What the review was
The Strategic Examination of Research and Development (SERD) was an independent review of Australia's R&D system. Its final report, Ambitious Australia, is dated December 2025 and was publicly released in March 2026. The panel was chaired by Robyn Denholm, with Emeritus Professor Ian Chubb AC, Winthrop Professor Fiona Wood AO, and Dr Kate Cornick. The report makes 20 recommendations spanning the R&D system, from foundational research to business incentives.
The problem the report identified
The review's central argument is that Australia's R&D system has leaned too heavily on measuring inputs rather than outcomes, and that business investment in R&D is both low and unusually concentrated. The report's own figures make the point:
| Measure | Australia | Comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Business R&D (BERD) as a share of GDP | **0.9%** | OECD average **1.99%** |
| Share of business R&D done by the largest 50 firms | **11%** | **37–80%** in comparable economies |
Source: Ambitious Australia, p. 54.
In plain terms: Australian businesses spend about half the OECD average on R&D as a share of the economy, and a smaller set of large firms carries less of the national load than is typical overseas. The report frames this as a case for bold reform rather than incremental change.
Note the precision: the 0.9% figure is business R&D (BERD), not Australia's total gross R&D expenditure (GERD). The report does not set a single numeric national R&D-intensity target.
What it recommended for the R&D Tax Incentive
The R&D Tax Incentive is the Commonwealth's largest single lever for business R&D, so it sits at the centre of the redesign. Among the report's recommendations (pp. 59–63):
- A premium offset set at the company tax rate + 23.5 percentage points for eligible R&D (against the current 18.5-point premium for refundable claimants — a rise of about 5 points).
- Lifting the refundable-offset turnover threshold from $20 million to $50 million, with refundability time-limited to young firms.
- Raising the minimum project size from $20,000 to $150,000.
- Removing the R&D intensity calculation for large companies and removing the expenditure ceiling.
- A deemed rate for supporting (non-core) R&D activities, rather than full claiming.
- Quarterly advance payments of the refundable offset for eligible firms.
These are the review's recommendations. As we cover separately, the 2026–27 Budget adopted a modified version of this redesign — same direction, different dials — to apply from 1 July 2028.
Why it matters for documentation
The thread running through the review is a shift from rewarding R&D spending to rewarding genuine, outcome-oriented core experimental R&D. Whichever way the final rules settle, that shift raises the importance of being able to show — with records made at the time — that an activity was systematic, hypothesis-driven experimental work. The characterisation of each activity becomes the question that matters most.
Dossio is infrastructure for exactly that: capturing R&D evidence in structured, dated, audit-ready form as the work happens, with the core-vs-supporting characterisation built into the workflow.
Sources
- Department of Industry, Science and Resources — R&D Tax Incentive
- Ambitious Australia: Strategic Examination of R&D, Final report (statistics p. 54; R&D Tax Incentive recommendations pp. 59–63).
- Australian Government — Budget 2026–27: Tax reform