Fear of a CRA review keeps eligible companies from claiming, and the fear is usually attached to the wrong things. Here is what the published numbers show, what a review now actually involves, and the nine patterns that make a reviewer look harder, none of which are about how novel your technology is.
Published February 2026 · 11 minute read
The CRA publishes what happens to claims, and the numbers are calmer than the anxiety around them. In its most recent published fiscal year the CRA processed 23,677 claims out of 24,160 filed. Ninety percent were accepted as filed. Six percent were accepted with modifications. Four percent were denied. Of $4.9 billion in credits claimed, $4.6 billion was allowed.
Two honest caveats. Those percentages are dispositions across all processed claims, not a review rate: the CRA does not publish how many claims are selected for review, and any advisor quoting you an audit percentage is inventing it. And a claim accepted as filed is not the same as a claim that captured everything it was entitled to. Underclaiming never shows up in these statistics.
Most of the vocabulary used in the market for this, desk review, technical review, second review, has quietly disappeared from the CRA's own guide. What the current guide describes is two people. A research and technology advisor determines whether the work meets the eligibility requirements. A financial reviewer examines the expenditures claimed. A full review involves both; where a project has already been approved through the CRA's new pre-claim approval process, the review is limited to expenditures.
The published service standards tell you what to expect on timing: claims accepted as filed are processed within 60 calendar days, 90 percent of the time, and refundable claims selected for review within 180 calendar days, also 90 percent of the time. In the most recent year the CRA met the first standard 95 percent of the time and the second 92.5 percent of the time. There is no current published day-count standard for non-refundable claims under review, and figures circulated for that are not from the CRA.
None of these is a rule the CRA publishes. They are patterns from reviews, from the court record, and from files that arrive on our desk after somebody else prepared them.
Form T661 contains a checklist of supporting evidence, with the instruction that you do not submit these items with the claim but are required to retain them in the event of a review. Treating that checklist as the year's filing system, rather than as a box-ticking exercise at filing time, is most of what separates an uneventful review from a painful one.
The CRA frames what records must establish in four parts: what work was done, who was involved, when they did it, and how the expenditures were calculated. If a document answers one of those four questions, keep it.
There is a defined route, and it has deadlines. Concerns go first to the reviewer, then to the research and technology manager or the financial review manager. Beyond that there is an administrative review, requested on the prescribed form before the thirty-day proposal period expires and before the file closes. An administrative review is not a second technical review; it examines whether due process was followed and whether the review was consistent with the legislation and published policy. After assessment, the formal route is a notice of objection, within ninety days.
Every file is prepared as though it will be the one reviewed. That means the allocation basis is written down while the year is fresh, the narrative describes experiments rather than products, the evidence is indexed as it accumulates rather than hunted for later, and nothing goes into the claim that we would not defend in a meeting. It is unglamorous, and it is the whole difference between a review that takes a phone call and a review that takes a year.
We read files the way a reviewer will, and tell you where they would not hold. That conversation costs nothing.
Book a meeting Check your eligibilityGeneral information current at the date of writing, not advice on a specific claim. Program rules, forms, and administrative practice change; we confirm the current position for every file.
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