The 2013 federal budget has announced new compliance measures to monitor the advice provided by SR&ED practitioners. The following measures were proposed by the federal budget:
- The Business Number of each SR&ED practitioner will be required with each SR&ED claim, along with details regarding the relevant billing arrangement
- A new $1,000 penalty will be levied in situations when information regarding third parties that assisted with claim preparation is missing, incomplete, or inaccurate. The taxpayer and the SR&ED practitioner may be held jointly liable for the penalty.
It is anticipated that the CRA will target the claims of taxpayers which have been prepared with the assistance of SR&ED practitioners that have been identified as advocating aggressive filing positions.