SR&ED & government funding · Across Canada

Unlock $100K+ in Government Funding for Your Innovation

Canada's trusted SR&ED and government funding experts. Big 4 accounting background combined with deep technical expertise to maximize your SR&ED tax credits and grants.

See what you'd qualify foror book a 30-minute call

2 minutes · no email required for the estimate

Verified to date

$150M+

in SR&ED credits and grants secured for Canadian companies across 500+ claims over 16 years.

Trained at
Deloitte · PwC · BDO · MNP
Sectors
12 industries
$150M+
credits and grants secured for clients to date
500+
SR&ED claims prepared and filed since 2009
16 yrs
focused on Canadian R&D funding, not general tax
Big 4
training (Deloitte, PwC, BDO, MNP) plus engineers

What usually happens

You spent $340K solving hard engineering problems. CRA gave you back a fraction of it.

Your team spent the year rebuilding a data pipeline that kept falling over at scale. Real uncertainty, real experimentation, real dead ends. At tax time your accountant filed a two-page SR&ED schedule describing it as “software development.”

CRA reduced the claim by 60%. The letter cited insufficient technical evidence of experimentation. Nobody in the room could explain what was missing, because nobody who wrote the claim had read the code.

The part that compounds

A reduced claim is not just this year's shortfall. The window to amend prior years is limited and mostly closed. A thin or aggressive claim can flag the file, so next year's review starts from suspicion. The loss compounds quietly, in the years you can no longer go back and fix.

The reframe

A SR&ED claim isn't an accounting exercise. It's a technical argument about uncertainty, and it's judged by whether a reviewer believes you didn't already know the answer.

The arithmetic is the easy part. Claims are reduced because the write-up fails to show the technological uncertainty, the hypotheses tested, and the work that didn't work. That is an engineering story, told to someone trained to look for holes in it. It is the whole job, and it is the thing most firms outsource to a template.

How the engagement runs

Four steps, real timeframes, named deliverables.

No “discovery phase.” Here is exactly what happens, what you get at each stage, and how long it takes from kickoff to refund, typically 4 to 8 weeks once we start preparation.

  1. Step 130 min, no cost

    Scoping call

    We look at what your team actually built this year and tell you, plainly, whether there's a claim worth making. If there isn't, we say so on the call.

    You get: A go / no-go answer and a rough range.

  2. Step 21 to 2 weeks

    Technical mapping session

    A two-hour working session with your engineering leads, not a questionnaire. We map the technological uncertainties, the approaches you tried, and where the work hit a wall. This is where reduced claims are usually lost, so it's where we spend the time.

    You get: An uncertainty map tied to specific projects and evidence.

  3. Step 32 to 4 weeks

    Claim preparation

    We write the technical narrative and cost the eligible expenditures (salaries, contractors, materials) against current CRA rules. A Big-4-trained reviewer stress-tests the file the way an examiner would before it's filed.

    You get: A filed claim: technical narrative, cost schedules, supporting evidence.

  4. Step 4Through refund + any review

    Filing and defence

    We deal with CRA on your behalf. If the claim is selected for review, the same people who wrote the narrative defend it, so you don't get handed to a different team when it matters most.

    You get: Refund processed; review handled end-to-end if it comes.

Estimate · 2 minutes · no email required

What would your R&D spend actually recover?

Enter this year's SR&ED expenditures. You'll see a federal and provincial range immediately, no form. The detailed breakdown, including which programs stack and what documentation you'd need, is what we email you.

$

Employees directly doing the work: developers, engineers, scientists.

$

Third parties doing SR&ED on your behalf. Counted at 80% for the estimate.

$

Consumed or transformed during the experimental work.

Estimated credit range

$0

Federal SR&EDselect company type
$0
ProvincialOntario 8% + 3.5%
$0

One report on this estimate. Not a newsletter; we don't send those.

Enter your expenditures above to generate the report.

How this is calculated

Federal: 35% refundable for CCPCs on qualifying current expenditures up to the $4,500,000 limit; 15% above it and for non-CCPCs. Provincial figures model Ontario's 8% refundable (OITC) plus 3.5% non-refundable (ORDTC) credits.

Contractor costs are counted at 80%. The range applies a conservative ±12% band. CCPC vs. non-CCPC status changes the answer materially, and provincial treatment varies by province.

This is an estimate, not a CRA assessment or tax advice. Actual eligibility depends on project-level review.

The 30-minute call

A go / no-go read on your claim and a realistic range, not a sales pitch.

Have ready

A rough sense of R&D headcount and spend, and any prior-year assessment.

Not for you if

Your work is routine build with no technological uncertainty, and we'll say so.

Selected engagements

Anonymized, with the numbers left in.

No client names and no logos, because SR&ED work is confidential. What we can show is the situation, what the technical session surfaced, and the result.

