It depends on your profession. A consultant, agency, fractional executive or corporate service provider incorporates an ordinary Ontario or federal corporation. A member of a regulated profession whose governing Act allows it — accountants, lawyers, physicians, dentists and other health professions, social workers, veterinarians among them — practises through a professional corporation, which must carry the words “Professional Corporation” in its name, hold a certificate of authorization from the regulator, and have its shares held by members of the profession. Engineers and architects practise through corporations holding the certificate their regulator issues. Ontario realtors have the personal real estate corporation. The tax reasons for incorporating are your accountant’s to weigh; a professional corporation does not limit your professional liability, and the firm confirms your regulator’s conditions before filing.

In a professional corporation, generally no: the shares must be held by members of the profession, and directors and officers must be shareholders. The exception is for physicians and dentists, whose family members may hold non-voting shares. Where the plan calls for income to reach family members or a holding company, the usual route is a separate management company alongside the practice, designed by your accountant and documented by the firm so that the two stay properly separate. An ordinary corporation for a consultancy has no such restriction.

With the questions the agreement has to answer: what each of you owns and contributes, how decisions are made, how a partner buys in or is bought out and at what valuation, what happens on death, disability or departure, and who keeps the clients and the files if one of you leaves. Without an agreement, the corporate statute or the partnership statute decides those things for you, and rarely the way either of you would have chosen. A two-partner shareholders’ agreement is standard work at a fixed fee; a larger or contested one is scoped in phases.

The buyer buys either the shares of your corporation or its assets — the goodwill, the client list, the contracts and the equipment — and the choice is usually tax-led, so it is made with your accountant first. The agreement then covers the price and how it is paid, a transition period in which you introduce the clients, the restrictive covenants that survive a sale, and the regulator’s approval where the profession requires one. A staged succession — a junior partner buying in over several years — is the same transaction spread out, and works only if the stages are written down before the first one.

Yes. Your accountant designs the structure and the firm documents it: the entities, the share terms, the management services agreement between the practice and the management company, and the intercompany arrangements that make the structure real rather than notional. The firm does not second-guess the tax and tells you early if the documents cannot do what the plan assumes.

Yes. A partnership needs the same agreement between its owners that a corporation does — contributions, decisions, profit shares, admission and retirement of partners, death, disability and departure, and who keeps the clients — and without one the Partnerships Act supplies defaults that suit almost no one. Accountants and lawyers may also practise through a limited liability partnership, which limits a partner’s exposure to the negligence of other partners without changing the partnership itself. Whether to stay a partnership, register as an LLP or incorporate is decided with your accountant; the firm documents whichever it is.

Three things. The corporation: physicians and dentists practise through a professional corporation with the certificate of authorization from their college, and are the professions whose family members may hold non-voting shares, which is usually where the management company and the accountant’s plan come in. The people: associates, locums and hygienists or technicians are engaged on agreements that decide who owns the patient relationships and the charts when someone leaves, and any supervision arrangement the college requires is written down. The data: the practice is a health information custodian under Ontario’s health privacy legislation, so consent, records retention, a privacy policy, terms for online booking or a patient portal, and the steps and notifications a breach requires are documents the practice has to have, not options. The firm drafts them alongside the corporate work, and confirms the college’s and the insurer’s conditions before anything is filed.

Yes, if the site or portal collects anything from a client or patient — a booking, a form, a document upload, a payment. Federal privacy law applies to a consultancy, agency or corporate service provider collecting client information; Ontario’s health privacy legislation applies to a health practice collecting patient information. A privacy policy says what is collected, why, where it is stored and who can see it; terms of use say what the client is agreeing to by using the portal, including limitation of liability and what the portal is not, such as advice. Both are standard work, drafted to match how the practice actually operates rather than copied from a template that describes a business you do not run.

Standard pieces run on the firm’s fixed-fee packages, with the fee published on each page — Launch for an ordinary incorporation, the Build a Team Kit for first hires and contractors. A professional corporation, a partners’ agreement, an engagement letter with terms of use and a privacy policy, a practice sale or a management structure is scoped after the consultation, at a fixed fee where the work is standard and in phases with a budget agreed first where it is negotiated. See Fees & Engagement.

Send a paragraph on the client’s situation through the contact page, with the names of the other parties so a conflict check can run first. The firm takes the Ontario corporate piece and hands everything else back; it does not compete for your client’s tax, accounting or other work, and it pays and accepts no referral fees. Your client engages the firm directly, on written terms, and you are kept informed as far as the client wishes.