SR&ED for Software Companies

Your engineering team is building the future — get paid for it.

Software development is the #1 SR&ED category — 41% of all claims. If your team is solving hard technical problems, you almost certainly qualify.

What Qualifies

Work you're already doing.

SR&ED eligibility comes down to technological uncertainty and systematic investigation. Here's what that looks like in your world.

New algorithms & architectures

Can we build a system that handles X at this scale without known solutions?

Designing novel data structures, processing pipelines, or system architectures where the outcome wasn't certain qualifies as technological advancement under SR&ED.

Performance & scalability R&D

Can we reduce latency to under Y ms while maintaining data consistency?

Systematic experimentation to improve throughput, reduce response times, or scale beyond known limits — especially when standard approaches fail.

Integration & interoperability

Can we make these systems communicate reliably when no documented approach exists?

Building custom middleware, adapters, or protocols to connect systems in ways that haven't been done before, especially with undocumented APIs or legacy systems.

AI & machine learning development

Can we train a model that achieves sufficient accuracy for this novel use case?

Developing custom ML models, experimenting with architectures, feature engineering, and training approaches where the feasibility was unknown at the outset.

DevOps & infrastructure innovation

Can we build a deployment pipeline that meets these constraints without existing tooling?

Creating novel CI/CD systems, custom orchestration, or infrastructure-as-code solutions that go beyond configuring existing tools.

Security & reliability engineering

Can we achieve this level of fault tolerance in a distributed system?

Developing new approaches to encryption, authentication, fault tolerance, or disaster recovery that require systematic experimentation.

Know the Line

Eligible vs. not eligible.

SR&ED rewards work that pushes the boundaries of what's known, not routine development. Here's how CRA draws the line.

Building a custom real-time data pipeline that processes 10M events/sec — no off-the-shelf solution could handle the throughput and ordering guarantees you needed.

Setting up Kafka with standard configuration to handle message queuing between existing services.

Developing a novel caching strategy that reduced API response times from 800ms to 50ms after three failed approaches using known patterns.

Adding Redis caching to an existing API using well-documented patterns and standard configuration.

Designing a multi-tenant architecture that isolates customer data while sharing compute — a problem with no clear solution in your scale range.

Deploying a new microservice using your existing template and standard deployment pipeline.

Experimenting with different ML model architectures to classify documents with 95%+ accuracy when existing models topped out at 78%.

Fine-tuning a pre-trained GPT model using standard prompt engineering techniques and documented best practices.

Worked Example

The math behind your refund.

Ontario CCPC · $1.2M R&D salaries · No contractors

Eligible expenditures

R&D salaries$1,200,000
Proxy overhead (55%)$660,000
Total qualified$1,860,000

Tax credits

Ontario OITC (8%)$148,800
Ontario ORDTC (3.5%)$59,892
Federal ITC (35% CCPC)$577,958
Total credits$786,650
Your estimated CRA refund$786,650

Traditional Consultant

$235,995

30% of claim

You keep $550,655

Shreddit (Pay Later)

$78,665

10% of claim

Save $157,330 vs consultant

Shreddit (Pay Now)

$39,333

5% of claim

Save $196,662 vs consultant

How Shreddit Helps

From your workflow to your refund.

Shreddit connects directly to the tools your engineering team already uses — GitHub, Linear, Jira, and Notion — and continuously identifies SR&ED-eligible work as it happens.

Instead of reconstructing 12 months of R&D from memory, Shreddit analyzes commit patterns, PR descriptions, ticket lifecycles, and project documentation in real time. By claim season, your technical narratives are already written — backed by contemporaneous evidence, not guesswork.

No developer interviews. No CTO time wasted. No questionnaires. Your team keeps building while Shreddit prepares a CRA-compliant T661 package from the artifacts that already exist in your workflow.

Learn more about how SR&ED works

More Use Cases

SR&ED works across verticals.

Your team is solving hard problems. Get the credit.

Join the waitlist and see how much your engineering work qualifies for.