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Australian-Based Immutep Ltd Receives $3.63M AUD from French R&D Tax Incentive

Sydney-based company Immutep Ltd has recently announced that it received a €2,173,454 (~A$3,630,000) R&D Tax Incentive payment in cash from the French Government under its Crédit d’Impôt Recherche scheme (CIR).

The payment relates to activity the company is conducting in Paris to develop its novel Immunotherapy treatment.

Immutep Ltd also registers activities under the Australian R&D Tax Incentive and has previously reported the following receipts:

• YE 30 June 2018 – $872,000;
• YE 30 June 2019 – $1,290,000.

Whilst there is likely to be some clinical and logistical reasons behind Immutep Ltd’s decision to conduct Activity in France to gain access to their R&D Tax System, this is a direct example that Australian capital is mobile, and other countries also offer R&D Tax Incentives.

Consideration of this is timely, as the government has, in recent weeks indicated that they may still seek to pursue their R&D proposed budget cuts to the R&D Tax Incentive, even in the wake of the COVID-19 Situation.

The government had reintroduced a bill to reform the R&D Tax Incentive in December 2019, despite:

• A Senate Economics inquiry concluding that a previous iteration of the bill should be withdrawn due to concerns over complexity, particularly the controversial intensity threshold;
• Widespread condemnation from industry, with a consensus that the intensity threshold would punish local manufacturers and risk driving R&D offshore.

The proposed changes, and their subsequent application and interpretation, would impose upon companies significant uncertainty at a time when:

• Australian businesses’ R&D investment was already in decline pre-COVID-19;
• Australian businesses face significant headwinds post-COVID-19.

We call on the government to reconsider their position and withdraw their proposed R&D Tax Incentive reforms.