Have you ever watched a witness that takes the stand to recount a terrible event in which they were personally involved? An event that may have caused some irreparable harm. The witness is just filled with overwhelming emotions of pain and sorrow of having to relive the incident. Someone please hand that witness a tissue. Having to watch as someone relives a difficult event just evokes very strong empathy in us all. And getting a positive verdict seems to ease all that pain that has been caused.
The SR&ED audit is not much different. It is one of the most emotionally draining processes that your team is ever to be put through. It is just a killer.
Any project which you select for an SR&ED claim, will likely have had its fair share of angst and turmoil. It often starts with things not working in the way that they were expected to work. This, despite all of your best efforts to identify the unknowns ahead of time. But the reality of most development projects is that, you don’t know what you don’t know, until you are smack in the middle of it.
And that is when all the fun starts. Deadlines are missed. Development staff may have to be added or removed. More development tools may need to be added or changed. More contact is occurring with the support staff for the underlying tools, components, or interfaces that you are struggling to use. All of a sudden, there is no shortage of uncertainty. And then you begin to really know what you don’t know.
Once you finally resolve that cornucopia of uncertainties and get to a happy project completion, it is best that you don’t relive it. Except for the fact that there is this SR&ED program. If you recount all your trials and tribulations and share those development hardships, there will be an SR&ED refund for you to ease all that pain that you had to endure. And that may be the case. Unless there is an audit.
An SR&ED audit effectively puts you on the witness stand. Presenting your claim to a technical reviewer will require you to relive the chronology of your development efforts through all of its most miserable parts. The only thing that makes it all bearable is the comfort in the fact that you have persevered. You have overcome everything thrown at you, and you have completed the project.
Unfortunately, the role of the technical reviewer is to stir the pain in your toughest development efforts, and then to question whether there was really any pain at all. This is emotionally tough for everyone. It is natural to have a strong emotional connection with the development feats that you have made. Having them cast in doubt can cause quite an emotional unraveling. And when things get emotional, it just throws you off.
If you are going to have an SR&ED audit, you must prepare yourself as best you can, for the arduous process that is to take place. Going into the process with an unwavering conviction of your technological accomplishments is not enough. You need to be prepared for how to cope with the process when all of that subtle, and not so subtle berating begins. Unfortunately, the technical reviewer is not there to show support for your technological achievements.