Payroll services in Toronto

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 September 2026.

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

Ontario’s employer health tax is graduated, and the order of operations is where employers lose money. Choose your rate from the band table using total Ontario remuneration before any exemption is deducted, then subtract the exemption and apply that rate to the rest. Deducting the exemption first puts you in too low a band and understates the tax.

The bands run from 0.98% on Ontario payroll up to $200,000, through eight further 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 a Toronto business of any complexity. 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 between them. All of it is tabled with its source on the Ontario tax facts page.

Group structures are where the exemption disappears

Toronto has many multi-entity businesses: an operating company and a management company, a professional corporation beside a services entity, a holding structure with staff in two places. Each collides with the employer health tax rules, because the exemption belongs to the associated group, not each corporation. Without an allocation agreement, each entity may claim a full exemption it is not entitled to, and a group over $5,000,000 of combined Ontario payroll loses it outright.

So the calculation is done at group level, then allocated. Doing it entity by entity and summing gives a predictably wrong number. Where structure is being considered for other reasons, include this payroll cost in the comparison — the associated corporations note covers the parallel corporate tax issue.

WSIB, and the federal deductions underneath

Ontario workplace coverage runs through the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, separate from the Ministry of Finance, with its own registration, classification and clearance obligations. It uses the same payroll data but reports to a different body on a different schedule, which is easy to miss when payroll runs informally.

Federal obligations are the same everywhere: income tax, CPP and EI are withheld each pay run and remitted with employer contributions to the CRA, on a schedule set by average monthly withholding. Ontario recognizes nine public holidays. Holiday pay is regular wages and vacation pay from the four work weeks before the holiday week, divided by twenty, unlike British Columbia’s average day’s pay.

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, from a single office in British Columbia

EverStone is a sole practitioner CPA firm with no Toronto office or Ontario branch; Toronto employers are served online through video calls, secure document exchange and e-signature. Payroll suits that, since none of it is physical. The payroll hub collects the guides and calculators.

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

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

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