Hello everyone, I am starting up a GSP and would like to know
what steps we have to do in order to register our company.
I am living in Canada, but our services will be hosted in the US, right now we have our website setup, control panel being built and have the servers we need.
We are just looking for all the info we need to cover our backs, for taxes, how to register our company name all of that type of info.
Thanks everyone for any tips and help.
Johnny Little.

Hello there,
I would personally would not bother, the market is saturated by "children" offering cheaper this and that. Solid advice, don't bother! :)

It does not bother me as I have a solid business plan, also most of those "Children" fail within the first few months of starting up their company.
I know how high the failure rate is when trying to startup a Game server company, I already have the money to last me at least two years without a client base.
Also we already have a website built and are in the middle of getting a custom control panel built for us.
It just comes down to all of the legal advice we need at this time, as for you letting us know it's a hard market thanks.

johnny,
From one game industry company to another, GO FOR IT! Anyone telling you not to enter the game industry either believes what they read or tried themselves and didn't do it right.
First and foremost, you need to decide what type of business you're going to be registered as. Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Incorporated? The best way to figure all of this out would be to sit down with a local small business advisor. This could range from a bank manager, to a lawyer, to my personal favorite... an accountant. My accountant is the best thing that ever happened to our company. They helped us make everything 100% legal and did all the leg work with registering our business as an Inc.
I believe in 2004 when all of this went down it cost us a total of about $1500-2000 to get EVERYTHING 100% legit. I honestly don't know if that's a lot of money or not for what we got but I do know I didn't need to waste my own time and government is quite pleased :D
As for your Terms of Service, Policies, etc. I would suggest writing them out in plain english one evening with your partners/staff and then bringing that document to a lawyer to add his touch.
Have you given any consideration to payment processors, etc? Once you register your company and receive your business license, you'll then be able to setup both CDN and USD bank accounts which you'll likely want for your Merchant account.
Anyways, I'm just rambling. Ask any specific questions and I'll do my best to help.

The gaming industry is definitely my preference. If you want to start a GSP, do it. Don't let other people tell you it's not possible. They just don't want another competitor. ;)

So should I just start an LLC is that the main thing I need to do?

So should I just start an LLC is that the main thing I need to do?
Not necessarily. A money smart accountant might suggest just going with a sole proprietorship while you begin landing those first few clients and then switching to an Inc. later. It all depends. I'd really seek some business advice locally. It's cheap and well worth it if you're ready to invest what you said you are.

Game server hosting is very volatile--but it seems you have almost everything planned out so I'm not going to lecture you (the same can't be said for the majority of GSPs who go out of business). Many GSPs start up as LLCs.. good if you have any partners, and I don't think you have unlimited liability like you would as a sole proprietor. @Mekhu: Don't know if you've done game server hosting before, but it's a very different beast than Ventrilo hosting. :P

Daniel,
Yup. I run a gaming community with 10+ gameservers and we used to have a family run GSP before moving into VOIP fulltime.
I really do believe it comes down to your target market. If you want to start a GSP and compete with gameservers.com then that's a BIG mistake on your part and odds are in a couple of months you'll complain about the GSP industry :)
Gotta be smart!
BTW Daniel, I like your website!

LLC and LLP have different fees, taxes, and fiscal years. It is good to read up before doing anything regarding those legal matters. I consulted my local accounting/tax firm before I opted to go with a LLP since all our employees are partners and we only plan on using contractors. In the future, once we expand, we may move into LLC or S-Corp.

The terms you are using aren't really used in Canada. You should incorporate either provicially or federally, get a GST and PST number and then go from there.
You will need to do a NUANS search for the name and essentially you end up with a number for your company as well as the name. The number itself if kind of used to obtain your tax numbers.
Go to http://www.cyberbahngroup.com/CyberbahnCMS/ where you can register most things online and as suggested by others, talk to a small business lawyer and accountant. They are usually very reasonable for an initial filing.