Five filings report the same wages, and they get compared
The wage expense on the T2, the totals on the T4 Summary, the remuneration on the Employer Health Tax return, the insurable earnings reported to the WSIB and the source deductions remitted through the year all describe the same payroll. When they drift apart, letters follow. The CRA’s PIER process, the Pensionable and Insurable Earnings Review, machine-checks every T4 for the CPP and EI that should have been withheld, and a high-turnover guard roster is exactly where it finds gaps, because part-year employees and the prorated CPP basic exemption produce discrepancies that look like under-remitting.
We reconcile the wage base across all of these before anything is filed, so the February slips, the March EHT return and the year-end T2 leave nothing for the review to catch.
The T2 itself: thin margins deserve every deduction they earn
Ontario guard companies keeping taxable income inside the small business limit pay roughly 12.2 percent combined on the first $500,000, and the return should capture the costs this industry actually carries: guard licence fees and renewals the company pays, the ministry-required 40-hour training that happens before a recruit is billable, uniforms and their upkeep, radios and site equipment in Class 8 at 20 percent, and patrol vehicles in Class 10 at 30 percent declining balance. Which vehicles belong in the corporation at all is a planning question, and we treat it as one.
The calendar matters as much as the deductions. The T2 is due six months after year-end, but a CCPC claiming the small business deduction owes its balance at three months, and a company whose cash sits in 60-day receivables should not meet that date by surprise.
| Filing | When | What it must agree with |
|---|---|---|
| T4 slips and Summary | Last day of February | Payroll ledger and the year’s source-deduction remittances |
| EHT annual return | March 15 | T4 remuneration totals for Ontario |
| WSIB reconciliation | Per WSIB reporting cadence | Insurable earnings from the same wage base |
| HST returns | One month after each quarter, for quarterly filers | Invoiced revenue, not bank deposits |
| T2 corporate return | Six months after year-end, balance at three | Wage expense vs T4s, revenue vs HST returns |
EHT and WSIB stop being rounding errors at guard scale
Ontario’s Employer Health Tax exempts the first $1,000,000 of payroll for eligible private-sector employers, then climbs to a top rate of 1.95 percent, and the exemption disappears entirely once an associated group’s Ontario payroll passes $5,000,000. A guard roster reaches these lines faster than almost any business its size, and employers with payroll above $1,200,000 remit monthly instalments, another date the cash forecast has to respect. WSIB premiums ride on insurable earnings under the classification for security services, and the reconciliation has to tie to the same payroll the T4s reported, not to a separate spreadsheet.
An HST return with almost nothing to claim back
Wages carry no HST, so a guard company’s input tax credits are thin: vehicles and fuel, uniforms, radios, scheduling software, office costs. Nearly the full 13 percent collected is remittable, which makes the HST account the largest tax number many guard companies handle in a year. It is also owed for the period the invoice was issued, even when the client pays at day 60, so the return has to be built from billed revenue and the remittance planned against slow receivables rather than the current bank balance.
The owner’s T1, and the letters in between
Salary and dividends from the corporation land on the owner’s personal return, so we prepare the T2 through Corporate Tax Filing and the T1 through Personal Tax Filing as one coordinated file, with nothing falling between the two. And because payroll-heavy employers attract source-deduction trust exams and slip-matching letters, CRA Audit & Review Support handles the correspondence: we read the letter, assemble the reconciliation and respond, so a routine review stays routine. Guard companies across Mississauga and the GTA get all of it quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call.
