HST vs GST+PST vs GST+QST: Canada's sales-tax regimes for a new business

Direct answer

Canada does not have one sales tax; it has four regimes, and which rate you charge is decided by where your customer is, not where your business sits. Five provinces — Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador — charge a single harmonized tax of 13% to 15% that the Canada Revenue Agency administers through one registration and one return. Three — British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba — charge 5% GST plus a separate provincial tax with its own registration, return and remittance. Quebec charges 5% GST plus 9.975% QST, both administered by Revenu Québec rather than the CRA. Alberta, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut charge 5% and nothing else. Two caveats decide most real cases. The $30,000 small-supplier threshold counts worldwide taxable supplies, not sales in your own province. And the provincial taxes set their own thresholds — Saskatchewan sets none at all — which a federal GST registration does not satisfy.

The one sentence in the statute that explains the whole system

Everything here follows from two subsections of the Excise Tax Act. Section 165(1) imposes a single federal tax: "every recipient of a taxable supply made in Canada shall pay … tax in respect of the supply calculated at the rate of 5%." That 5% applies in all thirteen jurisdictions without exception. Section 165(2) then adds a second, separate tax in some places: "every recipient of a taxable supply made in a participating province shall pay … in addition to the tax imposed by subsection (1), tax in respect of the supply calculated at the tax rate for that province." [1]

Read together, the HST stops being mysterious. There is no such thing as a 15% tax; there is a 5% federal tax and a 10% provincial tax that share a base, a return and an administrator and get quoted as one number. New Brunswick says so in its own words: "The HST rate is 15% and is composed of a federal component of 5% (GST) and provincial component of 10%." [16] Newfoundland and Labrador puts it the same way: "The new HST rate of 15% is a combination of the 5% federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) combined with the 10% provincial portion." [17]

What section 165(2) does not do is tell you the rate. It says "the tax rate for that province" and leaves the number elsewhere — and where it leaves it is the single most misunderstood thing about Canadian sales tax.

Where the rates actually live: a definition, a regulation, and a residual schedule

Follow the phrase. "Tax rate" is a defined term, and subsection 123(1) defines it in three tiers:

"tax rate, for or in relation to a participating province, means (a) if there is a sales tax harmonization agreement with the government of the participating province relating to the new harmonized value-added tax system, the rate that is prescribed for the participating province, (b) if the participating province is an offshore area referred to in the definition participating province, the rate that is prescribed for the participating province, and (c) in the absence of a rate that is prescribed for the participating province, the rate set opposite the name of the participating province in Schedule VIII"

[29]

So the schedule at the back of the Act is not the primary source. It is the residual — the answer only when nothing has been prescribed. What has been prescribed sits in the New Harmonized Value-added Tax System Regulations, and the prescribing sections are short and exact:

• "For the purposes of paragraph (a) of the definition tax rate in subsection 123(1) of the Act, the prescribed rate for Prince Edward Island is 10%." (s. 33.3(3))
• "the prescribed rate for New Brunswick is 10%." (s. 33.4)
• "the prescribed rate for Newfoundland and Labrador is 10%." (s. 33.5(1))
• "the prescribed rate for Nova Scotia is 9%." (s. 33.6(1))

[30]

Four of the five participating provinces therefore take their provincial component from a regulation. The regulations also prescribe 10% for the Newfoundland offshore area and 9% for the Nova Scotia offshore area — offshore activity is taxed at the same provincial rate as the province itself, which matters to marine and energy service businesses and to nobody else. [30]

Ontario is the exception, and the exception is instructive. No section of these regulations prescribes a rate for Ontario. Ontario therefore falls to paragraph (c) of the definition and takes its rate from Schedule VIII, which sets Ontario at 8%. [3] That is why Ontario's 13% is 5% plus 8%: the two halves come from two different instruments, and only Ontario's provincial half is still statutory.

