Forschungszulage (Germany)
German tax credit on research and development spend, for companies of any size with a German tax seat. Software counts only inside a project that genuinely qualifies as R&D.
At a glance
- What it is worth
- Up to €4,200,000of benefit per company · 25% of the eligible spend · maximum investment €12,000,000
- Where it stands
- Always available, with no deadline and no fund to run out
- Stacks with other aid
- Stackable up to a ceiling
- Which companies
- All companies, large ones included
- Who can apply
- Companies taxable in Germany, of any size, legal form and sector, with an R&D project certified by the BSFZ.
- How to apply
- First the project certificate from the BSFZ through its portal, then the credit claim to the competent Finanzamt, fiscal year by fiscal year.
- Who funds it
- National (Italy) · Germany
- Official source
- Bescheinigungsstelle Forschungszulage (BSFZ) · Last checked: 26 September 2026
What it funds
It is a tax credit in two stages, and the order never flips: the BSFZ certifies that the project is research and development, then the Finanzamt settles the credit against the spend. The credit is a share of the eligible spend within a cap on the spend, so the cap and the credit are two different numbers and the “At a glance” panel above keeps them apart, as the BSFZ overview page explains. Eligible spend covers staff, own work, contract research, project equipment the project genuinely needs and, for projects started from 2026, flat-rate overhead, under the measure page and the program that widened the base. The Italian twin, for readers comparing the two systems, is the Italian R&D tax credit.
Requirements and what is left out
- Anyone developing routine software: an ERP, bug fixes, integrations, customizations for a client. The project has to aim at new knowledge, with a scientific and technical risk and a systematic method, and the BSFZ judges the project, not the figures in the accounts.
- Anyone buying software or digital services to modernize the business: that is capital spend, not research, and it does not enter here.
- Anyone without a German tax seat: it takes a company subject to German income or corporation tax. Universities and outside research bodies qualify only indirectly, as recipients of contracts.
- Anyone qualifying as an undertaking in difficulty under the European definition: the text of the act excludes it.
- Anyone expecting to stack other aid on the same costs without removing them from the base: spend already covered by other grants or State aid leaves the calculation, and the base is counted net.
- Anyone walking into the Finanzamt without the certificate: the BSFZ application always comes first, even when the project is finished.
How to apply
- Get the company ELSTER organization certificate: registration on the BSFZ portal goes through it, and the procedure takes time.
- Register the company on the BSFZ portal.
- Describe each project: form, timeline, staff, finances, tax number and competent office.
- Receive the certificate: the examination covers the project, and no invoices are needed at this stage.
- Claim the credit from the Finanzamt for each fiscal year, within four years of the end of the year the spend arose, as the BSFZ frequently asked questions explain.
What this budget builds
Where a project holds up as research, for instance a model that has to solve a problem with no known solution, I build it keeping experimentation hours apart from ordinary development, with experiments, discarded hypotheses and results tracked in the code and a work plan in packages of the kind the BSFZ asks for. That is the material the certificate turns on, and where the work is plain development I say so up front.
This entry is informational and is not advice: I do not handle grant applications, and before committing to a purchase it is worth reading the official source above or talking to whoever files the application.
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