Early July, 2009


HOW PAINFUL IS IT TO FILE AN SR&ED CLAIM?

There are two parts to a SRED application, the financial and the technical.  

Basically eligible projects (we like to define a project as a search for a technical advancement) have to be recognized and then for EACH project (1) the technical advancements sought have to be identified, (2) the technical uncertainties have to be enumerated, and (3) the work done to reduce these uncertainties and to try to achieve the technical advancements has to be reported.  

Because CRA’s data reporting system only allows 350 words for each of the first two items and 700 words for the third, the words have to be chosen economically and carefully.  Fortunately it would likely be a pretty grumpy CRA employee that would disallow a claim out of hand if the three answers were only a little off point.  In short, sloppy drafting is not likely to invalidate the claim, but it is likely to slow up the processing because if CRA doesn’t find what they are looking for in the brief narratives submitted, they will need to do extra work.

The technical reporting also includes overviews of the people working on the project (their qualifications), and a list of brief factual answers (often Yes or No).

The financial part of the reporting has to do with summarizing and classifying the costs associated with the project in a prescribed format, and of course determining which expenditures indeed are eligible.

An SRED consultant can make this whole process go more smoothly and save you a lot of time (a rather self-serving comment we know, but true nonetheless), albeit at a price.

Contact: 250-479-4925

www.getsred.ca