Now the trap. Schedule VIII, read alone and read today, lists Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador all at 8%, and does not mention Prince Edward Island at all. [3] The page carries its own currency statement — "Act current to 2026-06-21 and last amended on 2026-06-18" — so this is not an archived copy. [3]

A founder who reasons from the schedule alone therefore gets Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador wrong, misses Prince Edward Island entirely, and gets Ontario right by accident. The schedule is not out of date in the sense of being an error; it is out of date in the sense that it has been displaced for every province that has a harmonization agreement, and only a reader who starts at the definition rather than the schedule can tell which is which. The regulations are themselves dated: they are "current to 2026-06-21 and last amended on 2025-04-01" — and 1 April 2025 is exactly the day Nova Scotia's provincial component moved to 9%. [30]

The practical rule: never read a rate out of Schedule VIII without checking whether one has been prescribed. For day-to-day work, use the CRA's rate table and the province's own finance page, and check the date on both. [4]

The four regimes

One: HST, in five provinces

Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador are "participating provinces" — five, not six, a count worth fixing in your head because British Columbia briefly harmonized then reverted and stale material still says otherwise. The CRA's own definition names them and excludes the offshore areas except for offshore activities: "Participating provinces include New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Prince Edward Island, but do not include the Nova Scotia offshore area or the Newfoundland offshore area except to the extent that offshore activities … are carried on in that area." [9]

In these five you charge one tax at one rate, file one return and deal with one government. The CRA "administers the HST on behalf of all the participating provinces," as New Brunswick's page puts it [16], and Newfoundland and Labrador says administration "is performed by the Canada Revenue Agency." [17]

The rate statements are clean: "13% … in the participating province of Ontario"; "14% … in the participating province of Nova Scotia on or after April 1, 2025"; "15% … in any other participating province." [6] So New Brunswick, PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador are 15%, Ontario is 13%, and Nova Scotia is the one that moved. This is the administratively cheapest regime in Canada: no second account, no second calendar, no second auditor.

One consequence of harmonization is worth knowing before you print an invoice. When you disclose HST you must show the total rate: "If HST applies to the supply, show the total HST rate. Do not show the federal and provincial parts of the HST separately." [9] The decomposition on this page is for understanding the law, not for your invoice template.

Two: GST plus a provincial sales tax, in three provinces

British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are non-participating provinces, so only the 5% GST applies federally. [6] Each then levies its own retail-stage tax — 7%, 6% and 7% respectively — under its own statute, administered by its own ministry, with its own registration, threshold, return and due date. [4]

These are not variations on the HST but a different kind of tax. The GST/HST is a value-added tax that flows through registered businesses and sticks only to final consumption; a retail sales tax is designed to stick at the point of retail sale, which is why relief comes as an exemption when you buy for resale rather than as a credit when you file. That structural difference is the most expensive thing on this page to get wrong; see recoverability below.

The two taxes also do not compound, and the CRA says how to sequence them: "When you have to charge the GST and the provincial sales tax (PST), calculate the GST on the price excluding the PST." [9] Manitoba states the mirror image of the same rule: its tax "is calculated on the selling price, before the GST … is applied." [25] On a $100 Manitoba sale the customer pays $5 GST and $7 RST, not $7.35.

Manitoba's tax is also worth naming carefully. The statute is The Retail Sales Tax Act and Manitoba Finance calls it RST, while the CRA's table files the same 7% under a column headed "PST" — same tax, two names, and this page uses RST. [25] [4]

Three: GST plus QST, in Quebec

Quebec charges the 5% GST plus a Quebec Sales Tax of 9.975%. [4]

What makes Quebec structurally distinct is not the rate but the administrator: it is the only jurisdiction where the federal tax is collected by a provincial revenue body. The CRA states it in its own registrants' guide: "In Quebec, Revenu Québec generally administers the GST/HST. If the physical location of your business is in Quebec, you have to file your returns with Revenu Québec using its forms, unless you are an SLFI for GST/HST or Quebec Sales Tax (QST) purposes or both." [9]

So a Montreal business has two taxes and one counterparty — better than British Columbia's two and two, worse than Ontario's one and one. It also means generic advice telling you to open a GST/HST account with the CRA is wrong for you. For the incorporation side, see the Quebec province guide.

