What a company files in Canada [CA]

Every corporation governed by the Canada Business Corporations Act, with no threshold and no distinction by size or activity. The statutory words are as short as the duty is broad: «Every corporation shall send to the Director an annual return in the form and within the period that the Director fixes.» The registrar's own page puts it the same way — «Every business corporation must file its annual return with Corporations Canada every year» — and a corporation that is dormant, that has no revenue, or that has not begun to trade is not excepted. One boundary matters more than any exception, because confusing the two is the commonest way to be in default: this is a corporate-law filing with the companies registry and it is not a tax return. A corporation incorporated under a provincial or territorial statute rather than the federal one has a registry duty to its own province, which this record does not state.

Extensions and exceptions: Two reasons keep this date off the exact footing. The first is that the anniversary is a fact about the particular corporation: the registrar states the rule as «within 60 days following their incorporation, amalgamation or continuation anniversary date», and the date in question appears on the corporation's own certificate, not in any general rule. The second is that section 263 fixes neither form nor period itself but leaves both to the Director, so the 60 days are an administrative period that the registrar can restate without a change to the Act. No extension on application was found in what was read. What the registrar does publish instead is a tolerance in enforcement rather than in the deadline: «it is our policy to only dissolve a corporation when it has not filed for two years». A return filed late is still late, and the fee and the public record follow the filing, not the policy.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

The registrar's current page states one amount and only one: «File your annual return online for $12.» That is the figure recorded here. Filing by a means other than the online centre costs more, and a higher figure for it appears on a departmental fee page — but that page is a 2018 notice of proposed fees and was last modified in 2018, so it cannot be relied on for a current amount and the upper bound is deliberately left empty rather than filled from it. Anyone filing other than online should read the fee shown in the filing channel itself.

Two duties sit behind this record and they are not the same thing. The first is to keep a register: section 21.1 requires the corporation to «prepare and maintain, at its registered office or at any other place in Canada designated by the directors, a register of individuals with significant control over the corporation», and to take reasonable steps at set times to ensure that register is «accurate, complete and up-to-date». The second, which is what is filed, is section 21.21: a corporation to which section 21.1 applies «shall send to the Director … on an annual basis, the information determined by the Director». A change recorded in the register travels separately and fast — the text read requires information to be sent «within 15 days after the day on which it is recorded and in the form that the Director fixes», so the annual filing does not absorb mid-year changes. What this record does NOT settle is the outer edge of who is caught. Section 21.21 applies to a corporation «to which section 21.1 applies», and the opening words of section 21.1 that would carve out reporting issuers were not legible in the text as served; the regulations under the Act carry a schedule defining «Reporting Issuer», which is reason to expect such a carve-out rather than reason to assert it. A listed or publicly traded corporation should read section 21.1 itself before relying on this record.

Extensions and exceptions: The statute says only «on an annual basis» and leaves the rest to the Director; the 60 days recorded here come from the registrar, which states that business corporations file «an annual return and ISC information within 60 days following their incorporation, amalgamation or continuation anniversary date». So the period is administrative on two counts — it is set by the Director rather than by the Act, and it is counted from a date particular to the corporation. No extension on application was found in what was read. A change recorded in the register during the year runs on its own 15-day clock and is not deferred to this date.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

A corporation files for each taxation year, and the filing does not depend on there being tax to pay. Paragraph 150(1)(a) sets the return and the period — «within six months after the end of the year» — for a corporation on conditions turning on Canadian residence, on carrying on business, on taxable capital gains and on liability for tax. Those conditions and their subparagraphs were summarised rather than read word for word, so this record states the ordinary case of a corporation resident in Canada throughout the year and does not map the non-resident cases. One exception was read and is worth naming: subsection 150(1.1) removes the requirement for «a taxation year of a taxpayer if the taxpayer is a corporation that was a registered charity throughout the year». No revenue or size threshold appears in the paragraph. The point worth keeping separate from the corporate-registry filing above is that this return goes to a different authority, on a different clock, and satisfying one does nothing for the other.

