Incorporate or NotSole proprietor, corporation, or the third column nobody shows

Everyone around you seems to have a professional corporation, and the honest math is less fashionable. In Alberta, tax integration is nearly perfect at most contractor incomes: a dollar flowed through an 11%-taxed corporation and paid out as a dividend nets within a quarter-cent of the same dollar earned directly. The tax rate isn't the reason to incorporate. The real levers are the ones this calculator puts in your hands: how much profit can actually stay in the corporation (deferral), what the structure costs every year, what happens to CPP, what your family's health and dental bills cost through each structure, and whether CRA would even accept the corporation at all.

That last one is the third lane: a contractor who works inside one client's walls, on their equipment and their schedule, can look to CRA like an incorporated employee, a Personal Services Business. A PSB loses the small-business rate, loses nearly every deduction, and pays about 41% corporate tax before a single dollar reaches you personally. The screener on the third card scores your fact pattern; the lane shows what that verdict costs. This calculator was born in the Health Professional case study, where the full reasoning lives.