R&D project documentation under judicial scrutiny. Will your documentation stand up to the tax authorities?

In recent months, several judgments have appeared in the case law of the provincial administrative courts that may cause concern among taxpayers benefiting from the R&D relief. In these rulings, the courts devoted considerably more attention to documenting research and development activity than had previously been the case.

Does this mean that taxpayers should prepare for new, more stringent documentation obligations? In our assessment – no. These judgments do, however, constitute an important signal that proper documentation of R&D activity may play a key role in the event of a dispute with the tax authorities.

Increasingly high court expectations regarding R&D documentation

Recently, two rulings of the Provincial Administrative Court in Poznań deserve particular attention – of 10 February 2026 (ref. I SA/Po 683/25) and of 24 April 2026 (ref. I SA/Po 277/26), as well as the judgment of the Provincial Administrative Court in Łódź of 17 June 2025 (ref. I SA/Łd 208/25). Although they were delivered against different factual backgrounds, all of them point to a markedly more stringent approach to assessing documentation of research and development activity.

It follows from the reasoning of these rulings that the courts expect taxpayers in particular to:

• document the course of the work in a manner allowing its systematic character to be demonstrated, rather than merely presenting the final results of the project,
• demonstrate the objective of the project, the technical or research problem identified and the method adopted to solve it, together with a description of the difficulties and risks encountered,
• present evidence confirming the actual course of the R&D work,
• demonstrate that the documentation was not prepared solely for the purposes of the tax proceedings, but reflects the way the projects were conducted while they were being carried out,
• prove the creative character of the work carried out, going beyond the use of available technologies and standard industry knowledge.

The rulings analysed therefore show that the courts attach ever greater importance not only to the result of the work itself, but also to the possibility of reconstructing the entire process leading to its achievement. The question therefore arises whether all these expectations find support in the applicable provisions.

What do the provisions actually say?

An analysis of the most recent case law leads to a fundamental question: do the applicable provisions in fact impose on taxpayers an obligation to maintain documentation to the extent expected by some administrative courts?

In our assessment – no. The provisions on the R&D relief require the taxpayer to demonstrate that the activity carried out meets the statutory conditions for research and development activity, but they do not specify how this is to be done.

The provisions governing the R&D relief do not contain a catalogue of documents that a taxpayer should hold in order to benefit from the preference. The legislator does not use terms such as “project card”, “schedule” or “project implementation report”. Nor does it specify the required manner of documenting working time or the course of the individual project stages.

The only documentation obligation arising directly from the provisions is the separation of the costs of research and development activity within the accounting records maintained (Article 9(1b) of the CIT Act).

This does not, however, mean that the taxpayer need not have evidence confirming that R&D activity is being carried out. It only means that the statute does not impose its form.

An obligation to demonstrate circumstances is not the same as an obligation to maintain specific documentation

This distinction also follows from the provisions of the Tax Ordinance. Under Article 180 § 1 of the Tax Ordinance, anything that may contribute to clarifying the case and is not contrary to law is to be admitted as evidence. In turn, under Article 191 of the Tax Ordinance, the tax authority assesses the entirety of the evidence gathered.

The provisions do not give priority to particular types of documents, nor do they make entitlement to the relief conditional on holding specific project documentation. The fulfilment of the conditions for R&D activity may be demonstrated by various means of evidence – from technical documentation, through project correspondence, test results and research protocols, to documents functioning within the enterprise independently of the R&D relief.

It is undoubtedly the taxpayer that bears the burden of demonstrating that it carries on research and development activity, incurs eligible costs connected with that activity and maintains separate records allowing them to be identified. The legislator has not, however, determined how these obligations are to be fulfilled. This means that the taxpayer may use various means of evidence, provided that together they allow the statutory conditions to be shown as met.

In this context, equating the obligation to prove that the conditions for R&D activity have been met with an obligation to maintain documentation in a specific form raises material doubts.

