Tuesday 20 June 2017

Whining a bit about CRA's SRED Claims Reviews



What is the likelihood of changing a CRA reviewer’s mind after they have made a proposal about your claim?  I have seen such a change occur….more than once…..but such a result is a minority outcome.

This is unfortunate because I am increasingly finding that to CRA, SRED is whatever the RTA reviewing the claim says it is. Reviewers have a knack for sending lengthy documented refusals that are very short on technological information and reflect no relevant hands-on experience with the technology that is the context of the claim. Too often I am seeing reviews done by people that display no evidence of technical proficiency in the activities for which the reviewed claim has been made.  At once time I thought that such experiences were isolated, but I have become jaded, and I am forming the impression that perhaps there is an agency wide strategy within CRA to reduce claims and wear out claimants, albeit politely.

This is not to imply that your review will be done by incompetents. There are some very bright reviewers, and some really helpful ones, but the fact that appeals to SRED related assessments are now several times what they were a few years ago should say something about what is happening.  The data at this link is informative: https://www.scitax.com/pdf/Bulletin.55.Statistics.Reveal.Dramatic.Increase.in.SR&ED.Appeals.11-Apr-2014.pdf.


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