Corporation for a Non-Resident
This Section is applicable for:
1. If you are not a Canadian Citizen nor a Permanent Resident and you would like to open a corporation in Canada.
2. If you have an existing foreign corporation in a country other than Canada and you would like to open a branch of your existing corporation in Canada.
Yes, We Can Incorporate for You:
We receive frequently question “as a foreigner, can I form a corporation in Canada?” The very simple answer is, yes. Clients from USA, China, Hong Kong, Dubai, India etc. are placing order with us either to open a Canadian Branch of their existing corporation or to make a new Canadian corporation. Let’s go the point straight.
Basic Understanding of Canadian Incorporating Process:
In Canada, you can incorporate provincially or federally. A provincial corporation as well as federal corporation, both are considered as Canadian corporation. It may give a question, does it mean a provincial corporation can’t sell product or services out side of its province? The answer is, can, a provincial corporation can do business all over in Canada from their head office in the incorporated province. Therefore, a Canadian corporation that is incorporated provincially is good enough to be a branch of foreign corporation.
The Solutions:
If you are not a Canadian citizen nor a PR, you have three alternatives to incorporate.
Solution#1: Find a trusted individual in Canada who is a Canadian resident (citizen or Permanent resident) and make him one of the director and you become a co-director with him. Later on, you may remove him from director’s position and add him simply into a less sensitive position such as officer in the corporation. As per Canadian corporation act, in most jurisdictions and federal level, minimum 25% of the directors must be either Canadian citizen or PR. This simply means, out of 4 directors, maximum 3 can be foreigner and minimum 1 must be a Canadian resident.
Links for Solution#1: Incorporate Standard Corporations
Solution#2: Finding a trusted individual can be pretty hard job. After all, all the directors have equal power; hence the Canadian resident director has power to remove you from director’s position. Therefore, if finding a trusted individual is difficult, the second solution can be incorporating in a province in Canada that does not require the Canadian residency requirement. In this case, three provinces, i.e. BC, Quebec and New Brunswick are the options to choose. If you do not have a local address, in those provinces, you can use our office as the registered address and mail scanning service with additional payment. You can change address anytime whenever you manage your own address. By this way, any letter, notice or document comes from government to your corporation’s name, will be sent to you by scanning in email.
Links for Solution#2: 1. BC Corporation, 2. Quebec Corporation, 3. New Brunswick Corporation
Solution#3: The last and most popular option is registering a Branch of your existing foreign corporation in Canada. In this approach, you are not opening a Canadian entity, rather your are opening a branch of your existing foreign corporation in Canada. In this case, there is no residency requirement for any province in Canada. However, you must find a contact person in Canada. In this case, the contact person does not have any authority over the corporation and can’t remove you. If your target is incorporating in the province of Ontario or Alberta, then solution#2 won’t work, rather solution#3 is the best choice for you. Similarly, if you do not have a local address, you can use our office as the registered address and mail scanning service with additional payment.