September Monthly Survey of Manufacturing
StatsCan released September’s Monthly Survey of Manufacturing today. Overall, manufacturing sales decreased 0.6% in the month of September to $45.1 billion. The drop was seen most notably in the transportation equipment industry, which dropped 7.5% in sales, and the motor vehicle industry, which dropped 10.4%. Provincially, the most significant changes in manufacturing sales looked like […]
SR&ED in the National Post
There was an interesting article in the National Post entitled, A little bit of give and take about a claimant’s experience with the SR&ED program over the years. The article explores how CRA reviews of claims used to be about the technology, whereas now they are more about paperwork – and there is speculation that […]
10 Quick Tips: How to Get Feedback from your Customers
Getting feedback from your customers is important for many reasons. One of the biggest is that you definitely want to make your customers happy, and how can you know what makes them happy if you don’t hear what they like and dislike about your current clients? Another very important reason is because getting feedback from […]
The Secret Truth About Executing Great Ideas
Have you heard about The 99 Percent? It’s a web magazine, annual conference and book that offers articles, videos, and more on helping people in all industries go from coming up with ideas to actually executing those ideas. One of the most recent videos posted is of a talk given by Frans Johansson, and in […]
August’s Manufacturing Sales
StatsCan released August’s Survey of Manufacturing on Friday. Overall, manufacturing sales in August increased 2% to $45.1 billion. This is 17.6% higher than the low of May 2009. The industry highlights are as follows: Motor Vehicle Manufacturing: rose 13.8% to $4 billion Petroleum and Coal Products: rose 2.4% to $5.4 billion Non-metallic Mineral Products: rose […]
R&D Review by Federal Government
There’s been a lot of talk in the past year about how Canada isn’t bringing R&D products to market as well as other countries. In February, it was announced that Canada got a ‘D’ for innovation, where we were listed as 14th among 19 other countries for commercialization of innovation. Then, there was another study […]
Sustaining Canada’s Economic Recovery Act
Last week, Jim Flaherty (the Minister of Finance) introduced the Sustaining Canada’s Economic Recover Act. This Act was developed to be a key component of Canada’s Economic Action Plan. Some of the highlights of the Act include: the implementation of Employee Life and Health Trusts taxpayers are now able to request online notices from the […]
Ten Quick Tips to a Hassle-Free SR&ED Filing
Invest in a digital camera and use it to take pictures of any modifications you make to your products. Dated photographs especially are invaluable to your claim. Keep hard copies of electronic files. Don’t forget to keep hard copies of any and all important emails and documents – a lot of companies only store emails […]
Higher Education R&D Spending
Today, StatsCan released results about spending on R&D in the higher education sector. In 2008/2009, spending went up 7.3% from the previous year to a total of $10.9 billion. About two-thirds of the R&D spending occurred in Ontario and Quebec, and most of the R&D that occurred got it’s funding from higher education institutes and/or […]
Fact or Fiction: We Already Get Funding from Another Program so Can’t Claim SR&ED!
A lot of times the funding that you get from other programs don’t cover the same areas of business as the SRED program covers. In the instances where you are getting a grant, loan or reimbursement for something R&D related you need to remember one thing: you cannot double dip for funding. Some examples are […]