Ah! My review experience is in direct innovation project grants. I have been on the defending (receiving) side of the R&D tax rebates. As far as I could tell,

Ah! My review experience is in direct innovation project grants. I have been on the defending (receiving) side of the R&D tax rebates. As far as I could tell, these types of negotiations are done by people from the finance and economy, not the innovation and R&D administration. This is also the domain of professional intermediaries from the Big-5 offering this as a service. If you were there as the token 'techie' (I know i was), your unspoken role would typically have been to spew jargon and tech details, of which neither your financial consultants nor the administration representative would understand one word. They weren't looking for technical insights, just judging in how-far the activities and people you are claiming the rebates for differ from your 'normal' activities and employee pool, so they can draw a line somewhere.