Reviewed by Logan Hanson, BSc, CPA. Last verified against CRA guidance on August 4, 2026.
If you’re filing SR&ED for the first time and thinking about a consultant, a handful of facts will save you money and grief. Not the sales pitch, the real stuff: what a consultant actually does, how they’re paid, and what separates a good one from a name on a website. Here are nine SR&ED consultant facts every first-time applicant should know before signing anything.
The nine facts below cover what a first-time applicant should expect from an SR&ED consultant: how they find eligible work, document it, price the job, defend the claim, and keep you ahead of the filing deadline.
The filing is the easy part. The value is in a practised reviewer walking your whole year and spotting eligible work you’d have missed, then writing it up in the CRA’s terms. If a consultant only asks for your one obvious project, you’re paying for a typist, not an expert.
SR&ED doesn’t require success. Work that failed or got abandoned can qualify when it addressed technological uncertainty and was investigated systematically toward an advancement. A good consultant actively looks for your dead ends, because they’re often strong evidence that the work was genuinely uncertain.
Commonly missed costs include Canadian arm’s-length contractors at 80% of the eligible amount, support work that enabled the experiment, and partial-time contributions. A consultant who only counts full-time developer salaries is leaving money behind.
Consultants usually charge a percentage of your refund or a flat fee. A percentage grows every year your refund grows, so the lifetime cost can be large. A flat fee stays known and leaves more of the credit with you. Ask which model you’re signing up for and what it costs over several years, not just this one.
If the CRA selects your claim for review, you want the consultant who filed it standing behind it. Ask whether audit defense is included in the fee or billed separately. A claim you can’t defend isn’t worth its headline number.
The technical narrative has to come from the people who did the work. A consultant who never talks to your engineers can’t capture the uncertainty properly, and that’s the part the CRA is judging. Expect a good one to want time with your technical team.
Records made while the work happened are far stronger than a narrative reconstructed at filing time. A good consultant helps you capture evidence through the year, using the commits, tickets and benchmarks you already produce, rather than scrambling at the deadline.
For corporations, SR&ED must be filed within 18 months of fiscal year-end, and the CRA very rarely accepts late claims. A good consultant keeps you well ahead of that date. Don’t leave your first claim to the last few weeks.
Ask about their approach, what’s included, and what happens if the CRA reduces your claim. A confident consultant will answer plainly. Be wary of anyone who guarantees a specific CRA outcome, because no one can. For more, see our earlier rundown of SR&ED consultant facts for first-time claimants.
The finding is where the money is. Take a CCPC eligible for the enhanced 35% refundable rate that would have self-filed $148,000 in obvious salaries, for about $51,800 in federal credit before overhead and provincial credits. A consultant reviewing the whole year adds $92,000 of eligible salaries from other projects and a $37,500 arm’s-length Canadian contractor (claimable at 80%, so $30,000), lifting the base to about $270,000.
That’s roughly $94,500 in federal credit before the prescribed-proxy overhead amount and provincial credits, up from $51,800. The extra came from finding work, not filing it. This is illustrative, so your numbers will vary. For an eligible CCPC the enhanced 35% credit is refundable, applies to the first $6 million of qualifying expenditures, provides up to $2.1 million a year, phases out with taxable capital, and shares that limit among associated corporations. See our State of SR&ED overview for context.
Before hiring an SR&ED consultant, ask these six questions about scope, eligible costs, pricing, audit defense, and claim reductions. Take them to anyone you’re considering for your first claim.
SRED.ca charges a flat fee, billed monthly, never a percentage or contingency fee, which usually works out to roughly half the lifetime cost of a percentage-based firm. As far as we know, we’re the only SR&ED provider that publishes its pricing on its website, so you can see it before you talk to us. We review your whole year, work with your engineers, track evidence as you go, and we’re CPA-owned with audit defense included. If the CRA approves less than 75% of the filed claim, we waive our fees, as set out in our 75% guarantee. If there’s no eligible work in your year, you don’t pay.
A first SR&ED claim goes far better when you know what a consultant should actually do for you: find the eligible work, document it properly, price it fairly, and stand behind it. Ask the hard questions, and judge on the answers. If you’d like a straight read on your first claim, grab a free consultation. The CRA’s SR&ED program page has the official rules.
Related reading: 8 SR&ED consultant facts for first-time claimants, first-time SR&ED claim help in Canada, and how SR&ED tax services support startup R&D credits.
Not always, but it often pays off on a first claim. A consultant finds eligible work you’d miss and writes the technical narrative to the CRA’s standard, which matters most when you haven’t done it before. For a small, simple claim, filing yourself can be reasonable.
Ask whether they review your whole year, capture costs beyond salaries, charge a flat or percentage fee, include audit defense, and support you if the CRA reduces the claim. Clear answers to these tell you a lot.
Usually a percentage of your refund or a flat fee. A percentage rises with your refund each year, while a flat fee stays known and often costs less over time. Ask about the lifetime cost, not just the first year.
Yes. A good one reconstructs what it can from your commits, tickets and release history for the current claim, then sets up light tracking so next year’s claim is stronger and easier to defend.
The CRA asks you to support the technical and financial parts of the claim. With audit defense, your consultant handles those questions with you using the evidence behind the claim, which is much easier when the claim was built to be defensible.
Look for whole-year reviews, a strong technical process that involves your engineers, transparent pricing, and included audit defense. Be wary of anyone promising a guaranteed CRA outcome, because that isn’t something a consultant can control.
This article is general information, not tax advice. Tax figures depend on your corporation type, province, and taxation year.
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