Hi, CIR expert here, it's well and alive. There has been a communication push against it last year but relatively over. It's 30% of R&D expenses as a tax cut. Update: I think the 50% you mention is related to non salary expenses CII = a smaller similar system for innovation, which we differentiate from R&D. CII used to cover non salary expenses with a 50% forfait but this part has been removed indeed. It still covers 20% of salary expenses.

"There are abuses" is really an understatement. "It's mostly abuse and there might be some legitimate beneficiaries" would be more correct.

It's also capricious. I've been in companies doing legitimate r&d who would spend man months preparing for the CIR only to get it rejected, while they got it in previous years for much less interesting work.