SR&ED evidence readiness
Find the SR&ED line before your AI project becomes undocumented work.
AI, automation, software, data, and cloud projects can include experimental work, but not every implementation is SR&ED. Digid helps Canadian teams clarify the technical uncertainty, project evidence, and next funding or implementation path.
Useful question
Did you learn something technically new, or just install something new?
That difference matters. We help frame the work before claims, financing, training, or implementation conversations get mixed together.
What SR&ED usually needs.
The CRA describes SR&ED eligibility around advancement and systematic investigation. For software and AI work, the practical question is whether the project had a real technical unknown and evidence of how the team tested it.
Technical uncertainty
Was the team trying to resolve a real technological unknown, not just configure a known tool or follow a vendor playbook?
Systematic investigation
Was there a defined problem, hypothesis, test plan, experiment or analysis, and conclusion based on evidence?
Evidence while work happens
Can the team show decisions, tests, failed paths, data, code, notes, time, and project records from the period of work?
Where Digid fits
We do not turn every AI build into a tax claim.
The job is to make a better project decision. If SR&ED looks relevant, the project needs disciplined evidence and usually tax/accounting review. If it is routine implementation, the better path may be BDC LIFT readiness, DMAP/TDP, training, cloud implementation, or a smaller pilot.
Program criteria can change. Review the CRA’s official SR&ED eligibility guidance before making claim decisions.
- AI workflow or agent design where reliability, latency, data quality, or integration limits are uncertain.
- Automation and data projects where the team must test different technical approaches before a stable method is known.
- Cloud, software, or systems work where experimental development may be separate from routine implementation.
- Projects that may combine SR&ED review with DMAP/TDP, BDC LIFT, training, or phased implementation planning.
Readiness process
Turn a messy build into a reviewable project trail.
- Separate routine implementation from work that may involve technological uncertainty.
- Map the project timeline, experiments, tools, data sources, and decision records.
- Identify missing evidence before the team loses context.
- Route the next step: assessment, advisory review, implementation plan, or referral to tax/accounting support.
Start with the assessment if the project is still unclear.
It gives Digid enough context to route the work toward SR&ED evidence planning, BDC LIFT readiness, DMAP/TDP, AI onboarding, cloud implementation, or training.