SR&ED for clinical research
SR&ED for clinical trials.
Most of a clinical trial is routine: recruitment, visits, monitoring, data collection. The part that can qualify is narrower: the problem your team didn’t know how to solve, and the work done to solve it.
Filing deadline
A corporation generally has 18 months after its tax year-end to claim SR&ED for that year. You don’t need to wait for the trial to finish or the paper to come out.
Where is the SR&ED in a trial?
Recruitment, consent, routine visits, standard assays and ordinary data collection don’t become SR&ED just because they support a study. The claim starts where the team hit a problem nobody knew how to solve and tested a way to solve it.
That problem might be in the intervention, the sampling method, an imaging protocol, the analysis or how an endpoint is measured. Often it shows up as a method that didn’t behave as expected, followed by a protocol change to fix it. Your protocol versions, deviation records, lab notes and emails usually show it as it happened.
Separate the experiments from routine trial work.
The experimental part is usually small next to everything else a trial involves. Keeping the claim to that part makes it clear and easy to support.
Work to examine
- Experiments or analyses aimed at a question existing knowledge couldn’t answer
- Developing a protocol or method as part of those experiments
- Support work directly needed for the experiments, in proportion to them
- Salaries, materials used up and outside contractors for that work
Work to keep outside the claim
- Routine recruitment, consent, visits, monitoring and standard data collection
- Work done only to meet an established regulatory or ethics process
- Ordinary statistical analysis using known methods
- The rest of the trial budget, outside the experimental work
Clinical trial SR&ED questions
Can clinical trial work qualify for SR&ED?
Yes, when specific work inside the trial was an experiment aimed at a question nobody could answer yet. Calling it a trial, getting ethics approval or planning a publication doesn’t make the whole study eligible.
Does the full clinical trial budget qualify?
Usually not. Routine recruitment, consent, monitoring, visits, standard testing and data collection stay out, unless they directly support the experimental work and are in proportion to it.
Who claims SR&ED in a multi-party clinical trial?
Whoever did the experimental work and paid for it, unless they did it on someone else’s behalf. The sponsor, site, investigator, hospital, university and corporate agreements have to be read together.
How do we start separating the experimental work from the rest of the trial?
Start with the research question and the parts of the protocol that deal with it. Then match the people, time and costs to that work, and check the sponsor, site and investigator agreements before deciding what goes in the claim.
What clinical trial records can support a claim?
The ones made during the work: protocol versions, deviation reports, analysis plans, lab notebooks, results and meeting notes. For the costs: contracts, time records, invoices and proof of payment.
Can grant-funded clinical research still qualify?
It can, but a grant or other funding can reduce the costs you claim. Ethan reviews the funding agreement before calculating anything.
Related medical SR&ED guidance
Official sources
Program guidance reviewed August 1, 2026.
Have a trial that hit a technical problem?
Walk Ethan through what didn’t work and what your team changed. A 15-minute call is usually enough to tell whether it’s worth claiming.