Four: GST only, in Alberta and the three territories

Alberta, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut levy no general sales tax; the CRA's table shows all four at 5% GST and 0% provincial. [4] One tax, one return, no provincial exposure at home — the simplest regime in the country, and the one that produces the most expensive mistakes, because a founder who has never charged anything but 5% is the one most likely to keep charging 5% into Ontario.

The HST provinces have not abolished their provincial sales taxes

This is the correction most founders need and almost never get. Harmonization folded the general retail sales tax into the HST; it did not repeal every provincial tax on every base. Two of the five participating provinces still run a separate retail sales tax on things a business actually buys, and neither is recoverable as an input tax credit, because neither is GST/HST.

Ontario. "The harmonized sales tax (HST) took effect July 1, 2010, and replaced the RST, with the exception of RST on certain premiums of insurance and benefits plans and RST on private purchases of specified vehicles." [39] Two live rates follow. "8% RST applies to premiums paid under taxable insurance contracts, group insurance, and certain funded or unfunded benefits plans", and "13% RST applies to specified vehicles purchased privately from a person within Canada who is not a GST/HST registrant". [39]

The registration duty catches employers, not just insurers. Ontario requires a vendor permit from "a holder of group insurance to whom premiums are paid by persons whose risks are covered by the policy" and from "a plan holder who self-administers funded or unfunded benefits plans where there is no third-party administrator", applied for on the Application for Vendor Permit – Insurance and Benefits Plans. [39] An Ontario company that self-administers a health-spending account or an unfunded benefits plan is inside a provincial sales-tax regime it probably believes was abolished in 2010.

Newfoundland and Labrador. The province levies a retail sales tax on insurance premiums at a rate that is not a rounding error: "A tax rate of 15% will be applied to the taxable premiums for contracts of insurance relating to property, risk, peril or events in the province." [40] Accident and sickness, life, automobile, marine insurance on commercial watercraft, surety and fidelity, residential mortgage default, crop, livestock and personal property insurance are exempt — but commercial property insurance is squarely inside the base. [40] The collection duty sits with the insurer: "An insurer or insurer's agent is required to register, collect, and remit tax on contracts of insurance relating to property, risk, peril or events in the province", and "The return, along with the payment of tax due, must be received by the Department of Finance within 20 days following the reporting period." [40] Separately, insurance companies pay "a tax of 5% of premiums generated in Newfoundland and Labrador", raised from 4% effective 1 July 2016. [41]

You do not file these taxes as a buyer, but you pay them, and you cannot claim them back. Budget commercial insurance in St. John's at 15% above the quoted premium, and Ontario group benefits at 8%, in the same line where you would otherwise have assumed a recoverable tax.

The thirteen jurisdictions, side by side

Combined rate and provincial component first. The combined rates come from the CRA's rate table, which is the only page on canada.ca that carries all thirteen rows; every provincial component is now traced to the instrument that sets it rather than inferred by subtraction. [4] The federal 5% column is section 165(1). [1]

A note on how this table changed. An earlier version of this page presented Ontario's 8% and Prince Edward Island's 10% as arithmetic — the combined rate less the statutory 5% — because neither province's own website could be reached and Schedule VIII was assumed to be simply stale. That was too cautious. Both figures are stated by federal instruments: PEI's by regulation, Ontario's by the schedule operating as the residual the definition points to. Neither is inferred any longer. Prince Edward Island's own site still serves a bot-protection interstitial to every fetch path tried, and ontario.ca's harmonized-sales-tax page still returns 404, but nothing on this page depends on either.

Two rates on this table sit outside it in a way worth stating plainly. Nova Scotia's 14% is the newest number in the country, effective 1 April 2025 [5], and the CRA's rate page carries a "Date modified: 2025-04-01" stamp that matches it. [4] Quebec's 9.975% is the only rate in Canada carried to three decimal places, which is a rounding hazard in any invoicing system that stores tax rates as two-decimal numbers.

