Research funding with 3 times higher success rate and 45 percent higher yield

May 27, 2022 | Research allowance FZulG

The Research Grants Act (FZulG) offers 30,000 companies in Germany the opportunity of a new instrument to reduce the risks involved in developing innovations.

In the Netherlands, France, and other European countries, this tax mechanism has existed in part for decades. In the Netherlands, the specialist in tax-based research funding, the PNO Group of Companies, submits 3,000 such applications annually (WBSO). This know-how is leading throughout Europe. The wholly owned subsidiary of the consulting firm ARTTIC Innovation GmbH benefits from this. The success of a grant application should not be based on chance, but on experience. ARTTIC Innovation GmbH and PNO Group can point to a 3-fold higher success rate and 45 percent higher yield than the average in their applications for European funding and fiscal research support.

The new Research Grants Act (www.fzulg.eu) is simple and easy to access: as soon as the certifying body has given a positive decision on the research project, up to one million euros in grants for personnel costs from this project can be claimed as tax research funding. Companies with a negative balance sheet even get the allowance paid out in full.

Martin Dietz, ARTTIC Innovation GmbH, explains: “Researchers and developers from many European countries turn to us when it comes to smoothly applying for funding. Experience is the be-all and end-all for a description of a project that is as precise as it is comprehensible and suitable. This is the basis for a successful application. In 2020, our research partners and we have been granted funding over 6000 times.”

However, before certification under the new Research Grants Act comes the application – and it must comply with the regulations and demonstrate eligibility based on the criteria of the OECD’s Frascati Manual.

Although the FZulG is a new law in Germany, ARTTIC already has a 33-year track record of supporting research funding applications at the European, national and regional levels. For the current EU research framework program Horizon 2020, 115 applications have already been successfully managed. While the average success rate here is 12 percent (percentage of applications approved), ARTTIC achieved a 35 percent success rate. In total, more than 25,000 applications have been successfully supported since the company was founded.

ARTTIC has therefore been intimately familiar with the OECD’s Frascati Manual, on which the new research allowance in Germany is based, for many years.