A Fixed-Fee CPA for Toronto’s Consultants, Agencies & Tech Founders
Reviewed by EverStone CPA · August 2026
EverStone CPA is a Canadian accounting firm working with incorporated professionals across Toronto and the GTA — corporate tax, bookkeeping and plain-English advice, delivered by video, phone and secure email, at a fixed fee agreed before we start.
Who we help here: Marketing and creative agencies, management and IT consultants, SaaS founders and finance-adjacent professionals — owners who’ve incorporated to access the small-business tax rate and want a CPA who can explain, in plain terms, what that rate actually protects.
Quick answer: Toronto has no shortage of accountants — it has a shortage of ones who reply. EverStone works with incorporated Toronto businesses entirely online from BC: corporate tax, HST, bookkeeping and salary-versus-dividend planning, at a fixed fee quoted up front rather than an hourly meter.
Restaurants, cafes and bars carry obligations no other retailer does; they are gathered in the restaurant and hospitality accounting hub.
Big-firm rigour, sized for an owner-run Toronto business
Toronto’s professional-services market is saturated with accounting firms, and most incorporated owners end up either overpaying a downtown firm for partner-level attention they rarely get, or underpaying a generalist who doesn’t understand how agencies, consultancies and SaaS businesses actually make money. We sit in between: a CPA-led firm that treats your T2, HST filing and year-end statements with real rigour, at a fraction of the overhead, because everything runs online instead of through a leased office downtown.
Every Toronto client is assigned one Chartered Professional Accountant who reviews the file personally, year-round — never a junior associate learning on your return. Meetings happen by video or phone, documents move by secure email and e-signature, and your fee is fixed and confirmed in writing before any work begins.
Book your free consultWhat Toronto clients get
- Corporate tax (T2) & year-end statements
- Personal tax (T1) for owners & families
- Monthly bookkeeping & payroll
- Ontario HST filed & reconciled
- Salary-vs-dividend planning
- Fixed fees, confirmed in writing
Which return applies to you
| If you are | You file |
|---|---|
| A sole proprietor | A T1 personal return with form T2125 for the business |
| An incorporated business | A T2 corporate return, with financial statement schedules |
| A partnership | A T5013 partnership return where required, plus each partner’s own return |
| Employed with a side business | A T1 that reports both the T4 income and the T2125 business |
| Sales tax where you operate | 13% HST — a single registration and a single return |
Source: When incorporating starts to pay. General information, not advice.
How Ontario’s HST changes the numbers for a Toronto consultancy
One combined tax instead of two, plus a few Ontario-specific rules that catch growing firms off guard.
One tax, not two
Ontario charges a single 13% HST rather than separate federal and provincial sales taxes. For a Toronto consulting or agency business that means one registration, one return and one set of input tax credits to track — simpler than provinces that split GST and PST, provided your bookkeeping captures every credit you’re entitled to claim.
Corporate tax rate
Ontario taxes active small-business income at 3.2% provincially, layered on top of the 9% federal small-business rate. Getting your salary-and-dividend mix right determines how much of your firm’s profit actually stays inside that lower bracket.
Employer Health Tax
Once a Toronto employer’s annual payroll passes Ontario’s EHT exemption, Employer Health Tax applies on top of CPP and EI. Agencies that start hiring staff or subcontracting heavily often trip this threshold without realizing it — we track it so it’s never a year-end surprise.
Accounting & tax services for Toronto businesses
Everything an incorporated Toronto business needs, under one roof — delivered online.
Corporate Tax (T2)
T2 corporate returns and year-end statements for Toronto’s incorporated consultants, agencies and SaaS founders, with Ontario HST and CRA correspondence handled as part of the file.
Personal Tax (T1)
Personal and self-employed T1 returns for Toronto owners, structured around a salary-and-dividend split that keeps more of your firm’s profit in your hands, not CRA’s.
Bookkeeping & Payroll
Cloud bookkeeping and payroll for Toronto agencies and consultancies, kept current monthly so your numbers are ready the moment a lender, investor or CRA review asks for them.
GST / HST
Ontario’s 13% HST registered, filed and reconciled against your books each period, with input tax credits tracked properly so a service business doesn’t leave money on the table.
Business Advisory
Straight advice on pricing, contracts and structure for Toronto owners, from a CPA who understands how agency and consulting margins actually work.
Fractional CFO
Part-time CFO support for scaling Toronto firms that have outgrown a bookkeeper — forecasting, utilization and margin reporting built for a services business.
Built around how Toronto’s agencies and consultancies actually bill
Toronto is Canada’s largest market for marketing agencies, management consultancies and independent tech contractors — businesses that bill by project, retainer or day rate rather than selling a physical product. That billing pattern creates its own accounting questions: how to time revenue recognition on retainers, when contractor income should flow through a corporation instead of a T4, and how to keep HST input tax credits clean when most of your costs are subcontractors and software subscriptions.
