Use the actual evidence relevant to the employment and role rather than inventing a conventional payroll history.
Explain the real arrangement
Provide accurate corporate and work records for review. Do not recast distributions as salary merely to make the file resemble another applicant’s.
Canadian payroll records and T4 slips covering a continuous year within the last three, plus position descriptions and organizational charts for both roles that show subordinate supervisors, budget authority and hiring discretion. The file needs the underlying records: share registers for the holding company and each operating company, showing percentages and dates; the minute book entries recording any change; and, for the acquired U.S. business, the purchase agreement and the post-closing register showing the group as owner. The governing L-1 rules require a qualifying parent, branch, subsidiary, or affiliate; generally one continuous year of full-time employment abroad during the relevant preceding three-year period; and a U.S. managerial or executive role for L-1A. The two share registers, evidence that both companies trade, payroll showing the beneficiary's qualifying year, an organisation chart for the receiving company, and a duty description written by someone who knows what the role involves day to day. For trading, the American side needs to look like a working business rather than an acquisition on a balance sheet: recent payroll registers, current service agreements with turbine owners, issued invoices, lease or premises documents and a filed federal return.