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Registered businesses allow you to operate your business name within the province where your physical business address exists. The 3 types of business registrations are as follows: Sole Proprietorship (1 individual), General Partnership or Partnership (2 or more individuals or corporations) and a Proprietorship or Tradename (registration of a business under an existing corporation).
Registrations include the following:
Please see the registration guide below, should you have any questions, or feel free to contact our staff, who are always available to assist.
Yes, you can! The Provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan allow you to operate a small business without being required to be a Canadian Citizen or Permanent Resident.
Ontario Business Central is not a law firm, therefore is unable to advise or provide a legal opinion. We are here to assist you in understanding what is mandatory within the jurisdiction of your choice in order to incorporate a company. It is recommended, in the event you have any legal or accounting questions or concerns, that the appropriate qualified professional is contacted before completing the registration or incorporation.
Should I incorporate or register?
Both of these options allow you to operate a business in Canada, however each offers different parameters that should be considered.
What about Personal Liability Protection?
This is one of the largest differences between the two options. Incorporating is the best way to separate your personal assets from your business risks. Incorporating may be the best option for you if you have either personal assets you would consider worth protecting or your business activity puts you in a position where there could be personal or property risk or loss. If you think your new business does not have much inherent risk for personal liability then you may want to look at registering.
Is there name protection for the business?
Incorporation provides a higher name protection against other business that may be either registered or incorporated after you start your business. It is also important to consider protecting your business name from others using the same or similar business name within the Province you decide to incorporate or register in.
Is there the Ability to Raise Capital?
Incorporations may be able to gain its own credit and have grants or loans available to them, separate from the individual business owners.
Is there Flexibility?
Incorporations may change any component which establishes the business be that the corporate name, structure of the business, or even the individual owners.
What is the cost to incorporate or register?
Incorporation fees are always greater than registration fees. If you consider your business to be a low liability risk, there is a smaller amount of capital to inject into business or you have decided to start a part time business, a registration is more cost effective to begin with.
How do I cancel my business?
Incorporations are typically more difficult to cancel or dissolve. Typically the Provincial taxation department is required to provide consent to dissolve the corporation based on the corporation being up to date on its tax return filings and payments before dissolution. Registrations are easier to cancel through the Province office not requiring additional confirmation from tax departments.
Taxation
Taxation varies depending on the type of business you have-incorporation or business registration. Upon registering a business, taxation is listed under your personal tax return. In the event that there is more than one individual owning the business, each owners’ portion will be required for their respective tax returns. Incorporations are seen as a separate entity from the owners and file a separate tax return. Therefore with an incorporation, you will be filing your personal tax return and corporate tax return each year. The corporation can have a different tax filing than the person due date of April 30th of each year. Individuals tend to utilize a tax expert to assist them in preparing and completing the corporate tax return. You may want to discuss with an accounting specialist regarding which form of business set up is most beneficial to your circumstance. Accounting and administration fees are typically higher for an incorporation than those of a registered business.
What are the Requirements to Register?
Most of the information is the same from Province to Province:
There is the option to register a small business as a Sole Proprietorship (1 individual owner) or a General Partnership (2 or more people).
Registrations allow you to operate a business within Canada. Registrations are incredibly easy and inexpensive to set up and cancel. Whether you have a business idea or a business in your home country that you would like to establish in Canada, the registration route may be the best bet in fulfilling your entrepreneurial ideas!
What is a federal Preliminary NUANS search?
The pre-search does a comprehensive search for business names, corporations and trademarks across the Province in which you are established in as well as most of Canada. This allows for a wider scope of potential conflicts to your proposed business name.
Why use Ontario Business Central?
We keep things simple to get your business up and running within minutes. Ontario Business Central first completes the NUANS to check for name availability before completing. We keep you updated throughout each stage of processing your order via email. Feel free to call or message/email us at any time as our friendly and knowledgeable staff is available to answer any questions you may have and offer support during the registration of your business. At Ontario Business Central, our focus is to assist you, the entrepreneur, in starting your business as quickly and easily as possible so you can move on to starting up and actually operating your business.