The state of Iowa issued $78.4 million in tax credits to businesses in 2019 through the Research Activities Credit, according to an Iowa Department of Revenue report released Thursday. The annual report, which is the 10th full-year report since the legislature required disclosure of the expenditures in 2009, indicates that the cost of the credit has increased by 62% over the past decade, according to an analysis by the Iowa Policy Project. The organization has criticized the program, designed with the intent to fund research by smaller companies, as giving away the majority of the funding to large corporations in the form of refundable tax credits. Both tax credit claims and “refunds” — checks for the value of tax credits not needed to meet tax obligations — hit record levels for corporations in 2019: $55.8 million in claims and $46.6 million in refund checks. The report also found the number of businesses filing as individuals expanded sharply last year to 7,083 claims, up from 5,305 in 2018, with a 50% increase in the dollar amount of individual claims to $22.5 million last year. According to the revenue department, the spike was due in part to more businesses filing as pass-through entities. Total qualifying research activity expenditures by the reporting companies totaled more than $2.7 billion in 2019, of which 47.7% were wage expenditures, the state report showed.