The day has finally arrived that many (if not most) life sciences startups and venture-backed companies have been waiting for – the deadline for the IRS decision regarding which companies will be awarded a Qualified Therapeutic Discovery Project (”QTDP”) tax credit or grant (and how much they will receive).

By way of background, earlier this year the IRS announced a new tax credit (or grant) pursuant to the QTDP, which was created by the Affordable Care Act. To be eligible for the tax credit (or grant), applicant companies had to file their completed applications with the IRS by July 21, 2010. Companies that are profitable (and therefore pay taxes) may receive tax credits. For companies that would not benefit from tax credits because they are not yet profitable, grants are awarded equal to the amount of the credits that would have been available. The credit (or grant) covers up to 50% of the cost of qualifying biomedical research made by a company in taxable years beginning in 2009 and 2010, up to a maximum credit of $5 million per company and $1 billion overall.  The QTDP is only available to companies with 250 employees or fewer.  In June my colleagues prepared a good summary of the QTDP, which is available here. The IRS, in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services, then certified which applicants may participate based upon a number of criteria.

According to the IRS website “[a]ll applicants will be notified by letter postmarked no later than Oct. 29, 2010, advising whether or not the application for certification is approved.” For those of you waiting for an answer from the IRS, watch your mail – and hopefully the holiday season will come a bit early for your company.

As I hear more, I will update this post.

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Updated November 1, 2010 at 10:35 a.m. Pacific Time:

The first announcements regarding the QDTP tax credit and grant award recipients are starting to come in via Twitter and press releases. It appears that companies are receiving their notice from the IRS via UPS. Here are a couple announcements:

I will continue to update this post as I hear more.

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Updated November 1, 2010 at 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time:

A couple more announcements regarding QTDP tax credit and grant award recipients:

While I still have not found a comprehensive list of the award recipients and I do not know how the exact award amounts were determined, there appears to be two different award levels materializing: $733k and $244k.  After reviewing the companies that have announced receiving an award so far, the only pattern I can discern is that the awards seem to be in $244k increments.

I will continue to update this post as I hear more.

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Updated November 2, 2010 at 10:30 p.m. Pacific Time:

Xconomy’s Luke Timmerman wrote a nice article about the QTDP grants awarded to companies in Washington and included several helpful links.  Here is a link to the IRS’s complete list of award recipients from Washington, and here is a link to the IRS’s complete list of award recipients for all 50 states.