Leyton UK & Ireland Reviews 208

We are in our 5th year of using Leyton UK to prepare and submit our R&D tax credit claims.

It has been a positive experience throughout. The Leyton team are clearly knowledgeable and professional and I feel I am in safe hands.

This review refers to the latest in a series of successful annual R&D Tax Credits applications which have been handled on our behalf by Leyton.

During this period of collaboration, Leyton have worked closely with us to deepen their own appreciation of the technical complexities of our projects. Each time we recommence our dialogue in preparation for a new application, it is evident that the complexities of our previous design outputs have been learned, remembered and processed. The Leyton Team really 'GET' us.

We also highly value the open dialogue where a broad net is cast over the list of potential projects to be considered for inclusion in the application. Challenges are made and there is complete transparency in the recommendations to 'go / no-go' on individual projects.

As the project narrative is developed collaboratively, we welcome Leyton's wider R&D experience, allowing our input into key technical aspects to be developed and framed within a wider context, supported by their extensive R&D focus experience. Given that many of our projects have a design lifespan of several years, it is reassuring for us that Leyton appreciate this aspect, and that they have the capacity to very quickly pick up the strands of our previous annual reporting, focusing instantly on the critical design path which we are following.

In short - the key strengths are:
- Listening
- Challenging
- Collaborating and prompting
- Adding value to the submission
- Guiding us through the potentially challenging financial reporting content with ease.

Our business has been working with Leyton for 4 years now. In that time, they have demonstrated market leading service; via informed, industry relevant expertise and a thorough understanding of our market and the engineering challenges we face.

We find Leyton to be transparent, communicative and responsive - often working to tight deadlines with ease.

Through all aspects of our interactions, from initial dialogue, through to data collection, accounts information, technical reports and payment, Leyton communicate effectively and efficiently.

They have become part of our team for this process and I would therefore highly recommend them as a business.

We switched to Leyton's following a recommendation from a similar business. Since then Leyton's have consistently exceeded our expectations. From the initial meeting, Leyton's demonstrated their experience within the food industry, ensuring a specialist within our category attended each meeting. Their compliance, focus and attention to detail set them apart.
They were able to identify additional benefits (eg The Patent Box claims)something our previous consultants never mentioned, which resulted in a significant increase in our revenue claims. Leyton's thorough approach gave us confidence that we claimed correctly and maximised our benefits.
Overall, Leyton's professional consultancy work has been exceptional and we are very satisfied with their work.
AT

Leyton is not a reputable company; we used Leyton to complete our R&D claims over three years. All was fine until we were acquired, and our acquirer had Deloitte look into our claims during diligence.

Deloitte concluded that the claims were incorrect and wrote to HMRC on our behalf - HMRC agreed with Deloitte, and we paid the balance.

Despite Deloitte's assessment and HMRC explicitly rejecting Leyton's claim and agreeing with Deloitte, Leyton maintained that their work was correct and refused to return their fees (per their guarantee agreement). On what basis, I will never understand - HMRC said their work was wrong, so how can they deny this ruling?

They even took legal action to chase the final invoice that we'd held back (given their fee is a portion of the claim value and our claim ended in us paying HMRC, I'm not sure how they've decided on the sum owed).

Leyton will claim that they only submit the information you give them and try to put the onus back on you - e.g., "any wrongful claim is your own doing because you gave the info"— but in practice, this is not true.

Anyone who has dealt with Leyton will know they deploy a consultant to complete an interview, determine themselves what is applicable for R&D return, and then write the claim... in the most opaque way.

We were 100% honest during these interviews, knowing that we were on the path to acquisition and that any exaggeration or creative accounting would be uncovered - still, here we are.

Avoid Leyton at all costs. It is not that the claims went wrong and we had to pay back any returns (+ fees). It is that they maintained they were right and would not rebate their fees—this really tells you what they're like as a business and that their "guarantee" is worthless.

