Small Businesses Continue To Drive Saskatchewan’s Economy

Released on October 16, 2018

In 2017, small businesses in Saskatchewan employed 31.2 per cent of the province’s workforce, paying $6.3 billion in wages and salaries and accounting for 25.6 per cent of total payroll.  They also contributed almost a third of the province’s gross domestic product at 27 per cent, in the same year.

The Government of Saskatchewan continues to invest in initiatives, services and programs that support small businesses in the province.

Some of these include:

• The Saskatchewan Commercial Innovation Incentive, the first “patent box” style incentive of its kind in North America;
• The Saskatchewan Technology Start-Up Incentive, which offers a 45 per cent non-refundable tax credit for individual and corporate equity investments in eligible technology start-up businesses;
• The Product2Market: Value Added incentive which helps support small-and-medium-sized agri-businesses, from product development through to marketing activities;
• The Canada-Saskatchewan Job Grant, an employer-driven program which helps employers train new or existing workers to meet their specific workforce needs;
• A small business income tax rate, at two per cent, for Canadian-controlled private corporations.  The rate applies to the first $600,000 of business income and is among the lowest in the country;
• A highly competitive tax structure which includes tax credits for research and development, as well as for manufacturing and processing equipment expenditures;
• The proclamation of the Regulatory Modernization and Accountability Act in 2013, to remove red tape that could be a road block to business, and to remove some of the barriers to growth.