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The Expert Group on R&D Tax Incentives Evaluation was established to suggest ways of improving the evaluation of R&D tax incentives in practice, and to help increase coherence among the evaluation methods used by European Union member countries. To do this the Expert Group reviewed recent evaluations, and wrote a series of discussion papers with an aim of identifying good practices. The main recommendations of the group are summarised below.

The decision to evaluate is too often based on an ex-post policy need and too rarely on an upfront commitment. Having an upfront commitment to evaluate provides an opportunity to think about evaluation requirements ex-ante, and in particular to ensure that the necessary data are collected.