Registration thresholds, and who must register

Two thresholds apply to almost every new business, and they are independent of one another. Clearing the federal one tells you nothing about the provincial one.

One clause in the CRA's definition of small supplier does more damage than any other, because it is easy to read past: the test runs on "revenue (along with the revenue of all persons associated with that person) from worldwide taxable supplies". [9] Association is defined broadly — "two or more corporations", "an individual and a corporation", "a person and a partnership or trust", "two persons, if they are associated with the same third person". [9] A founder who splits one business across two corporations to stay under $30,000 twice has not stayed under it once. The calculation does exclude "consideration attributable to the sale of goodwill of a business, supplies of financial services, and supplies by way of sale of capital property", so selling a building or the goodwill of a business does not by itself push you over. [9]

Recoverability, and filing frequency

This is the table that decides whether a tax is a cost or a wash.

A word on how the "no input credit" rows are established, because it affects how much weight to put on them. None of the three retail-sales-tax sources describes an input-credit mechanism, and each instead describes relief working the other way — as an exemption at the moment of purchase. British Columbia says a small seller is "ineligible for certain PST exemptions, such as the exemption for goods obtained solely for resale," which only makes sense where resale relief is granted up front rather than credited later. [20] So the conclusion is solid, but drawn from how relief is structured rather than from a sentence saying "no credit exists."

The consequence for a budget is direct. In Ontario, a 13% tax on your inputs is a timing difference. In British Columbia, the 5% GST is a timing difference and the 7% PST on whatever you consume rather than resell is a real cost that never comes back. Model them on different lines.

Place of supply: the rate follows your customer

This is the rule founders get wrong most often, and the CRA states it plainly: "The rate of tax to charge depends on the place of supply. This is where you make your sale, lease, or other supply." Place of supply is "the province or territory where a taxable sale, lease, or other supply is considered to be made. It determines which GST/HST rate applies." [5]

Nothing in that definition refers to where your business is located, where you incorporated, where your bank is or what address is on your letterhead. One registration can require you to charge four different rates in a single week.

The architecture: three questions, three instruments

Underneath the CRA's summary is a three-step determination, and each step lives in a different place. Knowing which step you are on is what stops you arguing the wrong rule.

Step one — is the supply made in Canada at all? Section 142 answers it, and it is a deeming rule with a list. A supply is deemed made in Canada if, for a sale of tangible personal property, "the property is, or is to be, delivered or made available in Canada to the recipient of the supply"; for intangible personal property, if "the property may be used in whole or in part in Canada"; for real property or a service in relation to it, if "the real property is situated in Canada"; and for any other service, if "the service is, or is to be, performed in whole or in part in Canada." [31]

Note the asymmetry between the two halves of section 142. A supply is in Canada if the intangible "may be used in whole or in part in Canada", but outside Canada only if the property "may not be used in Canada" at all. [31] Partial Canadian usability makes it a Canadian supply. Software licensed worldwide, including to Canada, is inside the system.

Step one-and-a-half — are you a non-resident? Section 143 flips the answer back off again: a supply of personal property or a service made in Canada by a non-resident "shall be deemed to be made outside Canada", unless the supply is made in the course of a business carried on in Canada, or the person is registered, or the supply is a qualifying tangible personal property supply where fulfilment-warehouse registration is required, or it is an admission the non-resident did not acquire from someone else. [32] Two things follow that surprise people. Registering voluntarily switches the deeming rule off and makes your Canadian supplies taxable — registration is not a neutral administrative act for a non-resident. And section 143 covers only "personal property or a service", so it never shelters a supply of real property.

Step two — which province? Section 144.1 is one sentence and carries the whole provincial layer:

"a supply is deemed to be made in a province if it is made in Canada and is, under the rules set out in Schedule IX, made in the province, but is deemed to be made outside the province in any other case and a supply made in Canada that is not made in any participating province is deemed to be made in a non-participating province."

