Ontario / Practical guides
We file your incorporation and your CRA accounts, so you can go back to work
One checkbox hands over the Articles of Incorporation and the four CRA program accounts. See the exact wording you authorize, which steps stay yours, what the all-in price covers, and the one panel every number lands in afterwards.
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Start with your business
Organize formation, standing, and the records that let the business operate.
There is a version of starting a construction company where you spend three evenings reading government pages, learn that the Ontario business number is not the federal one, and still end up unsure whether you did it in the right order. That version is the default. It is also the reason a lot of good contractors put off incorporating for a year longer than they should.
This page shows the other version. You fill in one form, tick one box, and the Articles of Incorporation and the CRA program accounts become our job instead of yours. By the end you will know exactly what you are authorizing, which steps we take off your hands, which ones stay yours, and where the numbers land when they come back.
How contractors describe the problem
Not the paperwork itself. The not knowing what order it goes in:
"I am contemplating starting my own glazing/door/caulking sub-contracting business in ontario, but search engines are horrible resources these days and I could not find a straight forward answer. I have read about licensing through the HCRA. What all goes into that? What steps are after? How do you navigate insurance? How do you obtain WSIB coverage?"
"what I'm looking for is info on the whole legal process of getting registered so i don't miss any steps, I don't have anyone close to me that runs their own so I'm reaching out on here lol. I've already googled all the stuff I'm gonna ask but I'd like to hear some first hand experiences. 1) I wanna know if yall are sole proprietors or corp and what's the pros and cons. 2) when you register with the CRA do they give you your HST number right away and how you go about paying the gov what their owed 3) who do yall deal with for liability"
And then, months later, the part nobody warns you about, which is that the numbers themselves go missing:
"I started a sole proprietorship in Ontario last year and crossed the $30K threshold, so I've been charging HST. I'm pretty sure I registered for an HST number with the CRA at the time, but now I can't find it anywhere. I have my Ontario Business Number from ServiceOntario, but I'm having trouble accessing my CRA My Business Account for the first time because it's asking for a federal business number—and the Ontario one doesn't work."
Three different people, one shape: the work is not hard, it is just undocumented, sequential, and easy to get wrong in a way you only find out about later.
What you actually authorize
The wizard ends on a review screen. Everything you typed is on it, the price is on it, and underneath both there is a single checkbox.
Review the current terms, then authorize the filing only when the details are right.
Read the wording, because it is deliberately narrow. You are authorizing us to prepare and file your Articles of Incorporation. That is one filing. The note underneath says the rest, the CRA business number, WSIB, trade licences, run from your dashboard once the corporation exists, and it says so on the screen rather than in a terms page, because the order genuinely matters: almost everything else attaches to a corporation that has to exist first.
The review screen shows the current filing terms. Nothing is filed until you authorize the filing and complete the required payment step.
The steps we take, and the ones you keep
Once the launch exists, the checklist is explicit about who is doing what. Every step carries a badge, and the badge is not decoration.
The steps we file carry a We handle this badge. The ones next to them are yours, and the list never blurs the two.
Choosing your activities and deciding on a named or numbered company are marked You, because they are decisions only you can make. The NUANS name search and filing the Articles are marked We handle this, with the government's fee shown on the row so you know what the number covers before you meet it.
That distinction runs through the whole list. It is the part most setup checklists get wrong: they hand you forty things and let you work out which ones you are actually on the hook for.
The four CRA accounts, in the order they depend on each other
CRA is where the sequencing bites hardest, because the accounts are not independent. The business number has to exist before the HST, payroll and corporate tax program accounts can hang off it.
The four CRA program accounts most people file one at a time, in the order they depend on each other.
All four are marked We handle this. The representative authorization underneath them is marked Automatic, which is what lets the rest happen without a paper RC59 going back and forth in the post.
This is the section that answers the HVAC tech above. He wanted to know whether CRA hands you the HST number right away. The honest answer is that it depends on the account and the day, which is exactly why it belongs on a list with a status on it rather than in your memory.
Where the numbers live afterwards
Every one of these filings gives back a number, and every one of those numbers is something a general contractor's office will eventually ask you for. They arrive by mail, by email, and by phone, weeks apart.
Where the numbers land when they come back, and where you read them off when someone asks.
Corp number, Business Number, HST account, WSIB account, payroll account, one panel. The contractor on r/cantax lost his HST number and could not get into his CRA account without it. This is the panel he needed. Your generated bid paperwork reads from here too, so the number you enter once ends up on the documents you send out.
It works the same from a phone, which is where you will be when the letter actually arrives:
Same dashboard from the truck. Check where a filing stands without opening a laptop.
What it costs
Review the current filing terms in Start your business before you authorize a filing.
We prepare and file the registrations you authorize, and you never open a government form to do it.
The questions worth taking to an accountant who works with trades are the ones about what happens inside the company once it exists: how you pay yourself out of it, and where your fiscal year end should land. That hour is cheaper before you file than after.
WSIB is worth naming separately: it is on your checklist and it is not one of ours. You register with WSIB yourself, and the guide on doing that is here.
On AEC Stack: the same authorization screen is where a sole proprietorship goes through. If you have not decided between the two yet, compare the two structures before you commit to either.
Start at the launch wizard and take it to the review screen with your own details in it. You will not have filed anything, and you will have seen the exact sentence you would be agreeing to. For most people that is the moment the whole thing stops feeling like a project and starts feeling like a form.
Take this guide with you
The full write-up, every screenshot and clip, captions, and a machine-readable manifest in one zip. Share it with your office or hand it to whoever runs your socials.
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