How do I incorporate a business in Ontario?
The filing steps, fees, and post-incorporation deadlines for setting up an Ontario corporation, plus the requirement most founders miss.
Topic
Corporate compliance
Plain-language answers on corporate compliance, written from primary sources.
Answers
What is an Ontario Initial Return and when must a new corporation file it?
Ontario's Initial Return filing process for new corporations: who must file, the information required, and the registry system to use.
What is the difference between a corporate annual return and a corporate tax return?
Why filing your T2 doesn't cover your registry filing, which province requires a second tax return entirely, and where each one actually gets filed.
What is an annual return and what happens if I don't file it?
What an annual return covers, why it isn't your tax filing, and the filing deadlines and dissolution risks in Canada's three jurisdictions.
How much does it cost to maintain a corporation each year in Ontario?
What Ontario actually charges each year, why the Annual Return still needs your attention, and the recurring costs that are not the return.
How much does it cost to maintain a federal corporation each year?
The one mandatory federal filing, the ISC register you must also keep, what a missed return triggers, and where the cost grows.
What happens if I don't file my federal corporation's annual return?
The escalation step by step, why losing your Certificate of Compliance bites first, what dissolution changes, and how revival works.
What happens if I don't file my Ontario corporation's annual return?
What the Ontario annual return requires, the path from a missed filing to dissolution, what dissolution changes, and how revival works.
What do I do after incorporating in Alberta?
Setting up your records office, getting a federal Business Number, where accounting records must be kept, and the annual return.
What do I do after incorporating in Ontario?
The four filings every Ontario corporation needs, why your fiscal year-end matters first, and the deadlines attached to each one.
What do I do after incorporating federally?
The organizational meeting, issuing shares and recording resolutions, calling the first shareholders' meeting, and where you must register provincially.