Standard Industry Classification (SIC) codes
Your SIC code can be found at Companies House and the full official list of SIC codes can be found here. If you don’t think that your SIC code(s) accurately reflects your R&D activities please ask your accountant to update Companies House with a more appropriate code asap.
HMRC conducts random, targeted compliance checks on R&D claims. There is some evidence that HMRC has been targeting the SIC codes for industries such as retail, wholesale, management consultancy, and anything related to the arts, humanities and social science.
You can have up to 4 SIC codes at a time. We suggest that you ensure one of your SIC code(s) directly reflect the area of activity in which R&D is taking place. For example, regardless of your industry, if your R&D is developing software for web portals it is better to have a SIC code that reflects that work as well as codes for a market that is served e.g. advertising.
Capturing evidence
New HMRC rules have been putting more emphasis on the importance of record keeping. It is important you keep accurate records throughout the entirety of any project potentially involving R&D work. There is more information on the increased importance of record keeping here.