Interpretative and judicial practice to date

Attention was initially focused on the obligation to maintain separate records of eligible costs arising from Article 9(1b) of the CIT Act. Both the administrative courts and the tax authorities consistently took the view that this provision imposes on the taxpayer an obligation to separate the costs of R&D activity, while at the same time leaving it free to decide how to fulfil that obligation.

The Provincial Administrative Court in Olsztyn, in its judgment of 15 January 2025 (ref. I SA/Ol 451/24), indicated that the accounting records should make it possible to determine precisely the amount of the eligible costs and the period to which they relate. The Supreme Administrative Court, in turn, in its judgment of 19 December 2023 (ref. II FSK 1415/22), emphasised that the legislator has not specified the manner of separating the costs of R&D activity, leaving taxpayers free to choose solutions allowing their correct identification.

The Director of the National Revenue Information Service has for years presented the same position. In the ruling of 2 June 2025 (ref. 0111-KDIB1-3.4010.204.2025.2.JG) it indicated that the provisions do not specify the form of cost separation or minimum requirements for the records maintained. The ruling of 14 March 2024 (ref. 0114-KDIP2-1.4010.75.2024.1.AZ), in turn, emphasised taxpayers’ autonomy in choosing the manner of separating costs, while the ruling of 24 June 2024 (ref. 0114-KDIP2-1.4010.186.2024.4.AZ) confirmed that the obligation arising from Article 9(1b) of the CIT Act may also be fulfilled by maintaining auxiliary records in the form of Excel spreadsheets.

The tax authorities consider the documenting of the course of research and development activity itself far less frequently. In this respect, guidance can be found primarily in the tax explanations of the Minister of Finance concerning IP Box of 15 July 2019. The Minister indicated that the records of an R&D project should include in particular a description of the project, its start and end dates, a list of the persons involved in carrying it out and a summary of the work performed, assigned to specific team members. As an example of how to document employee involvement, the maintenance of working time records, for instance in a spreadsheet, was indicated.

Interpretative practice takes a similar shape. An analysis of individual tax rulings leads to the conclusion that the tax authorities view the maintenance of R&D project cards positively as an element of documenting research and development activity. At the same time, it is difficult to find decisions from which it would follow that maintaining them constitutes an obligation arising from the provisions. Project cards are most often described by the applicants themselves as an organisational tool they use, and the Director of the National Revenue Information Service accepts such a manner of documentation as an element of the factual circumstances presented, without deriving from the provisions an obligation to maintain documentation in that form.

The case law, the rulings of the Director of the National Revenue Information Service and the Minister of Finance’s explanations therefore all lead to a common conclusion. The legislator requires the taxpayer to demonstrate that it carries on research and development activity, incurs eligible costs and maintains separate records allowing them to be identified, but it does not impose a single model for documenting these circumstances. What is of key importance is the ability to demonstrate the link between the costs incurred and the R&D activity, and not the maintenance of documentation according to a single, statutorily prescribed template.

Maintaining documentation on an ongoing basis

Notably, one of the recent rulings (I SA/Łd 208/25) put forward the view that there is an obligation to maintain documentation for the purposes of the R&D relief on an ongoing basis. This position does not, however, follow from the provisions. Moreover, the tax acts allow a CIT return to be corrected and the R&D relief to be claimed retrospectively, which in practice is a common way of recovering overpaid tax. It is therefore difficult to accept that a taxpayer would be obliged to maintain documentation on an ongoing basis, given that the legislator has not introduced such a requirement and at the same time has provided for the possibility of benefiting from the tax preference at a later date.

Summary

The most recent case law of the provincial administrative courts shows that documenting R&D activity will play an increasingly important role in tax disputes. This does not, however, mean the introduction of new documentation obligations. What remains crucial is gathering evidence allowing it to be demonstrated that research and development activity is being carried out, and correctly separating the eligible costs. From a practical point of view, it is worth ensuring that documentation is created on an ongoing basis and makes it possible to reconstruct the course of the work and to link the costs incurred with specific R&D projects.