Key takeaway: The CRA publishes the SR&ED approval rate, and it's higher than founders assume: in fiscal year 2025–26, 90% of processed claims were accepted exactly as filed, 6% were accepted after modifications, and 4% were denied. The program paid out $4.6 billion in credits, and software development took the largest share at 42.6% of all credits allowed. If you've been avoiding SR&ED because it feels like a lottery, the official numbers say otherwise.
Ask founders why they haven't claimed SR&ED and you'll hear a guess dressed up as a fact: "most claims get rejected," "the CRA fights everything," "it's not worth the risk." Nobody cites a source, because the guess doesn't have one.
The actual SR&ED approval rate is public. The CRA publishes annual program statistics covering how many claims were filed, how many were accepted, how fast they were processed, and where the money went. Here's what the most recent year, April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026, actually shows. And here's what it means for your claim.
The SR&ED approval rate, from the CRA's own numbers
For fiscal year 2025–26, per the CRA:
- 24,160 claims filed, and 23,677 processed.
- 90% of claims were accepted as filed. No changes, no fight.
- 6% were accepted after modifications. Adjusted, not rejected.
- 4% were denied.
- $4.9 billion in credits claimed; $4.6 billion allowed. Claimants received roughly 94 cents of every dollar they asked for.
- 59% of credits allowed were refundable. Cash, not just a smaller tax bill.
So the honest framing is this: 96 out of 100 processed claims end with the claimant getting paid, and 90 sail through untouched. The catastrophe scenario founders imagine, the denied claim, is the 4% column. And in our experience the claims that land there share a trait: weak or reconstructed documentation.
That last point is our argument, not the CRA's. The statistics page doesn't say why claims fail. But we've seen enough claims to know that the difference between the 90% and the 4% rarely comes down to whether real R&D happened. It comes down to whether anyone can prove it.
Two years of data, same story
One strong year could be a fluke. So compare it to the year before.
In fiscal year 2024–25, 22,758 claims were filed and 22,738 were processed. Claimants asked for $4.7 billion and were allowed $4.5 billion. In 2025–26, filings grew to 24,160, claims grew to $4.9 billion, and allowances grew to $4.6 billion, all per the same CRA statistics page.
Two consecutive years, the same shape: more claims filed, more dollars claimed, and roughly 94 to 96 cents allowed on every dollar asked for. This is not a program that swings wildly from generous to hostile depending on the year. It pays out billions, on a consistent pattern, to tens of thousands of claimants. If the CRA had quietly turned hostile to claimants, these two years of numbers are where it would show. It doesn't show.
The CRA itself calls SR&ED "the largest Government of Canada program supporting research and development in Canada." Programs that size don't behave like lotteries. They behave like infrastructure. The question was never whether the money flows. It's whether your claim is built to receive it.
Software companies are the program's biggest users
If you write software and assume SR&ED is for lab science, the data disagrees with you. Software development received 42.6% of all credits allowed in 2025–26, the largest share of any field, per the same CRA statistics page.
That's not a loophole. Computer programming and data collection are two of the eight categories of support work the CRA explicitly lists as eligible, alongside engineering, design, operations research, mathematical analysis, testing, and psychological research. Solving genuine technical uncertainty in software, whether that's performance walls, novel architectures, or integration problems with no documented solution, is exactly the experimental development the program funds.
The plurality of SR&ED money going to software means the CRA's reviewers see claims like yours every day. You're not an edge case. You're the median claimant.
How fast claims get processed
The other number founders get wrong is timing. The CRA's published service standards, in place since April 1, 2018, commit to:
- 60 calendar days to process refundable claims accepted as filed.
- 180 calendar days for refundable claims selected for review.
Those are targets the CRA aims to hit 90% of the time. Last year it beat them, processing 95% of accepted-as-filed refundable claims within 60 days and 92.5% of reviewed refundable claims within 180 days, per the same statistics page.
Read those standards together with the approval data and the picture sharpens: for a refundable claim accepted as filed — which is most of them — the process is "file, wait about two months, get paid." The long, painful version mostly belongs to the minority of claims pulled for review, and what decides how a review goes is the documentation behind the claim.
