Qualifying work happens every day: something new, something improved. Even failed attempts count. What kills the claim is missing records. Instrumented work writes its own. We engineer. We measure. We file what the record proves. A team of advisors: CPA, human systems engineering, field cost seg. We challenge each other's work before it ever reaches you.
Better work pays twice.
The credit rewards experimentation. Only when records exist. Instrumented work records itself: the camera timestamps the baseline, the simulation logs every alternative, the pilot writes its own data. The work is the proof.
tax outcomes from a single engagement
contemporaneous file behind every number
positions written after the fact
A written go / no-go: what's measurable, what improvement is plausible, which incentives credibly attach, and which business components would be named on the return. "None" is a real answer, delivered in writing.
Instrument the current state before anything changes: errors, cycle times, load, and a functional map of which building systems serve which work. The reference every later claim is measured against.
State the uncertainty. Design alternatives, increasingly with AI simulation. Pilot under real conditions. Measure against baseline. Iterate. Every version filed the day it happens.
The CPA side takes the file and produces the deliverables to filing standard, with a documented date on which development ended and qualifying stopped. Production running is not research.
Walkthrough with you and your preparer. The file stays indexed and retrievable, because examinations arrive years later, and answers should take minutes.
AI compresses the loop. It doesn't replace it. Models propose. The pilot floor decides.
Computer vision captures errors, motion, and cycle times from hours of real work. Ground truth, not clipboard samples.
Generative layouts and digital-twin runs test candidate designs before a single fixture is built. More alternatives, cheaper experiments, faster loops.
Models find what moved and why; humans make the call. The file records both: the model's run and the measured result.
The line we hold: adopting off-the-shelf AI is not research. Developing and testing your process with it, resolved by experiment and recorded in the file, can be.
The experiment record is the §41 claim: uncertainty stated, alternatives tested, results measured. Evaluated against the four-part test, in writing, either way.
How qualification works →The baseline's functional map (which systems serve the work, not the building) is the evidence an engineering-based study accelerates depreciation with.
How allocation works →Every specified purchase leaves with its invoice, business purpose, and treatment noted: §162, de minimis, §179, or capitalize. Booked in minutes. Built to hold.
Delivered inside every StudyThe ATM of the future doesn't dispense cash. It dispenses proof. Currencies come and go. Evidence survives them all.
Buildings default to 39 years. Components serving your work process belong in 5, 7, and 15, generally at 100% bonus. The Study's functional map is the proof. Existing buildings catch up without amending a return.
Most firms don't publish their limits. We do.
Wellness, coaching, training. Excluded by statute. We don't sell them, and we won't file them.
Surveys and assessments alone. Evaluation without experimentation is an efficiency survey. Excluded.
Tool adoption as "research." Buying AI, or anything else, is not experimenting. Licenses and prompts don't qualify; engineering resolved by testing does.
Undocumented history. If the records don't exist and can't honestly be assembled, the claim doesn't get made.
The zero-credit test. Every Study must be worth doing at a $0 credit. If it isn't, we won't file it.
Flat and hourly fees only. Never a percentage of the credit found. Our incentive is the file being right, not big.
AI formats the file. It never originates a fact. Timestamps come from instruments, not from a chat window after year-end.
Development has an end date. The day a system enters production, qualifying stops, documented in the file.
One claimant per dollar. Rights and risk are fixed in every engagement letter before work begins. We never claim what a client claims.
Claims sized to the file. Form 6765 now names every business component on the return. Ours are named before the work starts.
Nothing ships unchallenged. Every position survives the team's own cross-examination before a client or an examiner ever sees it.
"If the redesign isn't worth doing without the credit, we won't file the credit. Every number traces to a source. Every position to a written test. A credit worth claiming is one worth keeping."
You want a credit found, not work done. Our studies exist for the improvement. The credit follows the file, or it doesn't get filed.
You need last year documented. Records that don't exist can't honestly be assembled. We build files forward, not backward.
You want a percentage deal. We don't price by the credit. Ever.
We take a limited number of Studies per quarter. Documentation this thorough is handmade. That is the point.
Same Study, same house rules, whichever door you come through.
The Study, the credit, and the return, all under one roof. Tax preparation runs through our affiliated firm, A&B Tax Services. One team from the floor to the filing.
Book a scoping call to startWe run the Study and prepare the Form 6765 credit package and workpapers; your preparer reviews and files. They stay your advisor. We coordinate directly with them.
Your CPA, our fileFor accountants and firms: you keep the client, we build the file. No returns prepared for referred clients, no relationships touched. CPA to CPA.
The referral workflow →Research in the social and behavioral sciences is excluded, and so are efficiency surveys. Engineering is not. Our studies qualify only where the work is human factors engineering: physical systems, measurable performance, resolved by experiment. When a project is really a survey or a training program, we say so in writing and no claim is made.
Mills work backward from a credit target. We work forward from an improvement worth making at a $0 credit. Flat and hourly fees, business components named before work starts, and a written no when the answer is no.
A flat scoping fee in week one, credited toward the Study if you proceed. The full fee is fixed before work begins. No engagement is priced as a percentage of tax benefit.
Yes. We prepare the study and the Form 6765 package; your preparer reviews and files. For referred clients we never prepare returns or solicit compliance work.
The file is built for that day: indexed, contemporaneous, retrievable in minutes. We stand behind every position, alongside you.
One scoping call. An honest answer, including "nothing," if that's the truth.
Book a Scoping CallTake the two-page Field Guide: five questions that tell you whether your project can qualify, before anyone bills an hour.
Get the Field Guide