Hiring your first employee
The federal and provincial forms a Canadian small business fills in when it takes on staff, in the order they come up.
A business with no payroll yet, hiring one person. If you already run payroll most of this is done and only the employee's own forms are new.
Open a payroll account with the CRA
Before the first payday. You need a business number first; the payroll account hangs off it and is what you remit deductions against.
Have the employee complete their tax credit returns
One federal and one provincial, on or before their first day. They decide how much income tax you hold back, and getting them late means correcting the first cheque. This is the form every new hire fills in, at every job, which is why it is the most downloaded CRA form there is.
Know which slips you will issue in February
An employee gets a T4. Someone paid a pension, a retiring allowance or certain fees gets a T4A instead. Which one is decided by what you paid them, not by what you called them.
Know what you file when they leave
A record of employment goes to Service Canada within five calendar days of the interruption in earnings. It is the one with a deadline attached, and it is the one people find out about late.
Worth knowing
The provincial credit return is a separate form from the federal one and there is a different one per province. An employee who fills in only the federal one has their provincial tax withheld at the basic amount.
Nothing here tells you whether somebody is an employee or a contractor. That is the question these forms assume you have already answered, and it is not one a form-filling service can answer for you.
Most of what a new hire signs is not a government form at all: the benefits enrolment, the payroll deduction authorisation, the direct deposit sheet. Those are your insurer's and your provider's, they are in no catalogue, and they are the ones you fill in most often. Bring one and it is filled the same way.
Fill in the copy you have
Already downloaded it? Bring that file and we'll fill it in. It works the same for a form nobody publishes: a benefits enrolment, an employer's payroll form, anything with boxes in it.