I finally asked my accountant about the SR&ED tax credit and felt silly for waiting

I was chatting with my accountant last week over coffee at a Tim Hortons in Toronto, and she asked why I hadn't claimed the SR&ED credit for my software startup. I told her I figured it was only for big labs doing science experiments, not a small team of 3 building a mobile app. She laughed and said we qualify because we tried new ways to solve a problem and failed a few times before it worked. It hit me that I'd been missing out on thousands in tax refunds just because I assumed the rules didn't apply to me. Has anyone else here discovered a government program later than they should have?

2 comments

2 Comments

nora_barnes4d ago

I mean, did your accountant give you a sense of how far back you can go to claim it? I've heard some people can amend returns from previous years, but I'm not sure if that's just a rumor or if there's a hard cutoff. It'd be wild to think you could just miss out on that much money and still have a chance to get it.

lucas1654d ago

Yeah @nora_barnes I used to think you could only go back like a year or two. But my accountant told me you can usually amend returns going back three years, sometimes longer if there's a special situation. That conversation actually changed my mind on it, I was way off.