Incorporate your business with an experienced lawyer to ensure all paperwork is accurate and ensure your business is structured properly to protect you and for tax purposes. Your lawyer will walk you through the process and ask questions to ensure all your bases are covered.
This is part one in a series on business incorporation in Canada. We will break down all of the areas you need to focus on or make a decision about.
One of the decisions you will need to make is whether you want to incorporate your small business federally or provincially. Your lawyer will ask where you do business. Does your business need to do business across Canada, or is the majority of your business in one province? Let’s delve a little deeper.
Federal Incorporation
If you go with federal incorporation, it involves more paperwork and it’s more expensive. Both are true during the incorporation process and then every year going forward. The advantage to federal incorporation is that it allows your company to use the same name in every province that you do business in. Even if another company is already doing business in that province with a similar name, you can still legally do business there with your name. It’s important to note that you are required to register your company in all the provinces and territories you do business in.
Provincial Incorporation
If you incorporate your business provincially, you can use your company name in the province where you incorporate, but you can’t use it in any other province. Often small businesses, or sole proprietors choose to start out by incorporating in one province and then they can expand into other provinces or federally, once they have grown and it makes more sense.
Stay tuned for part two in our series on incorporation. We’ll share the information you need on naming your business.
Time is something we never quite have enough of, especially people launching a business. If you don’t have time to learn about the process and prefer to work with a CEO Law lawyer to incorporate your business, click here. We offer affordable, flat rate pricing.
