Warning: I was claiming SR&ED credits wrong for 14 months and a CRA letter in March tipped me off
Thought I'd flag this for anyone else running a small shop. I've been doing my own SR&ED paperwork since we started in 2022, and I had been lumping in every hour my devs spent on bug fixes and customer support tickets as eligible work, which it turns out is not how it works for the most part. What tipped me off was a review letter from CRA in March asking for time sheets on a claim from 2023, and the reviewer basically walked me through how they want the work broken down by uncertainty and experiment, not just "engineering time." I pulled our 2023 numbers and about $19,000 of what I claimed would not have held up if they looked closer. We got through it with no penalty, but I had to send a pile of extra docs and it ate three weeks of my time. My accountant had told me twice to stop doing this solo and I ignored him because I thought I knew our books. If you're self-filing, get someone who has actually gone through a review to look at your next claim, it's cheaper than the letter. Has anyone else gotten one of those review letters, and how long did it take to close out?