[bcantrill]

You fundamentally misunderstand SR&ED: it has nothing to do with "helping Canadian companies" and everything to do with encouraging companies to do R&D work in Canada. That Joyent Canada is a fully owned subsidiary of a US corporation is immaterial (indeed, SR&ED is designed to attract R&D investment from multinationals not based in Canada!), and as a I learned as part of the audit, the audit that we received is considered "routine" for the first year that a company applies for SR&ED credits. Our consultants didn't think it was a big deal, and Revenue Canada was very polite about it; they (apparently) just wanted to make sure that we employed everyone that we said we employed and that they were engaged in eligible activity (which we did and they were -- it was all fine). But the audit was expensive for us in terms of time, and we made the decision that SR&ED wasn't worth it. That's not nonsense; that's a business decision.