If you want to close your corp, usually people are told to pay a lawyer to shut it down. While I usually suggest using professionals such as professional bookkeeper, this is one of those times where you don’t have to at all.So if you want to DIY this, you do two things:
- Don’t file your annual renewal. Every year, the Province and/or Feds will send you an annual renewal form and request to pay them a renewal fee. Don’t do this. You can safely ignore these requests. But you will need to file an dissolve.
- File your tax returns(include payroll remittance and GST). You have to do this. CRA and the corporate registry are different entities. CRA requires you to file a tax return for every year your corp exists. If you don’t, CRA doesn’t just forget about it – They will continue to hound you even with an innactive corp. Functionally, what happens is: Don’t pay your annual renewal for Year 1, but DO file your Year 1 tax return (nil return). Then same thing for Year 2: Don’t file/pay your annual renewal, but DO file your tax return (another nil return.) Once Year 3 hits, the Province/Feds will go ahead and helpfully dissolve your corp for you. At that point your corp no longer exits, but you’ll need to file one last nil return for that stub year.