The Canadian filing calendar a small company actually has

A Canadian company with employees and a sales-tax registration is on at least four separate filing schedules, none of which line up. Each is set by a different rule, and two of them depend on figures from previous years rather than this one.

Source deductions — the most frequent#

If you have employees, payroll withholdings are remitted on a schedule set by your average monthly withholding amount from two calendar years ago.

Under $25,000 you are a regular remitter, due the 15th of the following month. Between $25,000 and $99,999.99 you remit twice a month. At $100,000 or more, up to four times a month.

The two-year lag catches people. A business that doubled last year keeps its gentler schedule this year; one that shrank keeps the demanding one. The remitter tool works out which band you are in and what dates it produces, including the business-day rule.

GST/HST — assigned by revenue, often electable#

Your reporting period comes from annual taxable supplies: annual at or below $1.5M, quarterly above that to $6M, monthly above $6M.

In the lower two bands the assigned period is a floor, not a ceiling — you can elect to file more often. Worth doing if you are usually in a refund position, because an annual return means waiting up to a year for money a monthly return returns in weeks. The filing frequency tool covers the bands and the election.

Quebec's QST is filed separately with Revenu Québec, on its own schedule.

Information slips — one hard deadline#

T4 slips for employees and T5 slips for dividends are due to both the recipients and the CRA by the last day of February for the preceding calendar year.

This one is genuinely fixed, it does not move with your fiscal year, and the penalty structure scales with the number of slips. It is also the deadline that reconciles against everything you remitted during the year — which is why the payroll liability reconciliation done monthly is what makes February uneventful.

The corporate return — set by your year end#

The T2 is due six months after your fiscal year end. Any balance owing is due earlier — generally two or three months after year end depending on whether you claim the small business deduction — which is the trap: the payment deadline arrives before the filing deadline.

Instalments may be required through the year based on the previous year's tax. Again a historical figure driving a current obligation.

Provincial layers#

Depending on where you employ people, add:

• Employer health tax returns — Ontario's annual return is due 15 March, with monthly instalments once payroll passes $1.2M. British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec and Newfoundland each run their own. The employer health tax tool covers who owes what.
• Workers' compensation — premium reporting to your provincial board, on their schedule and their classification.
• Provincial sales tax returns in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba if you are registered there.

Making it survivable#

Two things do most of the work.

Write the calendar down once, with the rule beside each date. Not just "15th of the month" but "regular remitter because AMWA two years ago was under $25,000" — because when the rule changes, you want to know which deadline moved and why.

Reconcile monthly so the annual filings are confirmations. The T4 summary should agree with what you remitted. The GST/HST return should agree with the tax accounts. If those reconciliations happen every month, the annual deadlines are administrative. If they do not, every one of them is a project.

The handover template has a section for exactly this — every registration, its filing frequency, and the rule that set it. It is the first thing a successor needs and the thing most often missing.