Payroll services in Oakville

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

Updated October 2026.

Who runs payroll with us in Oakville

Oakville’s economic development office names professional services, technology and digital media, health and life sciences, and advanced manufacturing as the town’s key sectors. Payroll looks different in each. A consultancy that has just hired its first employee needs a payroll account opened, a TD1 collected and a remittance schedule understood. A software company may pay salaried staff, hourly contractors and owners who take both salary and dividends. A small manufacturer or machine shop runs hourly pay with overtime and shift premiums. A contractor’s headcount rises in the building season and falls in winter, with Records of Employment issued each time someone leaves. We set up payroll for the business you actually run, not a generic template.

Getting started as a new employer

The first hire triggers a sequence. The corporation adds a payroll (RP) program account to its business number through My Business Account, the employee completes federal and Ontario TD1 forms, and each pay run withholds income tax, CPP and EI using the CRA’s tables. The withholdings, plus the employer’s share of CPP and EI, are remitted to the CRA by the due date for the schedule you are assigned — for most new small employers, monthly. Missing a remittance by even a few days attracts a penalty, which is why the first few months are where we pay the closest attention. Hiring your first employee covers the full checklist.

The Ontario employer health tax rate is chosen before the exemption, not after

Ontario’s employer health tax is graduated rather than flat, and the order of operations is where employers lose money. You select your 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. Reading the table the intuitive way — deducting the exemption first, 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. Two further rules matter for an Oakville business with more than one company. No exemption 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 between them. All of it is tabled with its source on the Ontario tax facts page.

Group structures are where the exemption disappears

Owner-managed businesses in Oakville often grow into more than one company: an operating company and a holding company, a second operating company for a new line of work, or a management company that employs the office staff. Each arrangement is ordinary, and each one meets the employer health tax rules, because the exemption belongs to the associated group rather than to each corporation. Without an allocation agreement, each entity can end up claiming a full exemption it is not entitled to.

The calculation has to be done at group level and then allocated, in that order. Doing it entity by entity and adding the results produces a number that is wrong in a predictable direction. The associated corporations note covers the parallel issue on the corporate tax side.

Owner pay through payroll

Many Oakville owners pay themselves a salary through the company payroll, alone or alongside dividends. Salary is deductible to the corporation, creates RRSP room and requires CPP contributions on both the employee and employer side; it also has to be remitted on schedule like any other employee’s pay. Owners who hold more than 40% of the voting shares are generally not insurable for EI, so the payroll setup has to reflect that. We set the owner’s salary up correctly, coordinate it with dividends on the T5, and check the total against the corporate tax plan. See salary versus dividends.

WSIB, and the federal deductions underneath

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 data as everything else but is reported to a different body on a different schedule, which is exactly the kind of split that gets missed when payroll is run informally. For Oakville contractors, a WSIB clearance is often requested by the general contractor before payment, so coverage has to be current.

Beneath both provincial layers, the federal obligations are the same everywhere in Canada. Income tax, CPP and EI are withheld from each pay run and, with the employer’s contributions, remitted to the CRA on a schedule assigned from your average monthly withholding. Ontario also recognizes nine public holidays. Public holiday pay is regular wages and vacation pay from the four work weeks before the holiday week, divided by twenty, which differs from other provinces.

Year-end: T4s, T4As and the EHT return

After December the payroll year closes. T4 slips and the summary go to the CRA and to employees by the last day of February, and T4A slips go to anyone paid fees or other amounts that belong there. The T4 totals have to agree with what was remitted on the PD7A through the year; a mismatch produces a PIER report and a bill. Employers with Ontario payroll above the exemption file the annual employer health tax return as well. We reconcile all three before anything is filed. The payroll year-end checklist sets out the order.

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
• Records of Employment when staff leave
• T4 and T4A slips and summaries filed by the last day of February

Remote, with no Oakville office

EverStone is a fully virtual, one-CPA firm. There is no Oakville office and no Ontario branch — Oakville employers are served entirely online through video calls, secure document exchange and e-signature. Payroll suits that arrangement because none of its inputs or outputs are physical: timesheets arrive electronically, pay is deposited directly, and remittances go to the CRA online. The payroll hub collects the underlying guides and calculators.

What a lender or a shareholder actually reads is year-end statements in Oakville.

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

Each company in a group remits on its own dates, so map all of them on a thirteen-week cash forecast.