Tips and tricks
The decisions and deadlines that quietly cost incorporated Canadian contractors money. Free to read, no sign-up, and written to be useful whether or not you ever buy anything from us.
General information, not tax advice. Rates and rules differ by province and change over time, and none of this is a substitute for advice about your own situation. Quebec runs its own regime and is not covered here.
Each article states when its figures were last checked against CRA. Tax rates move, and one of these moved while we were writing: Ontario changed its small business rate on 1 July 2026.
The GST/HST Quick Method
If you are incorporated and your business expenses are mostly your own time, there is a good chance you are handing CRA a few thousand dollars a year that you did not have to.
Worth a few thousand a year to most one-person corporations, and the window to elect is not open all year.What a one-person corporation actually owes, and when
Incorporating turns one tax return into roughly nine obligations across three levels of government. Nobody hands you the list.
The whole year in order, including the corporate tax payment that falls due before the return that calculates it.Salary or dividends
The most asked question by incorporated contractors, and it is usually asked in the wrong form. People ask which one is cheaper.
Cheaper is the least decisive part. What differs is RRSP room, CPP, borrowing, and whether tax has already been taken off.Each of these is one deadline or one decision. There are more of both: instalment thresholds, your T2 dates, payroll remittances if you take a salary, and the elections with money attached that expire quietly.
ContractorBooksAI is built for incorporated Canadian contractors dealing with exactly that calendar: corporate books, GST/HST, T2 figures, and a safe-to-spend number so you know what is actually yours to take.
Your books are stored in Canada. Your login is too. Some processing runs on trusted US services, and we name every one of them.