The Pennsylvania entry, field by field
This is the registry entry our engine applies for tax year 2026, rendered field by field. Where a field is blank in the registry, the row says so rather than filling the gap.
Program flags on this entry
- Program cap
- $60,000,000
- Award proration (historical)
- Approved applicants received about 44.3% of their computed credit in the 2024 award cycle.
- Application deadline
- December 1
- Application opens
- August 1
- Credit for TY2026
- Current credit Yes. Our rules registry carries a current Pennsylvania research credit for tax year 2026.
- Structure
- Incremental: the credit applies to qualified research expenses above a state base amount
- Credit rate
- 10% of qualified research expenses above the base amount
- Small-business rate
- 20% Applied where the state’s small-business definition is met.
- Base method
- The base amount is the formula Pennsylvania's own statute prescribes, not the federal §41(c) fixed-base computation. The registry does not carry a written description of that formula for this state, so the study establishes it against the statute cited below. The registry carries a base percentage of 50%. That is the statutory minimum base amount (§41(c)(2) as incorporated by the Pennsylvania statute): a floor under the base, and therefore a ceiling on the credit, not the base itself. Where Pennsylvania gross-receipts and fixed-base-percentage history is not on record the engine applies that floor and blocks issuance until the real base is substantiated.
- Carryforward
- 15 years
- Carryback
- None recorded
- Refundable?
- Not determined in our registry - we confirm it in the study The registry treats an unverified "nonrefundable" as unknown rather than asserting it.
- Small-business threshold
- $5,000,000
- Small-business credit cap
- $12,000,000
- State form
- REV-545
- Statute
- 72 P.S. §8701-B et seq. (Article XVII-B; Act 7 of 1997)
How the Pennsylvania credit is computed
The Pennsylvania credit is incremental: it applies to the qualified research expenses that exceed a state base amount, not to the whole year's spending. The registry carries a rate of 10%. A small-business rate of 20% sits alongside it.
The base amount is the formula Pennsylvania's own statute prescribes, not the federal §41(c) fixed-base computation. The registry does not carry a written description of that formula for this state, so the study establishes it against the statute cited below. The registry carries a base percentage of 50%. That is the statutory minimum base amount (§41(c)(2) as incorporated by the Pennsylvania statute): a floor under the base, and therefore a ceiling on the credit, not the base itself. Where Pennsylvania gross-receipts and fixed-base-percentage history is not on record the engine applies that floor and blocks issuance until the real base is substantiated.
The program is capped at $60,000,000 a year across all applicants, and approved claims are prorated against that cap: the registry carries a proration rate of 44.3%, meaning approved applicants received about 44.3% of their computed credit in the cycle the registry records. The award ratio moves every cycle and is not known when you apply. The credit is applied for, not simply claimed on the return: applications open August 1, the deadline is December 1. Missing the window forfeits the year. The computed number is a ceiling, not an entitlement.
Unused credit carries forward 15 years. Refundability: not determined in our registry, so the study confirms it against the statute rather than asserting it here.
Ricerca computes the Pennsylvania figure from the same substantiated expense base as the federal §41 credit, using the registry entry for the tax year claimed and applying the state's own qualification rules to it. Where the registry is silent on a point, the study says so and the position is resolved with the return preparer instead of being assumed.
Claiming it alongside the federal credit
The federal §41 credit comes first. It is computed from the qualified research expenses the study substantiates - wages for qualified services, supplies consumed in research, computer and cloud rental, and the allowable share of contract research - and it lands on Form 6765 with the return.
The Pennsylvania credit is then computed from that same substantiated base, with the state's own rules applied on top: its rate, its base amount, its caps, and its own view of what counts. Where the work was physically performed matters: state credits generally reach the research done in the state, so the same employee can sit inside one state's base and outside another's.
That is why the allocation work is done once, at the expense level, with the state attribution recorded as it is built rather than reverse-engineered at filing time.
One base, two computations
- 1 Qualify the activities under the four-part test and total the year's QREs.
- 2 Compute the federal §41 credit and file it on Form 6765.
- 3 Apply the Pennsylvania entry above to the Pennsylvania share of that base, and file it on REV-545.
Sources
The citations below are carried verbatim on the Pennsylvania registry entry. They are what the study cites, and what a reviewer can check.
- Statute
- 72 P.S. §8701-B et seq. (Article XVII-B; Act 7 of 1997)
- Form
- REV-545
Registry entry version 2024.1, exported from services/study-api/app/engines/rules_engine.py (STATE_RULES_2024 + STATE_RULES_REGIME_OVERRIDES via RulesEngine.get_state_rules) on September 10, 2026. The registry is versioned per state and per tax year: the entry above governs TY2026, and a study for an earlier year is computed under that year's entry instead.