Tax / duty / cost reimbursement

Reimbursement programmes refund a defined category of expense against evidence. The state's aim is usually to lower the cost of something it wants more of — export compliance, design capability, certification, quality testing — and the mechanism is deliberately simple: spend, document, claim.

The discipline is documentary. Claims are paid against invoices, proofs of payment and, often, evidence that the spend produced what it was meant to. A business with disorganised records will lose a straightforward claim to its own filing.

It rarely changes whether a project happens, but it materially changes what the project costs. Where the expense was going to be incurred anyway, it is close to free money.