Company

Status: This standard was approved as a departmental standard on February 21, 2018.

Definition

Company refers to the level of the statistical hierarchy below the Enterprise in the Business Register statistical hierarchy. The company is defined as the lowest level organizational unit for which income statement and balance sheet accounts are maintained. From this, operating profit and the rate of return on capital can be derived.

Usage

Any business, organization or individual represented by a Canada Revenue Agency Business Number (BN) with current or recently-filed corporate revenues, payroll deductions, sales taxes or partnership income are included as active companies on Statistics Canada's Business Register. Also counted are any individuals who reported business-related income on the previous year's personal income tax return, exclusive of those already counted as a result of remittances under a BN tax program.

Conformity to relevant internationally recognized standards

There is no internationally recognized standard for company as a Standard Statistical Unit, however it is listed as a synonym to the term corporation as an "other type of unit" in the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) "Guidelines on Statistical Business Registers", 2015. The UNECE definition is primarily concerned with ownership by a group of shareholders and management. This standard is not concerned with the ownership, nor does it require that a company have a specific type of ownership. The UNECE definition of corporation is not as a statistical unit, whereas it is in this standard.

Relation to previous version

• Company February 21, 2018 to current

  This standard replaces the previous standard for company. The previous standard did not situate the definition of company in the Business Register hierarchy. This has been changed. The current standard situates company in relation to the entity above it, the Enterprise. Additionally, the previous standard used terminology that was not in line with either that of national accounting or financial accounting concepts. The current standard has been updated with terminology about the information collected from units to be in line with financial accounting terminology.

• Company July 15, 1998 to February 20, 2018

  This was the departmental standard from July 15, 1998 to February 20, 2018.