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My Business Account and program accounts

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The business side is not the individual side with different words on it. A business has one business number and a set of program accounts hanging off it, one per thing it is registered for, each with its own balance, its own filing obligations and its own returns. Access to all of that belongs to a person rather than to the business — which is the fact that generates the hardest calls in this line, because businesses change hands, directors leave, and bookkeepers move on, and the access does not follow. This tutorial covers the structure, who can hold access, how access is delegated, and the situations where the person calling has an obvious moral claim to information and no current entitlement to it.

How to work through this tutorial

This builds the business side from its structure outward: 1. Learn the business number and program account structure properly. 2. Understand who can hold access to My Business Account and on what basis. 3. Learn how access is delegated to employees and representatives. 4. Learn what a business owner can do in the portal. 5. Understand what happens when the person holding access leaves. 6. Work through an example where nobody can get in. 7. Check your work against the common errors. 8. Verify every specific against CRA's published guidance before relying on it.

One business number, several program accounts

The business number identifies the business. Program accounts identify the things it is registered for, and each is a separate account with its own balance and its own obligations. Each program account number is built from the business number, a two-letter program identifier and a four-digit reference number. The reference number exists because a business can hold more than one account of the same type — separate payroll accounts for separate divisions, for example. The programs a business may be registered for include payroll deductions, GST/HST, corporate income tax, and import-export, among others. Registration for one does not imply registration for another: a corporation with a corporate income tax account and no employees has no payroll account, and should not. The consequence that matters on every business call: "my account" is ambiguous, and "my balance" is ambiguous. Establish the program account before anything else, exactly as you establish the portal before anything else on the individual side.

Who can hold access

Access to My Business Account is held by an individual, signing in with their own credential, and granted on the basis of their relationship to the business. A person who is the owner, a partner, a director or an officer can gain access on that basis. CRA validates the relationship against what it holds — which means it depends on CRA's records of the business being current, and those records are updated by the business filing things, not by the business changing. A sole proprietor's own credential covers both sides of their affairs, but the two are still separate accounts in separate portals. The framing to hold on to is that the business does not have an account in the sense of a login. Individual people have access to the business's information. Every difficulty in the rest of this tutorial follows from that.

Delegating access

The person with access can give access to others, and this is what makes the portal workable for a business of any size. An owner can authorise **employees** to act on the business's accounts, and can set what each may do and on which program accounts. They can also authorise **representatives** — an external accountant or bookkeeping firm — through the same authorisation machinery covered in the level 2 tutorial, granted per program account and at a level. Delegated access can be limited: view only, or wider. It can also include the authority to manage other people's access, which is how a business avoids having a single point of failure. That last capability is the one worth recommending. A business whose only access is held by one person is one resignation away from the situation in the example below, and telling an owner to add a second person costs nothing.

What can be done in it

The portal covers the routine administration of the business's accounts: viewing balances and transactions, filing and viewing returns for the programs the business is registered for, making payments and arranging pre-authorised debit, registering for additional program accounts, updating business addresses and contact information, and managing who has access. As on the individual side, what it shows reflects what has been processed rather than what has happened, and the same caution about payments and filings not yet appearing applies. The list grows. The habit is the same as before: assume a routine business transaction is self-serviceable, and check whether this one is the exception.

When the person with access leaves

This is the characteristic hard call on the business side. A director resigns, a bookkeeper is dismissed, a business is sold, a spouse who handled the paperwork dies. Access does not transfer with the role, because it was never attached to the role — it was attached to a person. What the new person needs is access established on their own basis, which means CRA must be able to validate their relationship to the business. That in turn means CRA's records about the business need to reflect reality, and often they do not yet: the new director has not been recorded, the change of ownership has not been filed. So the answer usually has two parts, and giving only the first is what makes these calls go badly. Part one: here is how you get access. Part two: before that can work, the business's information with CRA has to be brought up to date, and here is what that takes. An agent who recognises the shape of this call early can set expectations honestly instead of leaving someone to discover the second part on their own.

A worked example: a real owner, locked out

Teaching example. The figures below are invented to show the method. They are not CRA figures, and no amount here should be used for a real taxpayer.

The details in this example are invented for teaching. Nothing here should be quoted as CRA's position. Suppose a small corporation has two directors, Marisol and her business partner Kwame. Kwame set up My Business Account years ago and has managed everything since. He has now left the business acrimoniously and will not cooperate. Marisol calls. She is a director, she is entirely legitimate, the business is hers to run, and there is a payroll remittance due. She cannot get in. She cannot simply be let in on the strength of her account of events. What she needs is access established on her own basis as a director — and CRA needs to be able to validate that she is one. Suppose CRA's records still show only Kwame, because the corporate filings recording Marisol's appointment were never reflected. Then the first task is not access at all; it is getting the business's information right. Meanwhile the remittance is still due. Suppose it is $4,800. The obligation does not pause while access is sorted out, and there are other ways to pay that do not require the portal — which is the genuinely useful thing to tell her on this call, alongside the access route. Two lessons. For the caller: the obligation and the access are separate problems, and only one of them is urgent today. For the agent: this call is about validating a relationship, not about a password.

Common errors

Treating "my business account" as one account. A business number carries several program accounts. Assuming registration for one program implies registration for another. Describing access as belonging to the business. It belongs to a person. Assuming access transfers when a role transfers. It does not. Giving only the access route to a new director, without saying that CRA's records about the business may have to be corrected first. Letting a caller believe a filing or payment obligation is suspended while access is being sorted out. Quoting the two-letter program identifiers, or the list of available programs, from memory. Forgetting to suggest that a business add a second person with access. It is the cheapest possible fix for the commonest hard call. Treating a sole proprietor's personal and business accounts as interchangeable because one person owns both.

What to verify this tutorial against

This was drafted without a source document. The program list, the identifiers and the access rules are all published and all change. CRA's business number guidance is the primary reference for the number itself, the program account structure, the two-letter identifiers and the four-digit reference number. CRA's My Business Account pages set out who may access the service, on what basis, and the services available in it. CRA's guidance on authorising a representative for a business covers delegation to employees and to external representatives, the levels available, and per-program-account authorisation. CRA's guidance on registering for a program account is the reference for the point that registration is program by program. CRA's guidance on changing business information — directors, ownership, addresses — is what the second half of the difficult call in this tutorial depends on. Confirm what CRA requires and what has to be filed elsewhere first. CRA's payment pages are the reference for paying a business obligation without portal access, which is the practical answer in the worked example.

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