The number one piece of advice we give to our clients with respect to the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) program is to treat the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) as a Customer. The reason for this is quite simple: Return on Investment. At the end of the year, the CRA will provide your company a return on your qualifying R&D investments through the SR&ED program. To get your return, you must undertake eligible activities, provide certain deliverables (i.e. T661) and maintain appropriate records. This is not unlike the activities an organization would undertake when completing work for a ‘regular’ client. As in any other case, your return greatly depends on the customer satisfaction. One area where this philosophy particularly applies is maintaining quality supporting documentation for your SR&ED activities. In the T4088-08e (Guide to the T661), the CRA states that contemporaneous documentation is the “best supporting evidence that you […]
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It is common knowledge that a company has 18 months following their fiscal year end to submit a claim for SR&ED Investment Tax Credits (ITC). The claim can be submitted concurrently with a T2 or filed later as an amendment. However, the time you will wait before receiving your SR&ED ITC or cash depends on three factors: (a) how the SR&ED claim is submitted, (b) when it is submitted, and (c) whether the claim triggers a review. When a SR&ED claim is submitted as an amendment, the CRA will typically review it within 8 months following submission. If a SR&ED claim is filed concurrently with your annual tax return, the CRA will usually process the claim within 3 months following submission. Provided your SR&ED claim doesn’t trigger a CRA review or an audit, your refund will be on the way shortly after the claim is processed. It is also not […]
We frequently encounter manufacturing companies that are significantly under claiming on their SR&ED tax credits. The biggest mistake we see is that many of these companies view their new product development efforts as the only area where SR&ED is occurring and forget to look at their manufacturing improvement efforts. The methodologies of effective manufacturing process improvement, such as the Deming cycle or Six Sigma, often satisfy the requirements of SR&ED eligibility. Companies are quite surprised at how this can SR&ED eligibility can impact the real cost of their improvement projects. Let’s look at an example: A manufacturing company uses a piece of equipment that has consumable wear inserts. During operation, these inserts are consumed (worn-out) and require monthly replacement. The company’s Manufacturing Engineer identifies a number of possible other materials or coatings designed to reduce the rate of wear on the insert but is uncertain how these other materials will […]