Safe and cheap way to send money from Canada to South America
"The catch with any exchange service is that you're going to involve some sort of business and they're going to want to get paid for their service. These services all come with their own exchange rates, fees, waiting periods, or requirements to even use said service. Commonly, pros towards one of those comes at the cost of another— e.g. fast transfers have higher fees or worse exchange rates. Over the past few months I needed a service and ended up using USForex. Since you're going from CAD to USD, you'd likely need to use CanadianForex. Pros:  Cons:  Overall, this option was far better than the $97.00 I was quoted from WesternUnion; or the $25.00-45.00 I was quoted from BMO Harris, which would have required I open a saving account with them. I wasn't provided a clean exchange rate between these two to know how all three compared. The only bit of advice I can say with any service is compare exchange rates. If you're transferring more than a few hundred dollars, the exchange rate can be seen as a ""hidden"" fee when it's unreasonably low. I'm not affiliated with or accommodated by any of the exchange services mentioned."
The Canada Revenue Agency does indeed put out just the guide you want. It's at http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tg/rc4070/rc4070-e.html - you should always take a good look at URLs to make sure they're really from the government and not from some for-profit firm that will charge you to fill out forms for free services. It covers ways to structure your business (probably a sole proprietor in your case), collecting and submitting GST or HST, sending in payroll remittances (if you pay yourself a T4 salary), and income tax including what you can deduct. It's a great place to start and you can use it as a source of keywords if you want to search for more details. *People clamoring for more and more regulation will always be disappointed because businesses will always find ways to get around it.*  This is only true in America where we have too many retards who believe regulation doesn't work (thus you get broken regulation you basically wished for).  Canada's financial regulatory system (which actually has teeth, unlike their American counterparts) did a magnificent job avoiding the financial meltdown. "The other answers here do an excellent job of laying out the mathematics of the expected value. Here is a different take on the question of whether lottery tickets are a sensible investment. I used to have the snobbish attitude that many mathematically literate people have towards lotteries: that they are ""a tax on the mathematically illiterate"", and so on. As I've gotten older I've realized that though, yes, it is certainly true that humans are staggeringly bad at estimating risks, that people actually are surprisingly rational when they spend their money. What then is the rational basis for buying lottery tickets, beyond the standard explanation of ""it's cheap entertainment""? Suppose you are a deeply poor person in America. Your substandard education prepared you for a job in manufacturing which no longer exists, you're working several minimum wage jobs just to keep food on the table, and you're one fall off a ladder from medical-expense-induced total financial disaster.  Now suppose you have things that you would like to spend truly enormous amounts of money on, like, say, sending your children to schools with ever-increasing tuitions, or a home in a safe neighbourhood.  Buying lottery tickets is a bad investment, sure. Name another legal investment strategy that has a million-dollar payout that is accessible to the poor in America. Even if you could invest 10% of your minimum-wage salary without missing the electricity bill, that's still not going to add up to a million bucks in your lifetime. Probably not even $100K.  When given a choice between no chance whatsoever at achieving your goals and a cheap chance that is literally a one-in-a-million chance at achieving your goals the rational choice is to take the bad investment option over no investment at all." "The easiest and least expensive way of doing this, similar to the answer from Randy Coulman, is to write a check and deposit it into the Canadian Institution. Since this transfer is between accounts you own the easiest thing to do is to do a deposit by mail. Contact your current institution on where you would need to mail your deposit to. You can then write yourself a check on the US bank and mail it to the Canadian bank; be sure to write ""For Deposit Only"" along with your account number (and Branch Number for Canada) on the back. This is the slowest, but cheapest method. An alternative option is to use Wire Transfers, but they can be very costly (you'll usually incur a fee when sending and when receiving). I only recommend them when you need the money in the account fast (they are usually settled within an hour)." All the items listed are required for International Wire transfer. In wrong hands this info along with other info can cause issues. Most of the times you trust the person with this info and hence is less cause to worry. So the key is if you don't trust, don't give the details. Use alternatives like; Best open an account for receiving funds. Share the details, once the funds are received move it to an account where the details have not been shared. Alternatively paypal or other such services can help. I don't believe there is any particular structural or financial reason that outgoing wire transfers cost so much in Canada, their costs are no higher than other countries (and lower than many).  Wires seem to be an area where the Canadian banks have decided people don't comparison shop, so it's not a competitive advantage to offer a better price. The rates you quoted are on the low side: $80 for a largish international wire is not unusual, and HSBC charges up to $150! There are several alternative ways to transfer money domestically in Canada. If the recipient banks at the same bank, it's possible to go into a branch and transfer money directly from your own account to their account (I've never been charged for this).  The transfer is immediate.  But it couldn't be done online, last time I checked. For transfers where you don't know the recipients bank account, you can pay online with Interac E-Transfers, offered by most Canadian banks.  It's basically e-mailing money.  It usually costs $1 to $1.50 per transfer, and has limits on how much you can send per day/week. Each of the banks also have a bill-pay service, but unlike similar services in the US (where they mail a paper check if the recipient isn't on their system), each Canadian bank has a limited number of possible payees (mostly utilities, governments, major stores). You could use a Credit or Debit Card running in US $, drawing from your US$ account, and pay everything with it. If you pick a company with free foreign conversions, you would get the standard interbank exchange ratio every time you pay, with no fee. For the small payments where credit cards are not accpeted or useful you can convert some cash once every some month - all significant amounts should work with credit or debit card. I faced something similar for travel or work reasons, and as for me I preferred wire transfer over credit card withdrawals because my bank has huge fees. My thoughts so far are: the fee can vary a lot for credit card. As for me, I can expect 5% fees on foreign withdrawals. But I considered changing bank and I think a Gold (or premium) card might be a good idea as well. The idea is you pay a big subscription (100 euros or so) but have no fee. The total of withdrawal fees could easily (if you stay long abroad) reach this amount. There are also banks like HSBC that offer low fees on withdrawals abroad, you can ask them. The problem is that you cannot really withdraw huge amounts to lower the fee (since you carry this cash in the street). for wire transfers the total fee is usually $50 or more (I had a fee from distant bank, a fee for change and a fee in my home bank). But the amount is unlimited (or high enough to be of little matter) and I needed to do this once per year or so. So I guess it could be interesting if you have enough savings to only transfer money every couple of months or so. I think Western Union is also involved this profitable business. I never used it because the fees are pretty high, but maybe it is useful for not too big amounts frequently transfered. Actually, have you considered a loan? It's a very random idea but maybe you can use a loan as a swap and then transfer money when you have enough to reimburse it all. But the question is very interesting, I think the business is pretty huge due to globalization. It is expensive because some people can make a lot of money out of it.