R&D Binder

Short answer. Contemporaneous documentation is evidence of qualified research created at the time the work is done, such as commits, pull requests, design docs, and spike tickets, rather than reconstructed after the fact. It is the most credible way to substantiate a Section 41 credit in an exam.

What counts as contemporaneous

The line is not format. It is timing and authorship.

Strong (created as the work happened)

  • Commit history, with dates and authors.
  • Pull request descriptions and review threads.
  • Design docs and architecture decision records.
  • Spike tickets and prototype branches.
  • Incident post-mortems tied to the fix.

Weak (created after the fact)

  • A memo written after the audit notice, from memory.
  • A narrative with no date fixing it to the work.
  • A polished report assembled for the examiner.

What the IRS expects

The burden is on the taxpayer, and it rises with the size of the claim.

The credit regulations require records sufficient to substantiate the amount claimed, under Treas. Reg. § 1.41-4. Vague or missing records are where an exam starts.

From tax year 2026, Form 6765 Section G puts per-business-component detail on the return itself. Records you used to keep in case of an exam are now something you file, so capturing them while the work is fresh matters more than it did.

Reconstruction after the fact is allowed, but it is the weakest position. The goal is to never need it.

How the binder produces it

Your commit history is contemporaneous evidence by construction.

Commits were written as the work happened, with dates, authors, and a record of what changed. That is exactly the timing-and-authorship a contemporaneous record needs.

R&D Binder turns that history into the documentation: it clusters commits into business components, scores each against the four-part test, and cites the specific pull requests and SHAs behind every claim. The evidence existed already; the binder organizes and grounds it.

Contemporaneous evidence is what the four-part test is scored against; these cover the test and the activity:

Sources

Every claim on this page traces to a primary authority. Each source below is independent and verifiable.

Get documentation built to survive an exam

R&D Binder builds the documentation from evidence your team already created, with pull-request citations per claim. Documentation only; your CPA files the return.

Estimate your credit See the sample binder