This is another of our famous “public service announcement” posts. If you are an owner of an Ontario-incorporated company, you probably need to know this.
If you have a company, you’re required to file a tax return each year. And you are also required to file an annual return with either Corporations Canada (if you’re federally incorporated), or in the province where your company is established. For the majority of our clients, that’s Ontario.
Many people get confused about what we (an accounting firm) can do to help them. Taxes, clearly. Financial reporting and analysis, yes. Government benefits like Trillium or the GST credit? Not so much. Legal filings? Nope.
Probably about once a month I receive an email from a client forwarding to me the letter from Corporations Canada, telling them to file their annual return. If you read the letter, you’ll note that it’s only going to take you 10 minutes, and it’s info you should have on hand. It has nothing to do with finances or taxes – it’s purely letting the government know that your company still exists, and updating the record for any changes to information such as the registered address. It’s more legal than accounting or tax… and we try to stay in our lane wherever we can. I politely send it back.
Here’s where it gets complicated…. If your entity was incorporated in the Province of Ontario (not federally)…. You never had to worry about it. That’s because the required information was actually provided directly within the corporate tax return, which you were filing anyway. In fact, you probably weren’t even aware of it. CRA would helpfully provide this information to Ontario, and all was good.
Except… About 4 years ago, the Ontario government upgraded its business registry, as part of its program of moving services online. It’s not bad and lets you do a whole bunch of things online that used to be done by paper. You can find it here: https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-business-registry
So, what’s the issue?
When the registry migrated online, the link with CRA and the corporate tax return was broken. Annual returns were no longer annually being filed via the annual tax filing. It now needs to be done via the new online registry and we’re no longer able to help people with this.
To its credit, the ON government has tried to educate the business public on these changes (and we’ve reached out to clients as well). But… well, honestly, the subject matter is boring, and never seems urgent.
So, in my experience, the vast majority of business owners aren’t aware of this, don’t care, and certainly haven’t registered for their ONe-Key, the log-in you need to access the service.
Very good. So what?
I can confidently say that for the last 4 years, the Ontario government has experienced mass non-compliance, mainly from private companies who haven’t noticed this, or cared enough. And yet…. Apparently, the Ontario government doesn’t seem to care either. I’ve never heard of anybody receiving a notice or requirement to file its annual return.
This happy state of affairs is going to come to an end. At some point, the Ontario government is going to drop the hammer, and will send out a huge number of letters to business-owners (who, let’s face it, are already busy), telling them that they need to file their return within about 25 minutes, or their company will be dissolved.
And when that happens… I know I’ll be hearing about it, through many panicked phone calls and emails.
Why are you telling me this?
With apologies – we’re not going to be able to help you when this happens. We – along with many other accounting firms – have concluded that a company’s obligations under the Business Registry are too far outside our core competence or our core skill set. Sorry.
You have a few options:
- You can sign up for ONe-Key yourself (see the link above). It’s actually not that bad. We have done it for H&Co and our related property company.
- You can sign up for online service providers. The leader is Ownr and you can check them out at: https://partners.ownr.co/11lmja73s30y
- You can continue to engage with a professional, who can help you with this. Some of them have a sub-specialty in this work but are generally good people to have in your rolodex* anyway.
Give us a call if you’re looking for someone to help with your Ontario Annual Business Return Filing as that is a part we can help with.