Canada Revenue Agency's "Application Policy SR&ED 2000-02R (Guidelines for Resolving Claimants's SR&ED Concerns)" describes the "Administrative Second Review". From the description, the intent of the second review by the Assistant Director is to address concern with the initial scientific and/or financial audit.
In reality, however, the Assistant Director merely reviewed whether "the SR&ED technical and financial reviews were consistent with the current SR&ED legislation policies, and guidance documents". The Assistant Director did not review at all the numerous factual errors and significant judgement errors committed by the R&T Advisor, despite the point-by-point explanations in my detailed submission.
I later learned that the Assistant Director has no authority over the technical opinion of the R&T Advisor. The Assistant Director only determines if the client was given due process, not a review of the decision itself. Wrongful application of SR&ED regulations is not apparently a failure of process. This is a typical bureaucratic example of "form" triumphing over "content", i.e., false advertising.
I hereby submit to the Competition Bureau/Taxpayers's Ombudsman that the lack of real review in the "Administrative Second Review" is both false on the face and also implicitly false. Most importantly, the lack of real review has resulted in "injury to the plaintiff" when I spent so much time and energy preparing for the second review only to be denied by the Assistant Director not because of the merit but because of the consistency with the policy.