We work with these businesses specifically — corporate tax, HST, payroll and year-end statements, plus the salary-and-dividend and retained-earnings planning that determines how much of what you bill actually ends up in your pocket.
Book a free consultWorking with Toronto, wherever you are in the GTA
🖥️ Entirely online — video calls, e-signature and secure email.
Prefer a quick call?
📞 (604) 832-1743 · Mon–Fri 9–5 PT
✉️ info@everstonecpa.com
When retained earnings start working against your small-business rate
Many Toronto consulting and agency owners incorporate for one reason above all: the combined federal-and-Ontario small-business tax rate on active business income is dramatically lower than personal tax rates on the same dollars. For the first few profitable years, that’s straightforward — bill clients, pay yourself a mix of salary and dividends, and let the corporation absorb the rest at the lower rate.
The complication shows up once a firm has been profitable for a while and starts accumulating cash or investments inside the corporation. CRA’s rules link the small-business rate to how much passive investment income — interest, dividends from other companies, capital gains on a corporate investment account — the corporation earns each year. As that passive income grows, it can begin reducing the amount of active business income eligible for the preferential small-business rate, which means a portion of the same consulting revenue that used to be taxed at the low rate starts getting taxed at the higher general corporate rate instead.
It’s a federal rule, not an Ontario one, but it disproportionately affects exactly the kind of business Toronto has in abundance: profitable, owner-run consultancies and agencies that build up a corporate investment account rather than reinvesting everything back into the business. We review where your retained earnings are sitting, flag when a holding company or a different investment structure is worth considering, and make sure your salary-and-dividend planning accounts for it — instead of finding out at year-end that last year’s success just cost you the rate you incorporated to get.
Getting started, from anywhere in the GTA
Onboarding, done entirely online from anywhere in the GTA.
Book a free consult
A short video call about your agency, studio or consultancy. You leave with a fixed quote in writing — no obligation.
Send your records securely
Upload your books, prior T2s and HST filings through our secure channel; we reconcile and catch up any backlog.
Stay compliant all year
We file on time, watch your HST and instalment thresholds, and flag retained-earnings decisions before year-end.
Working with a virtual accountant in Toronto
Working with a CPA outside Toronto changes nothing about what gets filed. Corporate tax, GST/HST and payroll are federal systems, and Ontario’s corporate return is administered together with the federal one, so a single T2 covers both. What does change is how the year runs.
Onboarding happens over one video call and a secure document upload rather than a trip across the city; questions in June get answered by the same person who prepared the return in March; and nothing sits in a queue behind a walk-in. For a Toronto agency or consultancy the recurring work is usually HST on services billed to clients in other provinces, instalments once the first profitable year lands, and the retained-earnings question that arrives with growth.
If you have not used an accountant at a distance before, the virtual CPA overview sets out what changes and what does not. Province-wide detail sits on the Ontario small business page.
salary vs dividends calculator · work out your T2 filing date · corporate instalment calculator · Work out whether to incorporate
Also serving business owners in online accountant in Vancouver and accountant in Ottawa.
Questions from Toronto business owners
Can an accountant outside Toronto file my corporate taxes?+
How do we exchange documents securely?+
Do you understand Ontario tax rules?+
Does my Toronto business lose anything by using a CPA based outside Toronto?+
How does Ontario’s HST affect a consulting or agency business specifically?+
I run a profitable consultancy with cash building up in the company — does that affect my tax rate?+
Could CRA treat my incorporated consulting income as if I were an employee?+
How much does an accountant cost for a Toronto business?+
You are in BC and I am in Toronto — does the three-hour time difference cause problems?+
See how corporate tax and sales tax work province-wide in our Ontario accounting guide — provincial rates, GST/HST/PST and filing for Ontario businesses.
Real reviews from real clients
Verified 5-star Google reviews from EverStone CPA clients.
“I have worked with Sunny for the past 2 years. He is very knowledgeable and has saved me tons in taxes by restructuring my group of companies — the best accountant I've worked with in the last 10 years, after switching from three different firms.”
“Sunny and his team have been completing my bookkeeping, taxes and financials for the last 2 years and they have been amazing. Thank you!”
“Personal. Professional. Responsive. Plus he saved me a bundle!”
Toronto industries we work with most
The Toronto owners we work with are mostly agencies, consultancies and independent professionals billing corporate clients — plus e-commerce sellers and a steady stream of newly incorporated contractors. The recurring issues are HST on services sold across provinces, retained earnings building up faster than the owner draws them, and single-client contracts that raise personal services business questions.
