Draft of life sciences certification and tax incentive application released for public review

Draft Application

Draft Instructions for Completing Application

On Monday, November 24, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center released a draft application for certification and participation in the Life Sciences Tax Incentive Program. Under the Life Sciences Act, the MLSC is authorized to offer a combination of nine different tax incentives to certified life sciences companies, with a cumulative annual cap of $25 million. The various incentives are intended to benefit companies at all stages of development. For example, several of the incentives (the Life Sciences Investment Tax Credit, the FDA User Fee Credit and the §38M Research Credit, in particular) are refundable, meaning that even companies without taxable income may be able to qualify for cash payments through these incentives.

The Life Sciences Tax Incentive Program becomes effective on January 1, 2009, and the Center is on target to accept on-line applications commencing on January 2, 2009. In the spirit of transparency, we wanted to make the draft application available now in order to maximize public awareness about this program and how it will be administered.

This is only a draft, and should not be used for the submission of an application. Applications will not be accepted prior to January 2nd, and will only be accepted through an on-line form on the MLSC web site.

The draft application contains both the application for certification (Part I) as well as the application for participation in the Tax Incentive Program (Parts II and III). Certification is also required before a company can access grants, investment funds or other forms of financial assistance from the Center. Any comments you would like to share can be emailed to feedback@masslifesciences.com.

In addition, the Department of Revenue has posted their final Technical Information Release (TIR) on the Life Sciences Tax Incentive Program. This document provides further clarification regarding eligibility for the tax incentive program and how it will be administered. View the TIR here.