SR&ED Policy Review Project and Consultations (2007/8)

February 5, 2013 SRED

Reference Article (>5 Years Old)

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SR&ED Policy Review Project and Consultations (2007/8)

At SREDucation, we’re taking the time to document all of the changes that have occurred to the SR&ED program over the years. In our “From the Archives” series, you’ll be able to see how the program has evolved since its inception in 1986. For a timeline of these events, check out the SR&ED Tax Credit page on Facebook. Stay current with the program by understanding the historical context.

In the fall of 2007, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) along with the Department of Finance Canada conducted widespread consultations on the SR&ED program. The purpose of these consultations was to involve various stakeholders, and identify which areas of the SR&ED needed improvements. The main goal of the CRA and the Department of Finance was to reduce the compliance burden while keeping the SR&ED accessible. As such, the CRA put in place the SR&ED Policy Review Project to “consolidate and clarify the policy documents and related guidance documents with respect to the SR&ED program. The objective is also to present this information in a user-friendly way on the SR&ED Web pages of the CRA Web site.” (1)

Methodology Used

The CRA decided to use the following methodology in order to maximize the information gathered during the various steps.

Consult stakeholders: obtain recommendations and feedback.
Organize information: organize documents and guides using a topic-based approach.
Draft documents: for each topic, a policy document will be created while ensuring that the documentation is consolidated and streamlined to avoid redundancy.
Conduct online public consultations: the public will be asked to provide feedback related to the clarity, readability and completeness of the information.
Consider public feedback: after each public consultation, the comments and suggestions will be considered in order to improve the documents being published.
Release the final policy documents: once the documents have been finalized, they will be organized and posted to the SR&ED web pages. The final target date for this process is December 31, 2012. (1)

For further information on the timetable established by the CRA, click here.

A Q&A section on the Policy Review Project was setup here.

UPDATE: As of the time of this post being published, the CRA has not yet completed this process.

Source 10/25/2012: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/txcrdt/sred-rsde/mtrx/menu-eng.html