Making a CRA SR&ED claim? One of the concerns many people have about filing the SRED claim is the amount of time they will have to spend. It would be misleading to say that you would not notice the demand on your schedule. It DOES take time, but it can be minimized.
Some people gather together and catalogue everything they can think of which CRA might want to see in an audit of the claim. For some claims, this can be a daunting task!
Our approach is a little different. We understand the key aspects of a successful SRED claim and we focus our efforts on gathering information that will allow us to present them in the claim. This process starts with a short pointed questionnaire which we provide the claimant and which is directed towards having the claimant give us information that counts rather than things that would be interesting to know but which are not pertinent to the claim. We don’t believe in you spending time assembling documents and information that you will never need to produce, but at the same time, we believe in making sure you know where these items are in case you need to assemble them to answer CRA questions later.
In short, our clients find that a claim normally involves a few hours of their time. A little here and there spread over a few weeks and not adding up to an uneconomic amount. Our clients almost always (in fact, I could say “always”, but say “almost” just in case I am wrong) feel that the reward far outweighs the time invested.
