Mid-June, 2009
DOCUMENTATION TO PROVE YOUR CLAIM
Your word may not be good enough when it comes to proving that you did the work that you claim on your SR&ED claim that you did. Below is what CRA likes to see. Some of it might be missing, but the more you have, the better.
Project planning documents
Records of resources allocated to the project, time sheets
Design of experiments
Project records, laboratory notebooks
Design, system architecture and source code
Records of trial runs
Progress reports, minutes of project meetings
Test protocols, test data, analysis of test results, conclusions
Photographs and videos
Samples, prototypes, scrap or other artefacts
Contracts
EMPLOYEE OR CONTRACT WORK?
We see a lot of outsourcing of work, particularly to third world countries. And we see people having frustration with the quality of it sometimes. It may be cheaper, but work done outside Canada does not qualify as SR&ED except for rare cases. If you are in BC or Alberta (because that’s where our clients typically are), and you claim your SRED labor costs on the proxy method, you receive over 68% of your SRED employee labor costs from the program, 41.5% from contract non-employee SRED work done in Canada, and nothing for work done outside Canada. This may be important information when deciding where to get the work done.
That said, never hire someone just for the credit. You might not get it. Hire based on need.
Contact: 250-479-4925
www.getsred.ca