Those are file-level problems, not local ones, which is why distance from Toronto changes nothing about how we handle them. A large share of them are agencies, studios and consultancies billing project work rather than hours — see accounting for Toronto agencies and studios. Restaurants and hospitality operators are a distinct group again — see restaurant accounting in Toronto.
How working with a Toronto business actually runs
Everything is remote, and deliberately so: you get a CPA who replies, not one who is close by. A first consultation runs by video or phone. Documents move through a secure upload rather than a courier or a drop-in, and signatures are electronic. Through the year you can email or call with a question without a bill following it, because the fee is fixed and agreed before any work begins — which is the point, since the questions worth asking usually arrive before a decision, not after.
The same CPA handles your file from start to finish, so the person who prepares your return is the person who answers the phone. For Toronto owners that removes the two things that make an accountant hard to use: travel, and the hesitation to ask.
What a Toronto client’s year looks like
A Toronto client’s year is shaped by their fiscal year-end rather than the calendar. Books stay current month to month; we raise planning decisions — bonus versus dividend, timing a large purchase, whether to leave profit in the company — before the year closes, when they can still be acted on. HST returns file on their own cycle. The corporate return follows, and the balance owing comes due before the filing deadline, which is the detail that most often catches owners out.
We work with owner-managed businesses across Ontario — see accounting in Ontario for the provincial picture, or how a virtual CPA engagement works.
For year-end work specifically, Toronto financial statements covers retainer revenue, unbilled project work and client concentration disclosure.
Services in Toronto
Two service pages go deeper for Toronto: personal tax (T1) for incorporated owners in Toronto, and accounting for Toronto trades and construction businesses. Both are handled remotely from the Abbotsford office.
Two obligations come up often enough with Toronto businesses to have pages of their own. If you employ anyone, payroll services in Toronto covers Ontario employer health tax and the exemption rules. If you charge sales tax, GST/HST filing in Toronto covers a single 13% HST and the Quick Method question.
Related services and local guides
Nearby cities, the rest of what we do for Toronto businesses, and the reference pages behind this one.
Ready for a CPA who understands agency and consulting margins?
Work with a CPA who understands project revenue, contractor costs and Ontario HST — without a Bay Street retainer. Free consult, fixed quote, fully online.
Remote accounting from Abbotsford
The firm operates from 32615 South Fraser Way in Abbotsford and serves Toronto remotely. There is no Toronto office and no staff based there. Everything runs by video call, phone and secure document exchange, so nothing about the engagement depends on being nearby. The person who answers your question in March is the one who prepared the return in June, which is the part a larger office structure tends to lose.
How a remote engagement works in Ontario
Working with a CPA in another province is ordinary now, and for an Ontario corporation it changes essentially nothing about how the return is prepared or filed.
- Authorisation, not paperwork. You authorise us on CRA's Represent a Client through your CRA My Business Account — a few clicks on your side, no forms in the mail. That is what lets us see your filings, balances and notices directly rather than asking you to forward them.
- Documents move through a secure portal. Bank statements, payroll records and year-end files are uploaded to an encrypted portal, never email attachments. You can send from a phone.
- Signatures are electronic. Your T183 and engagement letter are signed in a browser. Nothing is printed, scanned or couriered.
- Meetings are video or phone. Year-end review, planning conversations and the free consultation all run this way, on your schedule rather than during a drive.
- Filing is electronic to the same place it always was. Returns are transmitted to CRA electronically from our office; where a provincial return is administered separately, it is filed to that provincial authority the same way.
What is specific to Ontario
Ontario harmonised its sales tax with the federal GST, so there is no separate provincial sales-tax return to file — one HST return covers both, which makes Ontario simpler on that axis than BC or Manitoba. The provincial corporate return is administered through the federal T2 rather than filed separately. Employer Health Tax is the main standalone provincial account for Ontario employers, with its own exemption and filing schedule.
Working with an accountant in another province is ordinary, and the pieces that change are worth knowing before they surprise you. See working with a CPA outside your province.
Current Ontario rates and thresholds live on the Ontario tax facts page, where each figure carries its source and the date it was checked — deliberately kept in one place rather than repeated across the site where it would go stale.
Ontario questions we get
Does it matter that you are not in Ontario?+
For a corporate return, no. The T2 carries the Ontario schedules and is transmitted federally; nothing about the filing depends on where the preparer sits. Provincial employer accounts are registered and filed online in either case.
Ask about your case →How do you handle the time difference?+
Meetings are booked in your time zone. Practically it means a 9am Toronto meeting is an early start here, which is our problem rather than yours.
Ask about your case →Talk to a CPA about this
One Chartered Professional Accountant, start to finish. Fixed fees, quoted in writing before any work begins — and no obligation from a first conversation.
“Highly recommend working with Sunny. We switched to him last year for both our personal and small-business taxes — responsive, knowledgeable and quick.”