Starting a Business in Canada

This section identifies the bureaucratic and legal hurdles an entrepreneur must overcome to incorporate and register a new firm in Canada.

The country data appearing on this page was collected as part of the Doing Business project, which measures and compares regulations relevant to the life cycle of a small- to medium-sized domestic business in 183 economies. The most recent round of data collection for the project was completed in June 2009.

The table below provides a summary of the procedures and the associated completion time and cost for setting up a standardized company. The table is followed by additional country-specific information on business registration requirements.

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Standardized company

Legal Form: Private Corporation
City: Toronto

Registration Requirements Summary:


  Procedure Time to complete: Cost to complete:
1 File for federal incorporation and provincial registration via Industry Canada’s online Electronic Filing Centre 5 days CAD 200

Registration Requirements Details

Procedure 1.
File for federal incorporation and provincial registration via Industry Canada’s online Electronic Filing Centre
Time to complete:
5 days
Cost to complete:
CAD 200
Name of Agency:
Comment:
The following documents are required to file for federal incorporation and provincial registration:
1. Form 1: Articles of Incorporation
2. Form 2: Initial Registered Office Address and First Board of Directors
3. Provincial registration form.

Four incorporation options available:
1. incorporation of a numbered name corporation, eg., 1234567 Canada Inc.;
If the company is incorporating under a name, rather than a number, a name search report must be obtained at a cost of CAD 20 (it was CAD 50). The search report and articles must be filed within 90 days of the production of the name search report.
2. incorporation of a corporation with a name pre-approved by Corporations Canada (a NUANS® search in electronic format is required to accompany the submission) ; or
3. incorporation of a corporation where name approval is to be sought (a NUANS® search in electronic format is required to accompany the submission);
4. incorporation of a numbered name corporation that has been pre-reserved.
It is a same day service, if you submit the forms online prior to 1PM, the incorporation certificate should be provided on the same day by 5PM.

The online incorporation process also allows selection of which Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) accounts are required (such as for corporate income tax or goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax), and if accounts are selected, it also results in automatic generation of the Business Number by the CRA within 5 days of incorporation, and the BN is mailed to the company.