What refundable actually means for your bank account
"Refundable" is the word that matters most if you're pre-revenue, and it's worth being precise about.
A non-refundable credit reduces tax you owe. If you owe nothing, it sits there waiting for the year you finally have a tax bill. A refundable credit is different: the CRA pays it out in cash even if your tax bill is zero. For a startup burning runway, that's the difference between a bookkeeping entry and a wire transfer.
Last year, 59% of all credits allowed under the program were refundable. Here's how the refundability rules break down, per the CRA's investment tax credit page:
- The basic rate is 15%, available to every claimant.
- Canadian-controlled private corporations earn an enhanced 35% rate, now on up to $6 million of qualifying expenditures per year for tax years beginning after December 15, 2024. The old limit was $3 million.
- Credits earned at the 35% rate on current expenditures are 100% refundable. Salaries, contractors, materials: the credit on that spend comes back as cash.
- Credits earned at the 35% rate on capital expenditures are 40% refundable.
- Qualifying corporations can get 40% of credits earned at the 15% rate refunded as well.
- The enhanced rate phases out as taxable capital grows from $15 million to $75 million.
Run that through a concrete case. A CCPC with $500,000 in eligible developer salaries earns a $175,000 credit at the 35% rate. Salaries are current expenditures, so that credit is 100% refundable. If the claim is accepted as filed, the CRA's own standard is to process it within 60 days of a complete filing.
If you're a typical early-stage CCPC spending on developer salaries, almost your entire credit lands in the fully refundable column. That's why the 60-day service standard matters so much: for most startups this isn't a future tax break, it's near-term cash you can put into a hiring plan or a runway model with a real date attached.
The myth audit
Put the three most common founder beliefs next to the CRA's numbers and watch what happens.
- "Most SR&ED claims get rejected." The data says 4% of processed claims were denied last year. Ninety percent were accepted without a single change. Another 6% were adjusted and still paid. If "most claims get rejected" were true, the CRA would not have allowed $4.6 billion of the $4.9 billion claimed.
- "Even if you win, it takes a year to see the money." The published service standard for refundable claims accepted as filed is 60 calendar days, and the CRA hit it 95% of the time last year. Even claims pulled for review carry a 180-day standard, met 92.5% of the time. The multi-year horror story is not the documented norm.
- "It's for scientists, and only if the project succeeds." Software took the largest share of credits of any field, at 42.6%. And the CRA's own eligibility guidance is explicit that failed projects can still qualify. What matters is that you attempted a technological advancement in the face of real uncertainty, and attacked it through systematic investigation: hypothesis, experiment or analysis, conclusion. The dead ends are evidence, not disqualifiers.
One caution cuts the other way. The same eligibility guidance excludes routine work: market research, routine testing, commercial production, style changes. The program pays for the experiments, not the shipping schedule. A claim that dresses routine work as R&D is exactly the kind that ends up adjusted or denied.
What the 4% teaches the other 96%
The denied slice is small, but it's instructive. A claim doesn't fail because the CRA dislikes your company. It fails when the work can't be shown to meet the program's two requirements, a real technological uncertainty attacked through systematic investigation, or when the records can't back the expenditures.
Here's our read, and it's ours rather than anything the CRA publishes: both failure modes are documentation problems before they're eligibility problems. Work that qualified but was written up from memory eighteen months later reads as vague. Hours that were real but never tracked read as invented. The claim inherits the weakness of its evidence.
This is why we built Glauq around continuous capture rather than year-end reconstruction. The system documents eligible work as it happens, inside the tools your engineers already use. Then a qualified, independent SR&ED expert reviews every claim and stands behind it before it's filed. The AI does the collecting; a named human does the vouching. That combination is what keeps a claim in the 90% column.
How the 2026 changes move the numbers
The statistics above describe the program as it was. The program you'll file into is getting bigger and, on the CRA's own stated direction, faster.
Bill C-15 received royal assent on March 26, 2026, and the CRA's summary of the changes confirms three structural moves:
- The expenditure limit for the enhanced 35% refundable credit doubled, from $3 million to $6 million, for tax years beginning after December 15, 2024. A CCPC that maxes the limit can now earn up to $2.1 million per year at the enhanced rate.