[33]

The residual in that sentence is the safety net for most small businesses: a supply made in Canada but in no participating province is deemed made in a non-participating province, so 5% and nothing more.

Step three — which rule inside Schedule IX? Schedule IX has nine Parts: I Interpretation, II Tangible Personal Property, III Intangible Personal Property, IV Real Property, V Services, VI Transportation Services, VII Postage, VIII Telecommunication Services, and IX Deemed Supplies and Prescribed Supplies. [34]

And Part IX is where the modern law enters, because it lets regulations override everything before it: "Notwithstanding any other Part of this Schedule, a supply of property or a service is made in a province if the supply is prescribed to be made in the province." [34] That hook is what the New Harmonized Value-added Tax System Regulations hang on, and for services and intangibles the regulations — not the Schedule — are the operative rules today. [30]

This is why summaries of "the Schedule IX services rule" are usually wrong in practice. Schedule IX Part V still says a service is supplied in a province if "all or substantially all of the Canadian element of the service is performed in the province" or "the place of negotiation of the supply is in the province". [34] That is a performance-based test that never mentions the customer's address. It has been displaced by an address-based test in the regulations. Reading the Schedule alone gives you a rule that has not governed ordinary services for over a decade.

Goods: delivery decides, and the statute defines delivery

For tangible personal property sold outright, Schedule IX Part II section 1 is the rule: "a supply by way of sale of tangible personal property is made in a province if the supplier delivers the property or makes it available in the province to the recipient of the supply." [34]

"Delivers" is not left to ordinary meaning. Part II section 3 defines it, and does so exclusively:

"property is deemed to be delivered in a particular province by a supplier and is deemed not to be delivered in any other province by the supplier where the supplier (a) ships the property to a destination in the particular province that is specified in the contract for carriage of the property or transfers possession of the property to a common carrier or consignee that the supplier has retained on behalf of the recipient to ship the property to such a destination; or (b) sends the property by mail or courier to an address in the particular province."

[34]

Three practical consequences. First, the shipping address on the order is the tax address for goods — not the billing address, not the head-office address. Second, "deemed not to be delivered in any other province" is an exclusivity clause: there is no apportionment for goods, one province wins. Third, the rule turns on who retained the carrier. If the supplier ships or retains the carrier on the recipient's behalf, delivery is at the destination; if the customer arranges their own pickup and takes possession at your loading dock, delivery is where the dock is.

Leases split at three months. For tangible personal property supplied "otherwise than by way of sale", a lease of "no more than three months" uses the same delivery test, while a longer arrangement uses registration for a specified motor vehicle and "the ordinary location of the property, as determined at the time the supply is made" for everything else. [34] Equipment rental businesses live on that line: a two-month rental follows delivery, a four-month rental follows where the machine ordinarily sits.

Services: the address cascade

For services the operative rule is regulation section 13, and it is a cascade rather than a single test:

"a supply of a service is made in a province if, in the ordinary course of business of the supplier, the supplier obtains an address in the province that is (a) if the supplier obtains only one address that is a home or a business address in Canada of the recipient, the home or business address in Canada obtained by the supplier; (b) if the supplier obtains more than one address described in paragraph (a), the address described in that paragraph that is most closely connected with the supply; or (c) in any other case, the address in Canada of the recipient that is most closely connected with the supply."

[30]

Read the qualifier carefully: "in the ordinary course of business of the supplier". The address must be one you obtain anyway, in the normal running of the business. You cannot manufacture an address to get a rate, and you cannot ignore an address you already hold. If you collect one Canadian address, that is the answer. If you collect several — a head office in Calgary, a site office in Halifax, an accounts-payable address in Toronto — you must pick the one "most closely connected with the supply", which is a judgment call you should document at the time rather than reconstruct under audit.