Extensions and exceptions: The six months are in the statute and do not move; what keeps this off the exact footing is the starting point. The year end is the corporation's own, settled by how it makes up its accounts within the 53-week limit, so no calendar date can be stated until the corporation names its year end. Nothing read gives an extension of the filing deadline on application. Two things are deliberately not stated here because they were not read: the date by which tax itself must be paid, which in Canada falls earlier than the filing date and differs by type of corporation, and the position of a short first or final year. A corporation reading this record should take the six months as the filing rule and look up the payment date separately — the two are not the same deadline.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

The rule runs the other way round from most registration thresholds: the Act states who is a small supplier, and registration becomes compulsory for anyone who is not. Subsection 240(1) is broad — «Every person who makes a taxable supply in Canada in the course of a commercial activity engaged in by the person in Canada is required to be registered» — and the exception is the small supplier. Section 148 draws that line at consideration for taxable supplies that «does not exceed the total of $30,000 or, where the person is a public service body, $50,000», measured over «the four calendar quarters immediately preceding the particular calendar quarter». Two features of the test matter in practice. It is measured on supplies made worldwide, not only in Canada, so an exporting business can be over the line on Canadian sales alone that look small. And it is not purely backward-looking: subsection 148(2) ends the status where the $30,000 is exceeded within a single calendar quarter, so a business can cross the line in one strong quarter rather than over a year. The test recorded below is strictly greater than $30,000, because the statutory words set the limit as an amount that is not exceeded. The $50,000 figure for a public service body is not recorded in the structured field and should be read from the section by anyone it concerns.

Extensions and exceptions: The event is the first taxable supply made in Canada otherwise than as a small supplier, in the course of a commercial activity, and the application must come «before the day that is 30 days after» it. Only the person can know that date, which is what keeps this off the exact footing — and the date is harder to pin down than it sounds, since the status can end mid-quarter under subsection 148(2) and the thirty days then run from the first supply made after it ended rather than from the quarter's close. Subsection 240(2.1) carries other cases keyed to other triggering events, which were not read here. Voluntary registration below the threshold is possible and is not a deadline at all; nothing read gives an extension of the thirty days on application.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

A registrant files a return for each of its reporting periods, and this record states one case only: the registrant whose reporting period is its fiscal year and which is not a financial institution. That narrowing is deliberate, because section 238 sets three different periods for what looks like one duty. Where the reporting period is the fiscal year, the ordinary case is «within three months after the end of the year», but a listed financial institution has «within six months after the end of the year», and an individual with a calendar fiscal year and a 15 June filing date files «on or before that day». Where the reporting period is anything shorter, the return is due «within one month after the end of the reporting period» — so a registrant on monthly or quarterly periods has twelve or four deadlines a year and not this one. What decides which period a registrant has are the threshold provisions elsewhere in the Act, which were not read for this record; a registrant should confirm its own reporting period with the Agency before taking the three months as its date. A non-resident making certain taxable supplies is pulled forward to the earlier of the ordinary date and the day the person leaves Canada.

Extensions and exceptions: The three months are in the statute; the starting point is not. The fiscal year is the registrant's own, so no calendar date exists until the registrant names its year end, and the registrant must also confirm that its reporting period is the fiscal year at all rather than a month or a quarter. Nothing read gives an extension on application. One thing deliberately not stated here is the date for remitting the tax, which can differ from the filing date for an annual filer and was not read; a registrant on an annual period should also check whether it is required to make instalments during the year, a question the provision read does not reach.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.

Every corporation governed by the Act, with one finding here that is worth more than the obligation itself: Canada sets no size threshold for audit. In most jurisdictions a company escapes audit by staying under a revenue or balance-sheet figure. Under this Act the route out is consent, not size. Section 163 is open to «shareholders of a corporation that is not a distributing corporation», and a resolution dispensing with an auditor «is not valid unless it is consented to by all the shareholders», and then only «until the next succeeding annual meeting of shareholders» — so it is unanimous, and it is renewed every year. A corporation with one dissenting shareholder, however small the business, is audited; a distributing corporation cannot use the section at all. The audit threshold field in the template is therefore left empty for Canada because there is no such threshold, which is different from not having found one. What was NOT read for this record is section 155, the provision placing the statements before the annual meeting, and the rules on the content and accounting standard of the statements.

Extensions and exceptions: This deadline runs backwards from its event, which is unusual enough to state plainly: the statements must reach the shareholders «not less than twenty-one days before each annual meeting of shareholders», so the date is twenty-one days ahead of the meeting rather than any number of days after it. No count forward is recorded in the structured field for that reason. The date of the annual meeting is the corporation's own, set by its directors within limits the Act imposes, and those limiting provisions were not read for this record — so a corporation cannot derive this date from anything here without first fixing its meeting date. A distributing corporation's filing with the Director is on the same backward footing with an outer limit of its own: copies go «not less than twenty-one days before each annual meeting» or «within fifteen months after the last preceding annual meeting». A subsidiary may be relieved of that filing where its holding corporation files consolidated statements covering it.

No date can be derived here. This deadline runs from something this page does not know — the financial year the company itself elects, or an event only you can date. What is published is the rule, not the day.