[ageektrapped]

It's fine _if you're not audited_.

In Ottawa. We got audited for FY 2013. It was brutal. Took the entire FY 2014 to get our claim. We got it in full because of me explaining everything several times in front of the auditor. It's hard to do because you have to put everything into those specific terms that SR&ED qualifies: experimental development, systems uncertainty, blah blah blah

The man hours spent were not worth it. Nearly killed the company with the cash flow problems as OP mentioned.

Applied again for FY 2014, betting on not getting audited.

CEO asked around, found this runaround/hard audit was common for recent claims. We think it's one of those Harper government, we're-not-saying-there-is-cutback-but-there-is-a-cutback type things.