Where no address is obtained at all, subsection 13(2) falls back to performance: the supply is made in a participating province if "the Canadian element of the service is performed primarily in participating provinces" and no greater proportion is performed in another participating province. [30]

The tie-breakers, and why an unresolved supply is expensive

When the performance test cannot single out one province, the regulation does not resolve in your favour. Subparagraph 13(2)(a)(ii) sends the supply to the province where "the tax rate for the participating province is the highest among the participating provinces for which no greater proportion of the service is performed in another participating province." [30]

The same principle governs intangibles: where the address tests do not settle it, "the tax rate for the particular participating province is the highest among the tax rates for the participating provinces in which the intangible personal property can be used." [30]

Today the highest participating rate is 15%. An unresolved place of supply is therefore not a 5% problem; it is a 15% problem, and the difference between guessing and documenting is ten points of tax on the whole invoice.

There is even a tie-breaker for the tie-breaker. Where two participating provinces share the same highest rate — and New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador all sit at 15% — section 18 sends the supply to the province "where the business address of the supplier that is most closely connected with the supply is located or, if [that address] is not located in one of the specified provinces, in the specified province that is closest in proximity, determined in any reasonable manner." [30] It is the only place in the GST/HST where physical proximity, "determined in any reasonable manner", decides a tax rate — and the only rule on this page where the supplier's own address matters at all.

Intangibles and digital products

Intangible personal property — software licences, subscriptions, rights, digital content — runs on its own address rule, with a small-value carve-out that matters to retail. For a supply "for which the value of the consideration is $300 or less" made through a specified location of the supplier in a participating province and in the presence of the recipient or their representative, the supply is made in that province if the property can be used there. [30] A gift card or download code sold over a counter follows the counter, not the buyer's home address, up to $300.

Above that, or for anything not sold face to face, the same home-or-business-address cascade applies as for services: one address governs, several address are resolved by closest connection, and failing everything the highest-rate rule bites. [30]

There is a distinct rule for computer-related services and internet access, which is where a lot of SaaS actually lands. Where there is one final recipient and "a single ordinary location at which the final recipient avails themselves of the service or access", the supply is made in that province; "in any other case, the particular supply is made in a particular province if the mailing address of the recipient of the particular supply is in that province." [30] For a distributed workforce with no single ordinary location, the mailing address on the account is the operative fact — which is one of the few places where a business's own address choice has a direct tax consequence, and it is your customer's address that governs, not yours.

Real property, transportation, postage and telecommunications

Four specialised Parts of Schedule IX survive largely intact, and each catches a different business.

Real property has the simplest rule in the whole system: "A supply of real property is made in a province if the property is situated in the province." [34] Nothing about addresses, negotiation or delivery. If you sublet space, sell a building or lease commercial premises, the province where the bricks are decides the rate — for a Montreal landlord, that means GST and QST regardless of where the tenant is headquartered. Services in relation to real property follow the property too, through an "all or substantially all" test with a place-of-negotiation alternative. [34]

Freight transportation follows the destination: "a supply of a freight transportation service is made in a province if the destination of the service is in the province", where "destination" means "the place specified by the shipper of the property where possession of the property is transferred to the person to whom the property is consigned or addressed by the shipper." [34] Passenger transportation follows the origin of the continuous journey where the first ticket specifies it and the termination and all stopovers are in Canada, and otherwise the place of negotiation. [34]

Postage carries the only dollar figure in the Schedule: a postage stamp follows where it is delivered, and the mail service it pays for follows the same province, unless the supply is under a bill of lading or "the consideration for the supply of the service is $5 or more and the address to which the mail is sent is not in a participating province." [34]

Telecommunication services run on a "billing location" concept: where the charge goes to an account relating to telecommunications facilities used by the recipient, the billing location is the province where "all those telecommunications facilities are ordinarily located", and otherwise where "the telecommunications facility used to initiate the service is located." [34] The supply itself is then made where the telecommunication is emitted and received, or emitted or received plus billing location. [34]

The CRA's own worked examples

Three published examples dispose of the "I charge my home rate" instinct.

