Canada

Starting a Business in

Canada

Listed below is a detailed summary of the bureaucratic and legal hurdles an entrepreneur must overcome in order to incorporate and register a new firm, along with their associated time and set-up costs.  It examines the procedures, time and cost involved in launching a commercial or industrial firm with up to 50 employees and start-up capital of 10 times the economy's per-capita gross national income (GNI).

The information 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 2011.

  • Standardized Company

  • Legal Form: Private Corporation
  • City: Toronto

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No. Procedure Time to Complete Associated Costs
1 File for federal incorporation and provincial registration via Industry Canada’s online Electronic Filing Centre

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.

 5 days CAD 200
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