Corfo Certification on NovaTax Blog

After certification: changes, audits and closing your R&D project

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Getting the Corfo certificate is a milestone, not the finish line. While the project runs and when it closes, the company has obligations that, if missed, can cost it the benefit.

1. Changes: always notify

Projects change: an experiment fails, the team turns over, the budget is adjusted. According to Corfo, it’s the taxpayer’s responsibility to report every change in amounts, timelines, team or other aspects.

Corfo evaluates the changes and decides whether to:

What is a Corfo R&D certificate and how do you get one?

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

To use the R&D Law benefit, doing research and development is not enough: the project or contract must be certified by Corfo. That certification, granted through a formal resolution, is what people usually call “the Corfo certificate”.

What is certification?

It is the process in which a company asks Corfo to verify that its project or contract meets the requirements of Law 20,241. If Corfo approves it, it issues a reasoned resolution that allows the company to apply the tax benefit to the R&D expenditure it actually incurs.

Joint R&D projects: applying together with other companies

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

R&D is rarely done alone. A supplier and its customer, two companies in the same industry or a large company and a startup may share a technical problem. The R&D Law lets them tackle it together through a joint project or contract (proyecto asociativo).

What a joint project is

It’s an R&D project or contract involving two or more taxpayers, who fund it together and apply to Corfo for certification jointly. Each company claims the tax benefit on its own contribution.

How to prove your R&D team's capabilities to Corfo

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the project mode of the R&D Law, a good idea isn’t enough: Corfo checks that the company has sufficient equipment and qualified staff to carry it out. It’s one of the most avoidable reasons for rejection. See Why Corfo rejects projects.

What the regulation requires

Staff capabilities

The Certification Regulation requires at least one science or engineering professional and/or technician with demonstrable R&D experience in the 36 months before the application. It’s proven with:

How to build an R&D project budget: expenses Corfo accepts

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Under the R&D Law, the benefit is calculated on certified expenditure. That makes the budget much more than paperwork: it determines how much tax credit you’ll get. A poorly built budget can end in partial certification.

Accepted expense categories

Corfo details accepted expenses in its Exempt Resolution No. 17. They fall into two broad groups.

Current expenses

Category	What it includes	Watch out for
Staff	Salaries and fees of the technical and professional staff involved	Valued by % of time allocated. At least 50% of the work in Chile
Materials and supplies	Reagents, materials, IT services, lab analyses, bibliography	Must be directly linked to the activities
Subcontracts	Services from legal entities directly related to the project	At least 50% carried out in Chile
Rentals	Movable or real property needed for the project	Justify the need
Intellectual property	Costs of registering patents, utility models, software rights or plant varieties	Must come from the certified project
Utilities	Water, electricity, phone, internet	Capped at 5% of current expenses

Capital expenses

Equipment and instruments, including insurance, shipping, import and commissioning accessories.
Infrastructure: building, fitting out or acquiring property the project requires.

Valued vs. paid out

This is a key distinction. According to Corfo, only staff costs can be valued: if an in-house engineer spends 40% of their time on the project, you can charge 40% of their cost. Every other expense must be an actual payment, backed by an invoice and proof of payment.

Why Corfo rejects R&D Law projects (and how to avoid it)

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Applying under the R&D Law doesn’t guarantee the benefit. According to a University of Chile study based on Corfo data, the certification rate was 54.4% in 2021, and that year only 37% of the amounts applied for were certified. In other words, a significant share of applications are rejected in full or in part.

The good news: the reasons for rejection are well known and mostly avoidable.

1. “It’s a routine improvement”

This is by far the most common reason. With 2015 data, 64% of rejections happened because Corfo considered the project to consist of “routine, repetitive or minor improvements, adaptations and analyses”, one of the law’s express exclusions.