Payroll services in Markham

Payroll covers the source deductions for CPP, EI premiums and income tax, the PD7A remittances to the CRA, the year-end T4 and T4A slips, and access through My Business Account.

Updated October 2026.

What payroll looks like for a Markham employer

The City of Markham’s economic development office points to technology, semiconductors, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, food and beverage and professional services as its key sectors, alongside a large number of head offices. The owner-managed employers we work with sit around that base: software and engineering firms paying salaried developers, manufacturers and distributors with hourly warehouse and production staff, clinics and professional corporations with a small team, and restaurants and shops in places like Main Street Unionville with part-time and seasonal staff. Each of those runs payroll differently, and the differences matter.

A technology firm’s payroll is usually steady salaries plus bonuses, stock-option events and the occasional contractor who may really be an employee. A production or warehouse employer has hourly rates, overtime, shift changes and vacation pay that has to be tracked rather than estimated. A restaurant has tips, split shifts, students and a summer peak. We set up the pay calendar, earnings codes and records around how your business actually pays people, then run it the same way every period.

The federal deductions underneath everything

The federal obligations are the same in every province. Income tax, CPP and EI are withheld from each pay and, with the employer’s matching CPP and EI, remitted to the CRA. The remittance schedule is assigned from your average monthly withholding, and a new employer generally starts as a regular remitter due by the 15th of the following month. Late remittances carry penalties that grow with the delay, and directors can be personally liable for unremitted source deductions. Each payroll account has its own RP number and its own PD7A statement, and the T4 summary at year-end has to agree to what was remitted. Payroll remittances and the RP account covers the schedule in detail.

Ontario employer health tax: the rate is chosen before the exemption

Ontario’s employer health tax is graduated rather than flat, and the order of operations is where employers go wrong. You select the rate from the band table using total Ontario remuneration before any exemption is deducted. Only then do you subtract the exemption and apply the chosen rate to what remains. Deducting the exemption first and then finding your band puts you in a lower band than you belong in and understates the tax.

The bands run from 0.98% on Ontario payroll up to $200,000, through a series of steps between $200,000.01 and $400,000, to 1.95% on payroll over $400,000. The exemption is $1,000,000. No exemption at all is available where the employer or its associated group has more than $5,000,000 of annual Ontario payroll, and associated employers must file an allocation agreement to share the single exemption. All of it is tabled with its source on the Ontario tax facts page.

Growing technology teams cross the exemption faster than expected

For a Markham software or hardware company, payroll is usually the largest cost by far, and engineering salaries add up quickly. A team that was comfortably under the exemption two years ago can cross it after a handful of hires, and the first year it does, the employer health tax arrives as an annual charge nobody budgeted for. Family groups face the same issue from another angle: an operating company, a management company and a holding company that are associated share one exemption, so it has to be calculated at group level and then allocated. Doing it entity by entity and adding the results gives a number that is wrong in a predictable direction. The associated corporations note covers the parallel issue on the corporate tax side.

WSIB is its own registration

Workplace coverage in Ontario runs through the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, which is entirely separate from the Ministry of Finance and carries its own registration, classification and clearance obligations. It draws on the same payroll figures but is reported to a different body on a different schedule, which is exactly the sort of split that gets missed when payroll is run informally. In construction, compulsory coverage extends to owners and executive officers as well; the trades accounting page for Markham covers that.

Ontario holiday and vacation pay

Ontario recognizes nine public holidays. Public holiday pay is the regular wages earned plus vacation pay payable in the four work weeks before the work week containing the holiday, divided by twenty. That formula differs from other provinces, so a national payroll policy written elsewhere will not produce correct amounts here. For hourly and part-time staff in retail, food service and warehousing, holiday pay is where errors accumulate quietly, and they are cheaper to prevent than to correct across a year of pay stubs.

Owner pay and the T4 or T5 question

For an incorporated owner, payroll is also where the salary-versus-dividend decision is carried out. Salary runs through the payroll account with CPP and a T4; dividends do not touch payroll and are reported on a T5. In a technology company doing development work, a founder’s salary can also count toward an SR&ED claim where a dividend cannot. We set the owner’s pay with the year-end in mind and run it through the same payroll as everyone else. See personal tax in Markham for how it lands on the T1.

What is covered

• Pay runs with Ontario tax tables applied to Ontario employees
• Income tax, CPP and EI withheld and remitted on your CRA schedule
• Employer health tax calculated at group level, with the band selected correctly
• Allocation of the exemption across associated employers where one applies
• WSIB registration support and payroll reporting
• Public holiday and vacation pay calculated under Ontario employment standards
• T4 and T4A slips and summaries filed by the last day of February

Remote, with no office in Markham

EverStone is a fully virtual CPA firm serving BC, Alberta, Ontario and Manitoba. There is no office in Markham and no local staff; Markham employers are served entirely online through video calls, secure document exchange and e-signature. Payroll suits that arrangement because none of the inputs or outputs are physical: timesheets and changes come in electronically, pay goes out by direct deposit, and pay stubs are delivered online. The payroll hub collects the underlying guides and calculators, and our Toronto accountant page is the nearest large-city practice.

The year-end this all feeds into is corporate tax in Markham.