They are a horrible company, never work with them. They are a strong-arm company with shady business practices. They are good at promising everything during calls (they never commit to anything in emails) but the contract will cover just a fraction. They will not do the entire job and they will ask for full payment. When you challenge this, they will drag it out for months, and eventually they will send you to their collections department (ask yourself why a company that does R&D needs a collections department and you will have the answer). There's no reasoning with them—more a scam than a serious business.

Leyton is using strong arm tactics. BEWARE.
We signed up after they made it sound so easy , but after 48 hours we decided that it wasnt something we wanted to pursue and advised Leyton, who told us that the contract was legally binding and claim to have done work already. we tried to reason and they strong armed us by saying that they would sue us for breach of contract. I am reaching out to the CFPB as well.

DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY >CFPB WARINGS

ERC credit document was not comprehensive didn't provide any assurance. So, we declined the service neither used their document. Matter of fact, we decided not to submit for ERC credit. Now they have sent our bill to collection agency. No Phone # on their emails , no response to our emails either.

I was contacted by "Wes" a consultant. I explained all the info he needed. Gave him access to all my financials and access to my accounts. Only to find out he was wrong. An absolute waste of time.

DON"T BOTHER....

Leyton's team has been providing us a great support. They are well organized, very professional, and agile when our agenda changed.

We have had a terrible experiance with Leyton. I Am leaving this review to warn others.
I was firstly bothrered by a pushly sales person stating that we were able to claim R&D. I was reluctant to carryout this type of practice as I didnt believe we were entitle to it. I reluctantly agreed (This was a mistake) I was informed over the phone that I didnt have to pay anything until our R&D claim was accepted by HMRC. This is incorrect, I was invoiced immediately. I was chased constantly to pay a fee of almost £4,000. I informed Leyton that I was not willing to pay until we have had confirmation that the claim was accepted. Leyton informed me that the R&D was registerd against a bad debt that we had with HMRC from 2014, this isnt the case as we are well up to date with our fees to HMRC. anyway they kept on requesting payment even though I was informing them what they have done is incorrect, my accountant even stepped in to check the info provided by Leyton. he also found that the info provided by Leyton was incorrect. I have now been issued a CCJ from Leyton requesting payment. obviously people understand how damaging a CCJ is to a LTD company so i has to pay this today. Basically I had to pay £4000 for a service that not provided to me and also picking up a CCJ in the process. I also have no idea where my R&D was filed.
If you are thinking of going with this company please think again.

Efficient in processing our claim for R&D grant. 100% success

Still waiting for the amended memo for ERTC over a couple of months now.

Excellent service, and through. A please to work with

Invoiced for more than the contracted amount, yet to receive a refund.

They did a good job, but I was unhappy that hey insisted on being paid before we received our ERC refund.
I wish they had a plan to advance the refund to the employer, pending its receipt.

I think Leyton handled the ERC work reasonably well. My concerns:
- the initial calculation was in error and had to be corrected by your staff. Given the fees charged for a relatively simple calculation this is hard to accept. The only reason (the ONLY reason) I contracted with you was because of my lack of time to devote to understanding the law and process. The error was simply sloppy work on Leyton's part. It should not have happened and I should not have had to find it.
- there are two parts to the effort to generate the ERC: 1) calculating the quarterly credit, and 2) filing the paperwork with the IRS. The calculation was done but I found it nearly impossible to get help with filing the IRS forms with many different people (the payroll people at Intuit are totally clueless, and several local "experts" were unwilling to even have a conversation about it). Alison (Boston) did a good job of helping me through it, with the caveat that the IRS has not yet responded, so I'm still only in the hopeful phase that we'll recover our investment in Leyton. Your value to your customers would be much higher if you took responsibility to at least provide information on how to fill out the IRS paperwork as part of the product you provide.
- per Alison your "payable in 60 days" policy was based on the historical typical lead-time for the IRS to process the claims. We're at 4 months and counting, and your staff is well aware of the IRS delays. Fronting a $12K investment is not trivial for a small business like ours. Sharing the pain of the actual IRS processing lead-time would be helpful.

Alison: 5 stars. Your back office staff: 0 stars. Your process and policy: 2 stars.

Good service. Wish there was more communication post sales (check in etc)