Decentralized social networking infrastructure · Ottawa, ON · 2 staff, 8 contractors

The company closed its first set of books after a three-month fiscal year and assumed there was nothing to claim. There was almost no salary on the file, just under $14,000 of payroll.

A technical session with the engineering lead found that the eligible work had been done by eight arm's-length Canadian contractors, and that the work itself was protocol-level cryptographic engineering with no reference implementation to copy.

$47,862

refundable, back in cash

Filed on $109,534 in qualified expenditures

  • Federal ITC (35% refundable)$38,337
  • Ontario Innovation Tax Credit (8%)$9,525
  • ORDTC (3.5%, non-refundable)$3,834

Computer vision for autonomous retail · Halifax, NS · 3 engineers + founder

Bookkeeping was in order and the year-end was filed on time. What had not happened was the technical work of establishing which facts the schedules rest on.

A session with the engineering team confirmed the full $97,016 payroll was eligible rather than a defensive fraction, added $53,359 through the proxy election, and stacked Nova Scotia's 15% refundable credit on top of the federal one.

Their accountant still does the year-end.

~$67,000

recovered across federal + provincial

Filed on $150,375 in qualified expenditures

Programs & stacking

The money isn't in one program. It's in how they combine.

Most firms hand you a list of eight programs. The value is knowing which ones stack, which ones cannibalize each other, and how a dollar funded by IRAP changes your SR&ED base. That coordination is where claims are quietly over- or under-filed.

Government funding programs, what they cover, and how they stack
ProgramStacks with
SR&EDScientific Research & Experimental DevelopmentThe anchor. Refundable federal credit at 35% for CCPCs on qualifying current expenditures up to the $4.5M expenditure limit; 15% beyond it and for non-CCPCs.Provincial R&D credits, IRAP (with rules), Mitacs
OITC / ORDTCOntario R&D creditsOntario adds an 8% refundable credit (OITC) plus a 3.5% non-refundable credit (ORDTC) on eligible SR&ED work performed in Ontario. Other provinces have their own rates.Federal SR&ED (reduces the federal base, so we model the interaction)
IRAPIndustrial Research Assistance ProgramDirect contribution funding for R&D projects. Non-repayable, but IRAP-funded salaries reduce your SR&ED base, so the two must be coordinated, not double-counted.SR&ED (net of IRAP-funded amounts)
MitacsMitacs research internshipsCost-shared funding for graduate-researcher projects. Can run alongside SR&ED when the eligible expenditures are kept separate.SR&ED, IRAP
CanExportCanExport SMEReimburses a share of costs to enter new export markets. Unrelated expenditure base, so it runs cleanly beside R&D funding.Independent, no interaction with SR&ED

Rates and limits reflect current CRA and Ontario guidance for 2025 and are re-verified at filing. SR&ED expenditure rules changed in the 2024-2025 federal budget cycle; provincial treatment varies. This is general information, not tax advice.

An honest comparison

We're not right for every claim. Here's where each option actually wins.

A rigged comparison table insults the exact buyer we want. So each alternative gets its real advantage. If your claim is small and routine, your accountant is the right call.

Who writes the technical narrative

Your accountant
Your accountant, from a summary you provide
Big SR&ED shop
A junior consultant, often from a questionnaire
In-house
Your engineers, on top of their day job
SREDit
Engineers who read the work, reviewed by Big-4-trained specialists

Genuine advantage

Your accountant
Already knows your books and files everything else
Big SR&ED shop
Volume, brand name, standardized process
In-house
Nobody understands the science better than your team
SREDit
The narrative is the whole job, not an add-on

Cost model

Your accountant
Bundled into your fee; SR&ED is a side task
Big SR&ED shop
Contingency, often 20 to 30% of the credit
In-house
Staff time diverted from building
SREDit
Stated up front; see risk-reversal below

If CRA reviews the claim

Your accountant
Usually out of their depth on the technical questions
Big SR&ED shop
May hand you to a different review team
In-house
Your engineers stop shipping to defend a filing
SREDit
The people who wrote it defend it

Best when

Your accountant
Your claim is small and clearly routine
Big SR&ED shop
You want a big brand on the file
In-house
You have deep in-house SR&ED expertise already
SREDit
Your work is genuinely uncertain and worth defending

Straight answers

The questions you'd ask on the call, answered before it.

Including the fee. Being the firm that states it plainly is, by itself, a reason to trust us with the rest.

What we commit to

Contingency fee, quoted first

A percentage of what we recover, charged after your refund is processed, and stated in writing before you sign.

Free scoping call

Thirty minutes to a go / no-go answer and a rough range. If there's no claim worth making, we tell you.

Review defence included

If CRA questions the claim, the people who wrote it defend it, at no additional fee.

Every year you file a thin claim is a year you can't go back and refile.

See what you'd qualify foror book a 30-minute call

No email required for the estimate