Since 2020, an Ontario real estate salesperson or broker has been able to earn their trade income through a Personal Real Estate Corporation. It can open room for tax planning your accountant will walk you through, but the corporation only qualifies while it keeps meeting the conditions in the Trust in Real Estate Services Act, 2002 and Ontario Regulation 536/20.
Those conditions are specific: a single director who is the registrant, one registered controlling shareholder holding all the voting shares, non-voting shares limited to permitted family, no arrangement that strips the director's powers, and a corporation that never holds itself out as a brokerage. Miss one and the exemption can quietly stop applying — often discovered only when it matters most.
The gap most people never check is the paperwork itself: whether the articles of incorporation actually lock those protections in, or merely leave compliance resting on how the company happens to behave. That is exactly what the Health Check surfaces.