Shadow Minister with a shortlist of straightforward savings measures that don't add complexity and don't harm the businesses the program exists to support - the same approach the2016 rate adjustment took.
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De-identified case studies
We're compiling real examples from across the community: companies whose refunds were held up for months with direct consequences for hiring and survival, reviews where top-tier penalties were applied to good-faith claims, businesses that have withdrawn from the program out of fear. If you're an advisor with a case that should be heard, or a claimant with a story to tell, we want to hear from you - anonymised, always.
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Pressing for the fraud data
Through the parliamentary channels available to the Opposition, we'll be supporting efforts to get the actual fraud statistics on the record. If there's a genuine fraud problem, the advisor community wants to know about it and help fix it - that's precisely what the RDTAA was established to do. If there isn't, the narrative needs to be corrected before it does any more damage to legitimate participation.
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An ongoing seat at the table
This meeting was the start of a conversation, not the end of one. R&D policy will be a core part of the Coalition's platform heading into the next election, and the Shadow Minister has committed to ongoing engagement with the advisor community as that platform develops - including engagement with claimants and local businesses directly.
The bottom line
The R&D Tax Incentive works. The evidence says so, the international comparisons say so, and the thousands of companies that have used it to fund genuine innovation say so. The threats to it right now don't come from its design - they come from proposed changes that add complexity without evidence, a fraud narrative that lacks data, and a breakdown in the working relationship between regulators and the community that keeps the program honest.
None of the Budget changes are law yet. The window between now and 1 July 2028is the window for getting this right, and the industry is organised, aligned, and engaged in a way it has rarely been before.
If you'd like to contribute a case study, join the RDTAA, or talk to us about anything raised here, get in touch at hi@kashcade.com.
About Kashcade
Kashcade is Australia's top-rated R&D Tax Incentive lender, providing non-dilutive loans against RDTI refunds to startups, scaleups, and ASX-listed companies. We've deployed over $150 million across more than 400 loans, with a 24–48 hour funding promise and no equity dilution or personal guarantees.
Kashcade is a 2026 & 2025 Finnies finalist for Excellence in Business Lending, we’ve been featured in the Australian Financial Review, Startup Daily, and FinTech Australia. Our team includes former R&D tax advisors, commercial lenders, and lending infrastructure engineers, led by Alex Simmons (ex-CommBank, ex-Accenture, 2026 Finnies Emerging Fintech Leader finalist) and Patrick Nappa (ex-Apple, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, University Medallist - University of Sydney).
