The corporation absorbs what the calendar delivers
A Canadian-controlled private corporation pays roughly 12.2% combined in Ontario on its first $500,000 of active consulting profit and about 26.5% above that, while personal rates climb to 53.53% at the top. The plan built on those numbers is not complicated, it is disciplined: the corporation banks the fat engagement years, the owner draws a level amount through fat and lean alike, and the difference between corporate and personal rates stays deferred until a year when taking it out is cheap. All of it assumes the corporation keeps the small business deduction, which is why the personal services business question gets answered honestly before any of this arithmetic is trusted.
| Where a consulting dollar lands | What it is taxed at |
|---|---|
| Retained in the corporation, first $500,000 | About 12.2% combined in Ontario; the rest deferred |
| Retained above the $500,000 limit | About 26.5% combined |
| Paid out as salary | Deductible to the corporation; your marginal rate, up to 53.53% |
| Paid out as dividends | From after-tax profit; integration keeps totals close, timing is yours |
| Earned by a personal services business | About 44.5%, with most deductions stripped away |
Year-end sits inside the engagement calendar
Two timing rules do real work for consultants. First, a milestone is generally income when the client accepts the deliverable and the engagement letter gives you the right to bill, not when you get around to invoicing, so pushing a December invoice into January moves cash and HST timing far more than it moves taxable income. Second, a retainer collected in advance is income when received, but paragraph 20(1)(m) permits a reserve for the services not yet delivered at year-end, so a six-month retainer billed in November is not all taxed in the old year. We work both rules deliberately: which proposals to sign before year-end, which deliverables to schedule for acceptance after it, and what reserve the T2 should carry.
The same choices set next year's instalment base. A year-end that catches two accepted milestones it did not need to inflates the instalments the corporation is asked to pay for the following twelve months, which is a cash cost even when the tax itself is only timing.
Retention has its own horizon. Earnings left inside eventually become an investment portfolio, and once passive income in the corporation passes $50,000 a year, the federal small business limit begins to shrink, so the plan covers what the retained dollars are invested in, not only how many of them stay.
Owner pay: room now, timing later, a pension for the exit
Salary is the instrument that builds things: RRSP room at 18% of earned income, CPP credited on both sides, and a payroll record lenders read without translation. Dividends are the instrument of timing, declared into the years the engagement calendar makes lean. Most consultant owners run a blend and revisit it annually inside Tax Planning & Advisory, because the right blend after a two-milestone year is not the blend that suited a dry one.
Former executives bring one extra option. A consultant with a history of high T4 income can establish an individual pension plan, which for owners past their early forties typically allows larger deductible contributions than the RRSP limit, funded and deducted by the corporation. It suits the classic arc, a decade of well-paid consulting between a corporate career and retirement, and it needs salary rather than dividends to work. One caution on the family side: a consulting corporation earns its income from services, so share-class arrangements promising dividends to a spouse mostly collide with TOSI unless the spouse genuinely works in the practice.
Plan the last engagement, too
Consulting practices end on purpose more often than most businesses: the pipeline is allowed to run dry, and what remains is a corporation holding a decade of retained earnings. Drawn as one lump, those earnings surrender much of the deferral that justified keeping them; drawn as planned dividends across low-income retirement years, they come out at rates that make the whole structure worth having built. We map the drawdown years before the last engagement letter is signed, and coordinate them with Estate Planning so the corporation has instructions if the plan outlives you. For consultants across Mississauga and the GTA, the planning conversation starts with a free 15-minute discovery call and a scope quoted in writing.
