Forschungszulage: Germany's R&D tax credit, expanded by the Wachstumschancengesetz

The law uses the Frascati definition. Three project types qualify: Grundlagenforschung (no near-term commercial use), industrielle Forschung (oriented toward a specific application), and experimentelle Entwicklung (working prototype, technology validation). 'Routine engineering' does not qualify - you need a real technical uncertainty that the project is set up to resolve.

Personnel costs of staff working on the R&D project - gross salary + employer social contributions, capped pro-rata at €70/hour (raised to €90/hour from 2024). Plus 70% of qualifying contract-research costs paid to external R&D partners. Tangible R&D investments (machines, materials) became eligible from 2024 onwards via the Wachstumschancengesetz - up to 100% inclusion in the base.

Bescheinigungsstelle Forschungszulage (BSFZ) is the federal body that decides whether your project qualifies as R&D under the law. Application is online, free, and takes ~2-4 months for a decision. The certificate is valid for the project's full duration (typical 1-3 years); you renew if the scope changes substantially. Without a BSFZ certificate the Finanzamt will reject the claim.

Forschungszulage is generally stackable with most German grant programmes (ZIM, KMU innovativ, IGP, BayTOU, BMBF Verbund) BUT with attribution rules: euros that were grant-funded cannot also be tax-credit-funded. In practice: your bookkeeping must distinguish grant-covered hours from own-funded hours; only the latter qualify for the credit. The combination still typically gets you to a higher total funding rate than either alone.