Payroll services in London, Ontario
A London payroll might cover a second shift at a parts plant, harvest help on a farm near Ilderton, a kitchen full of servers sharing tips, or drivers paid by the kilometre. Each carries the same federal deductions and the same Ontario layers on top. EverStone runs payroll for London employers remotely, on a written fixed scope.
Quick answer: A London, Ontario employer withholds income tax, CPP and EI from every pay and remits them to the CRA on an assigned schedule. It files T4 slips by the last day of February, reports to WSIB separately, and pays Ontario Employer Health Tax once total payroll passes the exemption. EverStone handles all four remotely for a fixed fee. Payroll is included in monthly bookkeeping from $300 a month.
Deductions, remittances and the schedule the CRA sets
Every pay needs income tax, CPP and EI withheld, and the employer’s own share of CPP and EI added on top. The total is remitted on the schedule attached to your payroll account, which depends on how much you withhold. A new employer usually remits monthly by the fifteenth of the following month; larger employers remit more often. Late or short remittances carry penalties that are hard to have waived, so the remittance is scheduled on payday rather than when someone remembers. When someone leaves, a record of employment has to be issued. After December, each employee gets a T4 by the last day of February. The payroll remittance calendar sets out the dates.
Employer Health Tax: the rate is chosen before the exemption
Ontario’s Employer Health Tax is graduated, and the order of steps catches people out. You pick the rate from the band table using total Ontario payroll before any exemption, then deduct the exemption and apply that rate to what is left. Doing it the other way round puts you in a lower band than you belong in. Related companies share a single exemption and have to agree how to split it, and a large associated group loses it entirely. A London manufacturer that adds a shift, or a family that owns a restaurant and a construction company, can cross into EHT without noticing. The bands and the exemption are on the Ontario tax facts page.
WSIB is its own account
The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board runs separately from both the CRA and the Ministry of Finance, with its own registration, rate group and premium reporting based on insurable earnings. Coverage is compulsory for most construction work, including for many independent operators and executive officers in construction, and general contractors ask subcontractors for a clearance certificate before paying them. For a manufacturer or a trucking company, the rate group attached to the account drives the premium, so the classification is worth checking once rather than assuming.
Payroll patterns across London’s industries
Manufacturing brings shift premiums, overtime and sometimes a group benefits plan whose taxable portions need to reach the T4. Farms hire seasonally, and the start and end of each season means new employee setups and records of employment. Restaurants have to treat tips according to who controls them: tips the employer collects and distributes are pensionable and generally subject to deductions, while tips passed directly from customer to server are not run through payroll. Trucking companies pay by the kilometre or by the load and have to separate wages from any meal or travel allowance. Contractors run crews whose hours shift job to job. See manufacturers, farms, restaurants, trucking and contractors in London for the rest of each industry’s file.
Ontario employment standards that reach the payroll
Vacation pay, public holiday pay and termination pay are set by Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, not by the CRA, and each has its own formula. Public holiday pay in Ontario is based on wages and vacation pay earned in the weeks before the holiday, which is not how a BC or federal policy would calculate it. A payroll set up with national defaults will produce the wrong amounts here. Vacation pay rules and statutory holiday pay cover the principles.
Moving payroll over partway through the year
Most employers change payroll providers when something has gone wrong: a missed remittance, a T4 that did not match, a bookkeeper who left. Switching in the middle of a year is routine as long as the year-to-date figures come across correctly. We take each employee’s earnings, deductions and CPP and EI contributions to date from the old system, confirm them against what was actually remitted, and carry on from the next pay. That way the maximums stop at the right point and the T4s at year-end agree with the CRA’s records. If the old figures do not reconcile, you hear about it before the first run, not after the slips are filed.
What is covered
- Payroll run on your schedule, with pay stubs and direct deposit
- CRA remittances made on time and reconciled each month
- Employer Health Tax tracked against the exemption, with the annual return
- WSIB premium reporting and clearance support
- Records of employment, T4 and T4A slips and the summary
- Payroll entries posted to the monthly books
Prepared and reviewed by a Chartered Professional Accountant at EverStone CPA, an Abbotsford CPA firm working with small businesses and incorporated contractors across the Fraser Valley and Canada. Updated September 2026. About the firm · Book a free consult
Payroll obligations for a London employer
| Obligation | What it involves |
|---|---|
| Source deductions | Income tax, CPP and EI withheld from each pay, plus the employer share |
| Remittance | On the schedule the CRA assigns to your payroll account |
| T4 slips and summary | By the last day of February |
| Employer Health Tax | Once total Ontario payroll exceeds the exemption |
| WSIB | Registration and premium reporting, compulsory for most construction |
| Sales tax where you operate | 13% HST, a single registration and a single return |
Source: Ontario tax facts. General information, not advice.
London payroll questions
What does payroll cost for a London business?+
I am hiring my first employee. What do I register for?+
Do server tips go through payroll?+
How often should we pay staff?+
Is WSIB filed with the CRA?+
Can you fix payroll that was done wrong?+
Is anyone from EverStone based in Ontario?+
Do you work with businesses outside London itself?+
Related services and local guides
Nearby cities, the rest of what we do for London businesses, and the reference pages behind this one.
Ontario payroll run properly
Source deductions, Employer Health Tax, WSIB and the T4s handled by one CPA for your London business, at a fixed fee.
Remote, from a single office in Abbotsford, BC
EverStone is a sole practitioner CPA firm at 32615 South Fraser Way in Abbotsford, serving London, Ontario employers entirely online. There is no London office and no local staff. Timesheets and hours come through a secure upload link or straight from your payroll software, pay goes out by direct deposit, and remittances are made electronically. Nobody needs to drop anything off on payday.
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.
