Consultation on proposed enhancements to the Scientific Research Experimental Development (SR&ED) program
Status: Open
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) recognizes the critical role the Scientific Research & Experimental Development (SR&ED) program plays in Canada's innovation strategy and is committed to hearing from claimants on how we can continuously evolve the administration of the program to meet the changing needs of businesses.
Throughout Fall 2025, the CRA will collect feedback from SR&ED claimants on its proposed enhancements to the program to support:
- Introducing a pre-claim approval process to provide businesses with early certainty through an up-front technical approval of eligible R&D projects.
- Streamlining the claim review process to eliminate unnecessary steps and reduce information requirements that create undue administrative burden for businesses.
Consultation process
The CRA will invite approximately twenty (20) SR&ED claimants and industry associations from across the country to participate in virtual discussions to help ensure the administration of the SR&ED program results in tangible improvements for businesses.
To ensure that all perspectives are heard, the CRA is encouraging participating organizations to invite their Chief Financial Officers, a lead engineer or scientist involved in projects, the individual who completed the T661 form, or any other individual that has had direct involvement with the SR&ED program to participate in the discussions.
How your feedback shapes our services
Claimant feedback is extremely important to us and will help shape future improvements to the administration of the SR&ED program as well as on how we could improve the T661 SR&ED Expenditures Claim form.
What's next
We will aim to share a summary of what we learned on Canada.ca during Winter 2026.
Related information
- Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentives
- SR&ED program resources
- Reporting and sharing