eSignature Legitimacy for Retail Trade in Canada

How to eSign a document: eSignature legitimacy for Retail Trade in Canada

so this is definitely the most cost and time effective method to incorporate your small business in Canada online hey everyone Griffin here and if you're a small business owner in Canada with a growing business one of the best ways to better manage your income and expenses along with paying less tax on your company's earnings is to incorporate the business rather than keeping things under your personal name as corporations are subject to better taxation rates and they provide your personal assets with limited liability protection which can be beneficial as you're growing your customer base over time now I've personally had several of my businesses set up as corporations over the years so I absolutely have experience dealing with navigating the incorporations process for small businesses and just the other day I actually helped my girlfriend set up a corporation for her small business that's thriving and also starting to really take off so this inspired me to make a video sharing this very process for entrepreneurs who may be new to setting up a company in Canada so in today's video I'll be taking you through the process of incorporating your Canadian business online in a matter of only a couple of minutes let's do it all right quickly here before I walk you through the online incorporation process I want to speak about why incorporating may be a good choice for you or not along with a couple of other factors to consider so first off you need to understand that a corporation is a fully separate legal entity from yourself in the eyes of the law and the CRA Canada Revenue Agency so even if you're a one-person business and you're going to own a hundred percent of the corporation shares you are not the corporation and vice versa this means that the company has its own unique business number which is sort of like a unique sin for individuals it files separate taxes from yours it's able to take on loans and mortgages and from a legal standpoint it's separate from your personal Assets Now from a taxation standpoint though corporations tend to pay significantly less marginal tax on actively earned income than individuals do which is the highest taxed form of income right income that you're earned from your job for example is going to be the highest taxed form of income in fact here's a quick comparison to give you some perspective on the different taxations between individuals and corporations so if you're an individual making say 250 000 a year in Ontario without any further deductions first of all you're doing quite well however you'd pay around ninety six thousand dollars in income tax for the 2023 calendar year on the other hand though if your corporation earns 250 000 a year and that is no net income it would pay roughly thirty thousand five hundred in income tax for the exact same fiscal period that being said you're still taxed at the personal level on salary or dividends that you are taking out of the company to pay for your own living expenses but nonetheless it offers you more control on when and how you utilize your after-sax income do keep in mind that incorporating your business also comes with additional costs and administrative requirements though such as annual reporting maintaining corporate records and potentially higher accounting fees as well so it's important to weigh the benefits and drawbacks before deciding if incorporation is the right choice for your business at the given moment let's now take a look at the different steps that you need to take in order to incorporate your business online in Canada alright so to set up your corporation online you're gonna have to head over to this website right here I'll leave a link to it down below in this video's description now once you're on the page you'll have to click on how to incorporate your business followed with keep reading or incorporate now so we're going to click on incorporate now and then you're going to have to provide some more information essentially to identify yourself to the Canadian government in this case if you want to take your time to read all this you can however I'm going to click on continue to sign in and you're going to do so in one of two ways either of you already have a GCT that you've signed into the government of Canada's website before or you can use the sign in part which is going to be the same type of thing as when you're logging in to say my CRA or any other government website essentially you're going to log in through a financial partner like TD or any of these other Financial companies or institutions so we're going to click on TD because that is the one that I use to sign in I'm going to go ahead and do that right now all right now by the way once you do log into this website using the sign in partner you're also going to have to verify your identity so you can do that one of three ways either mailing in a photo of your passport or driver's license but much simpler is just to take a photo of your identification either your passport or driver's license as well as a selfie and you will then be able to identify your identity so you can go ahead and incorporate your business so this is the page you'll be presented with and you'll see right here the button incorporate with a 200 in bracket so it does cost 200 to incorporate a business online we're going to click on that right now to go through this process yes so it's actually quite simple it's going to present you with a couple of different options basic incorporation custom incorporation or not for profit incorporation if you're watching this chances are a not-for-profit will not apply here we're going to be incorporating a business either under basic or custom essentially the main difference between basic and custom though is that under a basic incorporation you're going to be assigned a numbered name right so for example one two three four five six seven eight Canada Inc versus with the custom incorporation uh we'll we will give you the flexibility to tailor your Articles of Incorporation allow you to choose a corporate word name so for example Griffin hairdressing Incorporated let's say as well as create a structure with multiple classes of shares so again if you're someone who's starting say a YouTube channel or any type of small business an Amazon business a Shopify business using a basic incorporation is most likely what you're going to be looking for because not only are you going to get a simple numbered name it's also going to allow you to choose between a predetermined share structure for one class of shares or two classes of shares if you are say the single shareholder of the company chances are you're probably going to issue yourself a given number of shares say 1 million and be 100 share owner of all of those shares so we're going to click on basic incorporation click on next okay now from here it's going to bring you to step one of eight and this is about your Articles of Incorporation so when you incorporate essentially you are once again creating a separate legal entity so you're going to be receiving things such as Articles of Incorporation that include business number and so forth these are like your birth certificate for the company so I'm going to go read through this Articles of Incorporation are the legal document that govern the structure of your corporation you've chosen basic incorporation which means your corporation will be predetermined Articles of Incorporation predetermined meaning it's going to spit you out while a pre-made article and you're not going to make anything custom that is why this is more relevant for someone who has a very simply structured company not someone who let's say has many stakeholders or it's a more complex business structure again I would recommend going with a professional either a notary or a lawyer if that is the case for you now in this case a numbered Corporation name your corporation gets in the site number name and the minimum and maximal maximum number of directors minimum one maximum 10 and it is a private business so we're going to click on next here and we will have to submit our contact information so all of this is blurred out right now uh because well this is my personal information however