Once a SR&ED team reaches a level of meaningful financial return, it becomes a pawn for the political games. Be warned, however. There is one vital stakeholder that is almost always overlooked in these games-playing scenarios, because that stakeholder is external to every claimant: the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), which is responsible for assessing every…
DetailsThere’s nothing quite like the scent of money to bring out the corporate games players and political opportunists, but if a company isn’t careful, these games players can foul up a perfectly sound SR&ED program. Unfortunately, the very nature of the SR&ED program makes this scenario more possible. One phenomenon that seems to be unique…
DetailsTheir learning goals were much more narrowly focused, and while nobody actually cried (that I saw), I suspect that I was boring many of them nearly to tears. Mostly, when this happens, people tune out more than the most boring bits – they start to totally lose their grip on the wet soap of learning.…
DetailsThere are plenty of good reasons to conduct regular SR&ED awareness training sessions. But everybody needs to know the same things. It helps your SR&ED program if you teach the key stakeholders something about the information or response that you need, and why that information or that response matters. If you’re going to deliver such…
DetailsThe CTO and/or CIO have vested interests in their future technical vision of the company. That’s what they are paid to do – to think ahead and make things happen. (Note: A SR&ED program may appear to be an unwelcome distraction, until it becomes clear that SR&ED is a strategy for mitigating technical risk and…
DetailsIncremental and gradual change always seems like the slowest way to effect change in a large company – until you’ve tried all the other ways. However, training and recruiting SR&ED Champions for key points in your organization is one approach that promises to accelerate effective change. What do I mean by the phrase “SR&ED Champion”? …
DetailsSatisfying the negative test of intention You may well feel that it’s nearly impossible to try to prove that you did not intend to do a given thing at any point in time. However, this doesn’t have to be as tricky as it seems. The reason for this question is that, under the SR&ED program,…
DetailsClaiming expensive capital purchases as a part of your SR&ED tax claim requires that you satisfy a test of your intent for the equipment at the time of purchase. Long before you get to any discussion about how the equipment was actually used, and the level of usage, you will have to defend an intention…
DetailsThe demands of consulting practice (and apparently, of claim review) frequently result in the use of technical interviewers or claim reviewers who have, ultimately, an area of specific technical competence and at the minimum, a strong awareness of “what SR&ED looks like” based on their own technical backgrounds and their growing experience (and exposure to…
DetailsBased in part on my initial readings on the subject of cognitive interviewing, I have concluded that there is something to be gained by the application of improved interviewing techniques to SR&ED practice. Which leads me to consider a second question: how essential is it that the SR&ED practitioner be a scientist, expert developer, or…
DetailsWe should ensure that we are trying to understand the importance and substance of the story that the SME is trying to tell us. If they do not possess all of the facts we seek, we can at least ensure that we have fully understood and engaged with the person who is trying to help…
DetailsMy topic for today is, can the use of improved interviewing techniques, such as cognitive interviewing, yield better and more accurate information when transferred to the field of SR&ED? The interviewing technique known as cognitive interviewing was first developed, by psychology professors (Fisher, Gieselman, Amador – 1989), to help the police conduct more effective and…
DetailsMost projects fail to some degree. I think the documented percentage (per the Standish Group’s Chaos Report) is between 72% and 82%. Even if these percentages read like scare tactics to you, as they do to some people, it does not help to pretend that technical risks don’t exist, or need to be mitigated. Good,…
DetailsFrom an SR&ED perspective, project failure is useful. Failure for technical reasons is most useful. This is not to say that failure is “good”, in any sense – companies don’t appreciate failure, or reward it, usually. Most companies do not take failure as a sign of new learning, or in any constructive, positive sense. (I…
DetailsConversely, does the decision hold any promise as a supporting argument for the expanding of claims around the development of processes? In my opinion – probably not. The decision about patent law and patentability did not render any changes to the content of the income tax act, so far as I have read – all…
DetailsAs of October 14, 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the patentability of business methods and processes, via its decision re: Amazon.com and it’s “one click” process. The question is … will this decision open new doors or opportunities for us to claim SR&ED? Or will it have a negative effect? As the…
DetailsIt is a perfectly reasonable and sound approach for a Project Manager to say, first of all, “Let’s use the proven approaches to get there.” Avoiding and minimizing risk is what Project Managers are for. However, the time may come when it’s clear that the technology challenges will have to be overcome, and there is…
DetailsIt may come as a shock to some, but most Project Managers do not start out on a project with SR&ED in mind. There is quite enough work in getting a new project “up and running” – stakeholders to meet with, budgetary concerns, perhaps a project charter, building that initial work breakdown structure. It’s a…
DetailsThe CRA will accept eye-witness testimony, from the key technical primes who were engaged in doing the work, even while they actively disapprove of the lack of better technical record-keeping. (Note that I say record-keeping, instead of “documentation” in this instance, because I would not want to mislead you into thinking that what CRA cares…
DetailsIn any larger organization, it can be difficult to sift through the complete list of projects and expenditures to arrive at potential SR&ED claims, assuming that you have the access and authority to do so. Even then, typically, you don’t have the resources to identify and claim everything. Maximizing the return on your efforts usually…
DetailsThere was a time when the CRA reviewers liked to refer to the concept of SR&ED “nuggets” – the idea that trying to identify that core technological uncertainty or advancement being pursued was like sifting through the gravel of routine work to find the claimable gold within. It was an interesting analogy, and a valuable…
DetailsWhen I say full bore SR&ED, I mean an all-out, fully committed effort across your organization. For a company of any size, it requires a paradigm shift, from “prospecting” to “mining”, and a level of process integration that is extremely difficult to achieve. Most companies introduce or launch SR&ED, initially, as a kind of prospecting…
DetailsNote that there are some science reviewers who would argue that you have not begun to perform SR&ED until you have actually begun trying to close the gap, and that the recognition, analysis and reconnaissance around forming a hypothesis about the closing of the gap constitutes “due diligence” only. From my perspective, if you can…
DetailsDetecting a possible SR&ED project early can gain you serious advantages in a quest to maximize your claims. (Of course, the very earliest method of “detection” is to plan a project as SR&ED, from the outset, and then proceed with it.) It all depends on whether you are organized to take advantage of the opportunity.…
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