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Discussion on: Why you should incorporate (as a contractor)

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ronancodes profile image
Ronan Connolly 🛠 • Edited

I bet the accountancy firm can handle the paper pretty easily for you too.

They do indeed! They handle everything and bug me for the information they need for Revenue.
They also bug me when I am not expensing enough stuff or taking advantage of tax saver schemes, which is pretty sweet.

There's no LLC in Canada either

The umbrella companies at my accountancy firm are all LLC's.
Large corporations seem to want that limited liability in case there are any issues during the contract.

'employee' type work as a contractor...

What's the problem with this kind of relationship?
I understand for low paid workers it sucks as companies can take advantage of employees by not giving benefits, but for higher paid work the contractor is in the driving seat.
Is the government cracking down on contracting for the benefit of contractors or some other reason?

Where I work you can't really tell the difference between employees and contractors.
The main thing that employees get that contractors don't seem to be:

  • Pension contributions
  • Paid holidays & sick leave
  • Job security
  • Learning resources & time
  • Mentorship
  • Career guidance
  • Sports and social membership
  • Going on-call
  • Weekend work

I did the incorporation myself

Incorporation is extremely easy in Ireland. My accountancy firm can actually do it for me if I want access to more tax breaks, but that seems like something that would make sense if you were on a very high rate of income.

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j_at_canosie profile image
J C

Is the government cracking down on contracting for the benefit of contractors or some other reason?

You are correct!

It has to do with the government's bottom line more then anything. For years, the Cdn govt has been irked that one-man corporations were using the tax benefits for businesses, but they were really one-man corporations doing employee like work. For example, expensing business related purchases, tax breaks for small-businesses, etc

Basically, since most IT contractors do very similar work to their employee counter parts (not inc freelancers, they are OK), the government wants to tax them as employees. They've been picking on IT contractors since we're one of the largest groups of one-man corporations.

There are still advantages to incorporating, but us in Canada just have to keep track if we look too much like a employee. If we get caught, they apply pretty stiff penalties.

I actually look similar to my employee teammates where I work. I do weekend work too (but get paid for it at my hourly rate). B/c of my seniority on the team, I am expected to give coaching and mentoring (but I don't receive it) to juniors, but I too can bill that at a hourly rate (formal mentoring that is, I don't bill for watercooler talk :) )