Business Registration Online now requires a CRA account. If you need to create one, outside Alberta and British Columbia that depends on having a recently assessed personal income tax return.
Since July 14, 2026, Business Registration Online has only been accessible through a CRA account. That is the service used to get a business number, open payroll, or add a program account to a business number you already have.
For most owners this is a minor change. Sign in, register, and your accounts are issued immediately. If you already have a CRA account, you carry on using it as before.
The obstacle is for owners who do not yet have one and need to create it. There, the deciding factor is not the age or size of the business. It is whether the individual owner or director has an assessed personal income tax return from within the last two years.
What the change actually gates
You do not use Business Registration Online to incorporate, but where the business number comes from depends on where you incorporate.
With federal incorporation, and with incorporation or registration in the eight participating provinces, a business number is assigned as part of that process. If you incorporate in Newfoundland and Labrador, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Quebec or Yukon, you obtain the business number from the CRA separately, and that is a step this change now sits in front of.
Everywhere else the requirement arrives at the following step, when you open a program account.
Either way, new sole proprietors registering for the first time and established owners adding payroll or GST/HST for the first time now need a CRA account before they can use BRO.
The phone route is gone as well. For routine registrations the CRA now directs everything through BRO, with a small set of published exceptions covered below.
One regional point worth knowing: Business Registration Online covers GST/HST registration for the rest of the country but not for businesses in Quebec. Those registrations are handled separately.
The eligibility requirement
To register for a new CRA account using CRA credentials or a Sign-In Partner, you are asked for figures from your most recent assessed income tax and benefit return, and that return needs to be from within the last two years. A return you filed last week but that has not been assessed yet may not get you through. The CRA directs anyone who has never filed, or has not filed within that window, to a different route entirely. This applies to creating the account, not to using one you already have.
That describes more people than it first appears. Newcomers to Canada starting a business in their first year here. Someone returning after several years abroad with no recent Canadian return. Anyone whose last two years produced no filing obligation they acted on.
Alberta and British Columbia are the exception. You may register through a provincial partner even if you have never filed taxes, using an Alberta.ca Account or a BC Services Card, and that route can give immediate access without document verification or a mailed security code.
What to do if you cannot open an account
The CRA publishes an answer to this, though it sits at the end of the announcement.
Form RC1, Request for a Business Number and Certain Program Accounts, is the designated route if you have never filed your taxes, if you have not filed in the last two years, or if you cannot otherwise meet the CRA account registration requirements. It is a mail-in form rather than an online alternative, so build the extra time into your planning rather than treating it as equivalent.
It covers a business number and certain program accounts, not every account type, so confirm the specific accounts you need are included.
If you can open an account, do it before you need it
Registering with CRA credentials or a Sign-In Partner requires verifying your identity, and there are two routes.
The document verification service uses a mobile device and gives immediate access. The alternative is a CRA security code, which the CRA mails to the address on file within 10 business days. The CRA recommends the first over the second, and the reason is timing.
You will also enrol in two multi-factor authentication options for receiving a one-time passcode.
The timing is what catches people out. Set the account up while nothing depends on it.
Other situations the online route does not cover
Business Registration Online also cannot be used to reactivate a previously closed program account, register a business owned by another business such as a corporate or partnership partner, register where the owner or director is deceased and an estate needs to file, or register a Canadian business with only non-resident owners.
Confirm your situation is a standard registration before assuming the online path applies.
The practical summary
If you already have a CRA account, sign in and carry on.
If you do not have one and you have an assessed return from within the last two years, set it up now and use document verification rather than waiting on a mailed code.
If you do not have an account and have no assessed return from the last two years, or have never filed in Canada, do not wait at the online door. In Alberta or British Columbia, a provincial partner sign-in can get you in immediately. Everywhere else, Form RC1 is the route, and because it goes by mail it needs to be started well before the date you need the accounts open.
About Author
Bashar Qawas is a partner at Better Books Canada, a bookkeeping and tax firm in Ottawa serving small businesses across the country. Before moving into private practice he was an auditor with the Canada Revenue Agency, and he now writes about what actually trips up owner-operators at filing time. He works with clients across restaurants, professional practices, ecommerce and the trades, and can be found at betterbookscanada.ca.
