We are not here just to incorporate a company for you, instead we provide a complete service package including business registration, management process initialization, all business accounts activation, enterprise platform design, and training to your bookkeeping.
Before you are incorporated
Unless you are sure your clientele stays within a province permanently (a good example is a restaurant), we would suggest you apply for a Canadian federal corporation. Because when your corporation name is federal, no other business owner can get the same or similar name in any other province; but when your corporation name is provincial, other people can register the same name in any other province.
Some professional corporations (PC) have to be provincially incorporated such as those for the MDs, dentists, realtors, etc.
We also do trademark registrations for our clients, however this is a whole new story as the requirements of trademark registration and renewal is much more complicated. So if you do need to register a trademark, please call our office for more details.
Please also be advised that:
- We will take time to explain to you the relations and the differences between incorporators, shareholders, and the directors of the new business.
- If you don’t mind keeping a low profile to your business, we can register a numbered company for you, such as
- 51885888 Canada Inc. or 51885888 Ontario Inc.
- it is a random number allocated by the government so no one has control to choose the number
- the only beauty of a numbered company is to save you a headache to come up with a wonderful and unique company name
- there is an approximate annual filing fee of $20 for all federal companies.
Provincial companies don’t have this fee or any renewal process.Ontario government changed the process in 2021 and there is now a mandatory renewal process with Ontario corporations. - We can also register not-for-profit corporations (NPO). In an NPO the “shareholders” are called members, therefore we will need to explain to you the relations between the members and the directors of the NPO.
- As long as you provide us with adequate info/docs, it only takes us one to two business days to complete the registration of a federal or a provincial corporation.
If you wish to let us register a federal or provincial company for you, please kindly contact us and/or use the Incorporation Online Form to provide us with your information.
After you are incorporated
- Approximately one or two business days after the registration is completed, we will notify you of the business number (BN). The number always has 9-digits, e.g. 58588 5888 RC0001. The letter C means it’s a corporation and this is not your HST number yet.
- We will activate the HST number for you unless the service you provide is HST exempt (for example when you provide some medical services). The first 9 digits of your HST number would be the same as your business number, it’ll look like something as 58588 5888 RT0001. The letter There means it’s an HST number.
- We will activate your Payroll account (RP) and/or Import/Export account (RM) if necessary. We will also explain to you how to make regular payroll taxes remittance to CRA.
- With the incorporation document we send to you, you can go to any one of the five major banks to open your business accounts. Each business has its own transaction pattern, some of them have lots of cheque deposits while some others may conduct thousands of e-transfers or wire-transfer in a month. So you will need to shop around and make the decision based on your type of business. Having said that, each newly started business will need:
- one business chequing card (mandatory)
- one or multiple business credit cards (optional but suggested)
- have e-transfer enabled
- Now your business is up and running and you will need to consider how you want to do your bookkeeping and accounting. We are pleased to let you know our corporation registration service package includes a one-hour bookkeeping training.
- If you need our consulting services for management process establishment, HR and IT platform design and implementations, please refer to our enterprise platform services page.
If you have had registered a sole proprietorship (SP) for your self-employed business previously, you will need to:
- Complete the bookkeeping of the income, expense, and HST (if applicable) of your SP business
- File the T2125 along with your personal tax return next year, as well as the HST return if applicable
- Close your business account for your SP and HST in CRA’s “My Account”.