Something changed in the last two years. Companies that never thought of themselves as doing research — a distribution business building forecasting models, a manufacturer automating a line, a clinic training software on its own data — are now spending real money on technical work, and they have heard that the government pays some of it back. When they go looking for an answer, they don't call a specialist firm. They call their accountant.
That puts CPA firms in an awkward spot. The question arrives from a client you already serve, it is squarely adjacent to tax, and the honest answer — “we don't handle SR&ED” — sends your client shopping. Meanwhile the work itself takes years to learn and a technical background most tax practices don't have on staff. This is a guide to the third option.
Why clients are suddenly asking
Three currents are converging, and they land on the same desk:
- AI has pulled ordinary businesses into technical work. A logistics company fine-tuning a routing model, an insurer building document extraction, a retailer engineering a demand forecaster — none of them have an R&D department, and all of them may be running eligible experimental development. Most have no idea.
- Tariff volatility has made recovery programs urgent. Importers and manufacturers who ignored duty drawback for a decade are suddenly asking whether they can claw any of it back.
- Capital is expensive.Non-dilutive funding — refundable credits, grants, investor tax credits — looks far more attractive to a founder than it did when money was cheap.
In every one of those conversations, the accountant is the first call. Not because they are expected to file the claim, but because they are the person the business trusts on anything involving CRA.
Why building it in-house rarely pencils out
The instinct is to learn it. A few firms do, successfully. For most, the arithmetic doesn't work, for reasons that have nothing to do with capability:
The technical narrative is the hard part, not the schedules. A defensible SR&ED claim requires someone who can interview an engineer, understand what was actually uncertain about the work, and write it in language a CRA reviewer accepts. That is a different skill from tax compliance, and it is the skill claims are won and lost on.
The programs multiply.SR&ED is only the entry point. A given client might also fit a provincial digital media credit, an export grant, tariff recovery, or an investor credit program — each with its own forms, deadlines, and body to deal with. Covering one is a project. Covering the set is a practice.
Volume is lumpy. Expertise you use a handful of times a year is expensive to maintain and decays between uses, particularly as policy shifts.
What a CPA referral program actually involves
The alternative most firms land on is a referral partnership: you keep the client and the relationship, a specialist does the technical work, and you receive a share of what the specialist earns on the engagement. Done properly, it is close to zero operational burden — no software to adopt, no staff to retrain, no new deadlines in your calendar.
In practice, a well-run accountant referral program looks like this:
- You make an introduction. Usually one email. You are not expected to pre-qualify the client or know the program rules.
- The specialist assesses and reports back to you.A written go/no-go, covering every program the client might fit — not just the obvious one.
- They execute; you stay informed. Technical narrative, schedules, filing, and any correspondence with CRA or the program body, with your firm copied throughout.
- You are paid when the client is. Commission follows the actual outcome, not the engagement letter.
The value to your firm is not only the commission. It is being able to answer “can you help with this?” with yes. A client who receives a six-figure refund because of an introduction you made tends to remember who made it — and tends not to go shopping for an advisor who could have.
Your professional obligations
Referral fees are permitted for Canadian CPAs, but they are governed, and the governing rules are provincial. CPA Ontario, CPABC, and CPA Alberta each maintain their own code, and CPA Alberta addresses compensation arrangements under a dedicated rule. Confirm the current wording with your own body rather than relying on any specialist's summary, including this one.
Two themes run through all of them:
- Disclosure to the client.If you receive compensation in connection with a referral, the client is generally entitled to know. Put it in writing — a paragraph in the engagement letter or a short standalone note. Draft the wording once and reuse it.
- Independence where you provide assurance. This is the sharp edge. Where your firm performs audit or review engagements for the same client, commission and referral arrangements are restricted or prohibited outright, because the payment creates a self-interest threat. Segment your roster on this basis before you start making introductions.
The practical consequence: referral arrangements generally sit cleanly alongside your compilation, tax, and advisory work, and require careful thought — or are simply off the table — for assurance clients.
Protecting the relationship you built
Commission terms are negotiable. Losing a client you have served for eleven years is not. The real question in any partnership is what stops the specialist from becoming your client's new primary advisor.
Three things worth having in writing:
- A non-solicit clause. Not a handshake. It should bar the specialist from offering services that overlap yours, and from referring your client onward to anyone who does.
- Scope confinement. The safest partners do one narrow thing. A firm that offers government incentives and bookkeeping and T2 prep is a competitor with a referral form, whatever the agreement says.
- Communication protocol. Are you copied on correspondence? Do you see the deliverable before it is filed? Silence here means you learn about problems from your client, which is the worst possible order.
Quality risk lands on you
If a specialist files an aggressive claim and CRA reverses it two years later, the client does not remember who wrote the technical narrative. They remember that youmade the introduction. That makes the specialist's filing standard your business.
Questions worth asking before the first referral:
- What is your acceptance rate, and how do you define it? The figure means nothing without the definition.
- What happens on a CRA technical review — who defends the claim, at whose cost, and through how many rounds?
- Do you ever decline a file? A partner who has never turned one down is not screening them.
- Can I see a redacted technical narrative? The writing tells you more than any statistic.
A short due-diligence checklist
| Check | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Scope | Government incentives only — no accounting, bookkeeping, or T2 work |
| Non-solicit | Written clause covering both direct competition and onward referral |
| Assurance clients | Partner raises the independence issue before you have to |
| Program coverage | Assesses every applicable program, not just the one they prefer to sell |
| Audit defence | Included at no additional cost, through every round |
| Willingness to decline | Says no to weak files, and can give you an example |
| Exclusivity / minimums | Neither — both compromise your duty to the client |
| Visibility | Per-file reporting you can reconcile, and correspondence you are copied on |
How the commission side usually works
One practical note, since it is the question firms ask last and should probably ask earlier: when you compare offers, ask what the percentage is calculated on. Some arrangements pay a share of the specialist's fee; others quote against the client's gross credit, which produces a headline number that is not comparable. The useful question is simply: on a claim where the client receives a refund of X, what do you invoice the client, and what do I receive? Any serious partner answers that in one sentence.
Actual terms are worth settling in conversation rather than off a rate card. Firm size, the mix of programs your clients fit, whether you want white-label delivery — all of it reasonably moves the arrangement, and a partner who will only quote you a fixed table has not thought about your practice.
Where to start
Three things to do before you speak to anyone: segment your roster by assurance versus non-assurance, get your disclosure wording drafted once so it is reusable, and decide which of your clients you would actually be comfortable introducing.
If you want to see how our own terms answer the checklist above, they're set out on the CPA partnership page, and we're happy to walk through specifics for your practice on a short call — the contact page reaches us directly. If you would rather judge the technical work before anything else, our breakdowns of how AI work qualifies for SR&ED and what triggers a CRA review will tell you more than any pitch deck.