The questions R&D leaders, CTOs, and finance teams actually ask about the SR&ED tax credit and how the CRA assesses it.
Technological uncertainty exists when you cannot know, from standard practice and publicly available knowledge, whether a result can be achieved or how to achieve it. It is not commercial, market, or budget risk. It is a genuine gap in technology that you have to resolve through investigation. Establishing where that uncertainty sits, and showing it clearly, is the foundation of every eligible claim.
Work to develop or improve a product, process, material, device, or software, where the outcome was uncertain and you had to experiment to reach it. It spans manufacturing, software, food innovation, natural health products, biotechnology, and engineering. The work does not have to be new to the world, only that the solution was not readily deducible to a competent professional in the field.
Yes. Software qualifies when you face technological uncertainty that standard development practice cannot resolve, such as novel algorithms, performance or scalability limits, or integration problems without a known solution. AI and machine-learning work often qualifies where model behaviour, data limitations, or architecture require genuine experimentation rather than applying established methods.
Failure does not disqualify a claim. SR&ED rewards the systematic attempt to resolve technological uncertainty, not the commercial outcome. A project that did not reach its goal is often strong evidence that the uncertainty was real, provided the work was carried out systematically and documented.
Frequently, yes. Scaling a process that does not simply scale, achieving a tighter tolerance, improving yield or consistency, reducing waste without losing quality, or adapting equipment to do something it was not designed to do can all involve eligible experimental development, even when it happens on the shop floor.
Yes, though the programs interact. Government assistance such as IRAP generally reduces the SR&ED expenditures you can claim, so the two must be coordinated to avoid double-counting. We plan them together so you capture the most across all programs, in the right order.
Sometimes. SR&ED claims can generally be filed up to eighteen months after the fiscal year-end, and a weak or previously denied claim can occasionally be strengthened within that window. We assess whether a prior year is still worth pursuing before you invest any time in it.
Contemporaneous records made as the work happens carry the most weight: dated notes of what you tried and why, records of trials and results including failures, versioned designs or code, and a reasonable basis for the time your people spent. You do not need a lab-grade system; we help you build these habits into how you already work.
On contingency. The fee is a percentage of the credit you actually receive, not of the credit claimed or estimated. Nothing is payable up front, nothing is billed by the hour, and if no credit is recovered there is no fee. If the CRA reduces the claim, the fee falls with it.
Almost. Grant applications such as IRAP, CanExport, Mitacs and hiring programs are also charged as a percentage of the funding awarded, with one difference: a retainer is invoiced when the work starts and credited back against the fee once the grant is approved. A grant is decided in a competitive round rather than on an amount, so part of the preparation is paid for up front. Grant work and tax credit work are never bundled into one number.
By the file, not by the negotiation. The factors are how many distinct projects there are, how many provinces, whether records already exist or have to be reconstructed, whether grant funding has to be sequenced against the claim, and whether a prior year or an open review is being taken on. You are told which of those moved your rate, and in which direction, before anything starts.
No. It is agreed in writing at the start of the engagement and stays there for as long as you remain a client. It does not rise because your claim grew, and it is not adjusted after a good year. It reopens only on a material change in scope, defined in the engagement letter: a new province, a substantially different set of projects, or grant work that was not part of the original quote.
Yes, per claim year, and you are told what it is on the first call. A small claim is not a small file: the interviews take the same time, the narrative takes the same care, and it has to survive the same review as a large one. If your claim is likely to fall below that line, you will hear so before any work is done, along with a straight answer about whether filing is worth doing this year at all.
No. If your claim is selected, the person who prepared it answers the questions, as part of the same engagement. This is worth checking with any advisor you speak to, because a lower percentage that excludes review support is not a lower price, it is a deferred one.
For SR&ED, after the credit has been assessed and received. Nothing at the start, nothing while the claim is with the CRA, and nothing during a review. For grant applications, a retainer when the work starts, credited back against the fee once the grant is approved.
The CRA may ask for more detail on the technical work, the financial figures, or both, sometimes in a meeting with your technical staff. A claim prepared to review standard already contains what they ask for. We prepare you beforehand and support you throughout, including drafting the technical and financial responses.
Ideally before or during the work, not only at year-end. Early involvement means the uncertainty and experimentation are captured as they happen, which makes for a stronger, lower-risk claim. That said, within the filing window it is rarely too late to prepare a solid claim.