this is going to reflect your own personal information we'll go to the next page class of shares so here we can determine whether or not we want one class of shares or if we want two classes of shares again if you're going to be the sole shareholder chances are you might just want to go with one class of shares which you can select right here now we can click on the little I information that's going to give you more information essentially so if your corporation does not need different classes of shares for example you are the shareholder the social shareholder of the corporation you may want to select this option your corporation shareholders will have the right to vote receive dividends receive the remaining property of the Corporation after dissolution so if you don't really know whether or not you need one or two classes of shares chances are you'll just need one class essentially by having more than one class you you can attribute different characteristics to those different classes of shares such as voting rights access to dividends at a different Cadence or Pace depending on when earnings coming in these are all things that you can essentially modify and customize with more than one classes of shares we're going to click on one class of shares in this case though just to make things simplistic so we'll go to next and this is where you're going to in input corporate information such as the registered office address so you need to have a office address for your corporation and this is quite simple if you are working from home and your company is based at home you don't have an office chances are this is just going to be your home address unless you have say an office somewhere else in your Province or in another province that is going to be dependent on your current business so we're going to put in I'm gonna just put in information here and I'm going to blur it out just so we can go to the next step all right from there once that is input the directors are going to show up here so the directors of the company are essentially the people who have control of the company they aren't necessarily the largest shareholders but they're people who have access to the company are able to take decisions on behalf of the company so in this case um there is there would be one shareholder me in this fictitious example you can add more directors though by clicking right here and uh adding more directors essentially all right now I'm going to click on cancel and we will continue going down from here incorporators this is the person who will sign the corporation's Articles of Incorporation must be 18 years or older not bankrupt and not incapable and then finally for this page we're going to choose the date of incorporation choose the effective date so essentially it's like the birth of your your incorporation essentially and usually that's going to be the day in which you're doing it so in this case we are September 9th that's totally fine we will click on next alright and finally the last step here before proceeding to determining whether or not your corporation is going to be registered at the provincial level or territorial or federal level essentially as well as proceeding to the payment is going to be reviewing Printing and signing your basic incorporation documents so this includes the Articles of Incorporation that you can download for your yourself here you will want to download that print it as well as sign it and keep it in a safe place for your records as well as the initial registered office address and first board of directors document both of these are very important to just keep a nice copy of I like keeping a physical copy in my records from here you have to sign it and confirm that the incorporator so that will be you in this case has signed Form 1 as well as form two you will click on this and go to next now in this case I'm not going to move forward with this incorporation because of course this is a fictitious company I'm not looking to incorporate however you'll go to the next step which will be determining whether or not you want to incorporate at the provincial or federal level now when it comes to determining whether or not you want to incorporate your business at the provincial or federal level there are a couple things to take into account the main ones though being the fact that for provincial incorporation this means only conducting business in that Province whereas Federal incorporation allows you to conduct business across the country additionally provincial incorporation protects your business name in that Province only whereas Federal incorporation protects your business name across Canada there are a couple more characteristics though so we'll look over a couple of these right now on the Canadian government's website as we can see here so choosing between Federal incorporation and provincial or territorial incorporation there are several benefits to incorporating steadily federally heightened name protection across Canada as well as right to carry on business anywhere in Canada so that really Incorporated companies can carry-on business anywhere in Canada and there are no restrictions regarding the province or territory where the head office is located so that's actually a good thing to mention even if you're Incorporated federally you can have your offices located in any one of the provinces or territories whereas if you are incorporating at the provincial level your main business office needs to be located in that Province or territory third Point recognition so Federal incorporation is often considered a sign of Distinction companies in corporate federally receive Global recognition as Canadian companies and then finally online services corporations Canada offers clients and online service that allows you to send documents pay fees all of this on the Canadian government's website so personally all the companies I've ever Incorporated through this method I've gone with the federal incorporation definitely do a bit more research into your own case however that is what you will most likely want to go with and then find only you will proceed to the payment it is two hundred dollars to incorporate online and keep in mind that every year above any other accounting fees for your business you have to spend twelve dollars for an annual filing and finally I thought it important to mention that incorporating your business can have many advantages as we've just covered but it also comes with added and ongoing responsibility especially if you're the sole shareholder who's going to be taking care of all of the filing and providing Financial documentation to your accountant so first off it's absolutely essential that you keep your company's financial and incorporation documents in a dedicated binder to keep track of them separate from any personal documentation because again your company is a separate legal entity from yourself additionally incorporating online as we've just covered is hands down the cheapest and quickest way to go about setting up a corporation but unless you're a tax or legal professional who really knows what you're doing this method is best for simply structured businesses with few shareholders and a simpler business rather than more complex structures with several stakeholders and things to take into account at the time of incorporation which can impact the company down the line for example while I've Incorporated my own social media and e-commerce businesses myself with the method that we've just covered well for my real estate businesses that involve multiple properties and other shareholders we felt it best to just get this done by a professional that we can reference down the line and count on for further guidance but this did of course come at a much higher fee than simply filing it yourself and paying the 200 to the government so that's how to set up your corporation online in Canada if you have any questions about the process feel free to leave a comment down below I'll try to answer as best as I can good luck also as always I have links down in this video's description to resources I use and recommend where you can get some free money for signing up to an account such as well simple Quest trade as well as some courses I have about real estate investing stock market investing and so forth