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The SRED (Scientific Research and Experimental Development) programme is designed to financially help Canadian companies involved in research and development.
A small business can expect to receive approximately 70% of its employees' salaries spent in R&D activities refunded as either tax or cash refunds. (However the exact percentage depends upon individual circumstances – which we can determine for you.)
The Mirak team has been successful at creating SRED claims that produce maximum rebates - with minimum time required of your personnel in the claim creation process.
Our success is based on our ability to clearly understand R&D projects, to explain them in the form needed for SRED technical audits, and to produce the necessary supporting documentation.
Increasingly our SRED claim submissions have been approved without on-site technical audits because of our clear and thorough descriptions and documentation.
You must act immediately. Only R&D qualifies that takes place within a company's financial year in which its year end is no longer than 18 months from the SRED claim filing date. This means it is essential that you check when your financial year ends and determine whether one or two years are currently available for SRED claims.
Filing a SRED claim is not a flag for an income tax audit. The Canadian Revenue Agency has publicly stated that the filing of a SRED claim is independent of income tax filings and is not used to as a flag for audits.
Getting the Maximum Claims
We know how to get our clients the maximum allowable SRED claims.
Most companies significantly underestimate the amount of their R&D activities -
- They tend to overlook wrong directions or small experiments that didn't generate the outcomes they were looking for, or forgot much of the small R&D activities they were involved in.
- They don't understand which activities are allowable for SRED claims - such as thinking that marketing research does qualify while non-R&D activities that support actual R&D activities doesn't.
Finding all the allowable SRED expenses is what we're good at.
Forensic R&D Project Recreation
We've developed our Forensic R&D Project Recreation system that can accurately produce detailed descriptions and workflows of R&D projects - even when they may have taken place two years before with only limited documentation.
Our forensic system applies "complex modeling" techniques. Simply stated - R&D projects have predictable workflows involving standard activities – by examining a project through simple systematic questioning, and interpreting and combining the results - we can create a clear picture of the project.
As the project is "recreated" it stimulates participants' memories producing more details stimulating the recall of more details.
The results - a project described in detail requiring relatively little of your R&D personnel's time.
No Risk or Up Front Payment
We can create your SRED claim for a commission of the refunded claim. This means that there is no up front cost to your company and we have the strongest incentive to successfully generate as large a rebate claim as possible.
We also offer the option for a small up front payment reducing the overall cost for us to create the SRED claim - in exchange for providing us with a cash flow benefit.
The SRED Claim Creation Process
The SRED creation process involves a Mirak partner interviewing the principal person(s) involved in your company's R&D projects.
This usually involves three to four meetings of two hours each - each successive one exploring the R&D projects in more depth using our well established methodology. After each meeting we produce a brief outline of our understanding and assumptions of the projects which your staff member(s) review and comment on in the next meeting.
In parallel to this we require a list of the staff and consultants involved in the R&D process and determine their levels of involvement in the different projects. This will require your accounting department to provide the necessary financial information relating to payroll and consultant invoices. There may be other information required relating to equipment and supplies used in the R&D.
We also need to review existing documentation and technology that can be used in support of the R&D claims - from emails, meeting notes, experimentation notes, to prototypes and completed systems, equipment and products.
We then create the financial information necessary for a SRED claim which your accountant can use to complete the claim or we can do it for you.
The outcome we produce includes -
- a full description of the projects
- a briefer description of the projects in SRED compliant form
- flowcharts providing visual explanations of the projects
- GANTT charts displaying the interrelationships of the different projects
- spreadsheets of the time of staff and consultants spent in the projects
- a list and location of available supporting documentation of the projects
- financial information needed for SRED claim filing for your accountant or we can file the claim for you
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