How to Incorporate a Business in Canada

Steps to Starting or Setting up a Corporation

First Published: Jun 13, 2011 EntrepreneurJourney.com

n Canada, setting up a corporation or incorporating a business is a straightforward process. Depending on the nature of your business and how accurately you file required documents, it is possible to start your new corporation within 1 – 2 business days if you submit your documents online. For example, my own federally incorporated business entity A Dawn Dot Net Corp. was approved in slightly more than 24 hours. Today, I am going to discuss how you can start a corporation in Canada in simple words.

Although there are many small steps involved incorporating a business, at the end it comes down to these three major steps you need to complete to start a corporation in Canada.

 Pick a Name – You need to decide on a name and even before that you need to know whether your corporation is going to be a federally or provincially incorporated corporation. A federally incorporated business can do business anywhere in Canada. A provincially incorporated business will have to be physically in the province where it was incorporated. Once you know what you would like your corporation to be called, you will have to search for your name availability using the NUANS (Newly Upgraded Automated Name Search) and obtain a NUANS name search report.

 Complete Articles of Incorporation – These are the documents that you file with the authority setting out to provide the legal structure of the corporation – in other words, Articles of Incorporation describe a corporation's purpose, rules, and regulations. For example, how many directors there will be. Where the registered office will be located. Where the remaining property goes if corporation winds up. What classes and how many shares the corporation can issue. Can these shares be transferred or should there be restrictions so the corporation remains private? And so on. Articles of Incorporation are what make each corporation unique. Articles of Incorporation are also known as Certificates of Incorporation.

 Submit Documents and Payment – The last step is to submit the documents mentioned above and any other necessary documents along with the payment to Corporation Canada or provincial authority.

Last Word

Although it is possible and may not be difficult to do everything by yourself online, I recommend you seek the expertise and assistance of a qualified professional. While setting up my corporation, I noticed that it would have been difficult for me to fill up some of the forms and submit everything online fast like the way my accountant was able to do. There are so many rules and regulations that I could not have been possibly known, had my accountant not mentioned those to me.