The definition of research and development (the result is uncertain) means that it is impossible to know if the specific research will yield results that will lead to a profitable marketable product. I see no reason why “unsuccessful” research cannot be offset against other profit generating projects within a company.

“co-incides with “doing good for the people”

There is no requirement of public good in any of the provisions, so if they Minister did do this, you could challenge the ruling. The stated goal and aim of the tax break is to encourage and help promote the software development industry, so I think we have to be optimistic that generally people will qualify just because they are software developers. The automated retweeting of tweets theoretically should be granted the exemption, remember though it needs to lead to the generation of income in order to qualify for the deduction, so your example of hiring developers to just randomly develop software wouldn’t work unless some of their development actually ended up with income being generated. The last thing to bear in mind that tax break takes the form of a deduction, and not a rebate, you won’t actually get 150% of your expenses back, but it will significantly reduce the tax you will have to pay.

Further to this, surely there’s a limit here, otherwise I could hire of team of folks to build software and claim back hugely against all of them?

I smell a fish, hyped up topic with a lot of talk and potentially very little action for the average person.