- Eligible Canadian public corporations can now access the enhanced refundable rate, which was previously reserved for CCPCs.
- Certain capital expenditures are eligible again, with credits earned at the 35% rate on capital spend 40% refundable.
Then there's process. Starting April 1, 2026, the CRA offers an optional pre-claim approval service: businesses with under $25 million in gross income can ask for a ruling on up to three planned projects, get a determination within eight weeks, and rely on it for three years. Claims made up entirely of pre-approved projects get an accelerated, expenditure-only review with a 90-day service standard. You find out whether the work qualifies before you spend a year doing it.
And the government has put its intent in writing. The Budget 2025 legislation package includes a commitment to "simplify the administration of the SR&ED program and cut in half the processing period for claims". Whether that target is fully met or not, the direction is unambiguous: more certainty up front, faster money after filing. These are the biggest changes to the program in over a decade, and it's worth knowing exactly what changed and who it helps.
What provinces add on top
The federal numbers understate what a claim is actually worth, because provincial credits stack on top. The big four:
- Ontario offers the Ontario Innovation Tax Credit, an 8% refundable credit on up to $3 million of qualifying expenditures (a maximum of $240,000), plus a 3.5% non-refundable Ontario Research and Development Tax Credit.
- British Columbia offers a 10% refundable credit for CCPCs on qualifying expenditures up to the federal expenditure limit, which BC Budget 2026 aligned with the new $6 million federal ceiling.
- Quebec replaced its previous R&D credits with the CRIC, which pays 30% on the first $1 million of eligible expenses above an exclusion threshold and 20% beyond that, for tax years beginning after March 25, 2025.
- Alberta runs the Innovation Employment Grant, paying 8% on baseline R&D spending and 20% on spending above the baseline, on up to $4 million of eligible expenditures.
Stack a provincial credit on the federal 35% and the effective return on a dollar of eligible R&D spend climbs well past what most founders assume the program pays. The exact stack depends on your province and your numbers, which is what a calculator is for.
The real risk is the unfiled claim
Here's the asymmetry the fear gets backwards. The downside is bounded: worst realistic case for a properly documented claim, a review adjusts it. The downside of not filing is the whole refund. At the enhanced 35% rate on up to $6 million of qualifying expenditures under the new limit, that's as much as $2.1 million per year walking away.
And the door closes on a schedule. A corporation has 18 months after its fiscal year end to file Form T661 and Schedule 31, which works out to 12 months after the T2 return is due. Miss it and that year's refund is gone for good, a deadline worth understanding in detail before it understands you.
Twenty-four thousand claims were filed last year, and 96% of the ones processed got paid. The program isn't the gamble. Sitting out is.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of SR&ED claims are approved? In CRA fiscal year 2025–26, 90% of processed claims were accepted as filed, 6% were accepted after modifications, and 4% were denied. That means 96% of claims resulted in credits, per the CRA's published program statistics.
How long does it take to get a SR&ED refund? The CRA's service standard is 60 calendar days for refundable claims accepted as filed and 180 days for refundable claims selected for review. Last year it met those targets 95% and 92.5% of the time respectively.
What share of SR&ED goes to software companies? Software development received 42.6% of all SR&ED credits allowed in 2025–26, the largest share of any field in the CRA's statistics. Software R&D isn't a fringe use of the program; it's the program's biggest category.
Does a high approval rate mean I can file a thin claim? No. A high acceptance rate is not an invitation to file thin. A vague narrative or unsupported costs is exactly what pushes a claim into the reviewed and denied minorities.
Will the new rules change approval rates? No one knows yet; the first full year of data under the new rules hasn't been published. What is known is the CRA's stated direction: the pre-claim approval service is built to give claimants certainty before they file, and the government has committed in writing to cutting claim processing time in half. Both point toward more predictability, not less.
What is the deadline to file a SR&ED claim? For corporations, 18 months after the fiscal year end, filed on Form T661 with Schedule 31 alongside the T2 return. The deadline is hard: an unfiled year cannot be recovered after it passes.
Stop pricing your decision off a rumor. The CRA's own data says a documented claim overwhelmingly gets paid, and gets paid fast.
See what your numbers look like — estimate your refund or check your eligibility.