A furniture store in Vancouver sells a mattress delivered to Toronto and charges 13%, because the place of supply is Ontario — a British Columbia seller, in a province with no HST at all, charging Ontario HST. [5]

An electronics retailer in Winnipeg sells a laptop delivered to Nova Scotia: 14%. If the customer instead picks the same laptop up in Manitoba, the retailer charges 5% GST plus 7% Manitoba tax, because the place of supply is now the non-participating province where the customer took possession. [5]

Same seller, same product, same week — two tax outcomes, decided entirely by where the goods ended up. That is Schedule IX Part II section 3 in action: shipping to the customer's address deems delivery there and "not … in any other province", while a counter pickup leaves delivery in Manitoba. [34]

Ten determinations, worked

Each row applies the instrument named in the last column. Rates are the verified 2026 rates from the table above.

Rows 1 and 2, and rows 3 and 4, are the two comparisons to internalise: the same goods and the same service change rate on a fact that has nothing to do with your business address, and everything to do with a delivery arrangement or an address field.

The $30,000 threshold, and when to register before you have to

Section 148 of the Excise Tax Act sets the number: a person is a small supplier while taxable supplies do not exceed "$30,000 or, where the person is a public service body, $50,000," measured on consideration that became due or was paid during "the four calendar quarters immediately preceding the particular calendar quarter." [2] Status is lost if the threshold is exceeded in any single calendar quarter. [2]

The CRA states the same test operationally and adds the timing. Charities, public institutions and public service bodies use $50,000, and a charity also qualifies where "gross revenue from your first fiscal year is $250,000 or less." [7] RC4022 confirms the charity test in the same terms: "Charities and public institutions are also considered small suppliers if they meet the gross revenue test of $250,000 or less." [9]

Two effective dates follow, and they differ. Exceed $30,000 in a single calendar quarter and your effective date is "no later than the day of the supply that made you exceed $30,000" — the invoice that broke the threshold is itself taxable, with no grace period. Exceed it across four quarters and it is "no later than the day of your first supply after you stopped being a small supplier." [7]

The trap in the word "worldwide"

The threshold is not measured on sales in your own province, or even in Canada. RC4027 puts it in terms: small supplier means "the total amount of all revenues (before expenses) from your worldwide taxable supplies … is $30,000 or less in any single calendar quarter and in the last four consecutive calendar quarters." [15] RC4022 uses the same worldwide basis for registrants generally, and adds the associated-persons aggregation. [9]

"Before expenses" is the other half of the trap: the test is on revenue, not profit. A consultancy grossing $34,000 and netting $9,000 is over the line.

When voluntary registration pays

A small supplier "may choose to register voluntarily if you make taxable sales, leases, or other supplies in Canada." [7] Registering early is often the right answer, and the arithmetic is simple.

It pays when you buy more than you sell, or sell to businesses. Every dollar of GST/HST on your inputs becomes recoverable, and a business customer does not care what you charge because it recovers the tax too. [11] A pre-revenue company fitting out an office in New Brunswick absorbs 15% on every purchase while unregistered, and recovers all of it once registered. On a $120,000 fit-out that is $18,000 of working capital.

It costs when you sell to consumers and buy little: prices effectively rise by the tax or your margin absorbs it, and you take on a return and a calendar for a credit you barely use.

There is also a case where staying small costs you money. In a retail-sales-tax province, staying out of the provincial registration can forfeit the resale exemption — BC's small sellers are "ineligible for certain PST exemptions, such as the exemption for goods obtained solely for resale." [20] A BC retailer buying inventory below the threshold pays 7% PST on stock it will resell and cannot get it back. Small-seller status is not automatically cheaper.

And one asymmetry decides more cases than any calculation: exempt supplies cannot be fixed by registering. "Generally, you cannot register for the GST/HST if your business provides only exempt supplies", and a registrant is "generally not entitled to claim ITCs on property and services purchased to provide" exempt supplies. [9] If you run a music school, a childcare service, most health practices, or long-term residential rentals, the tax on your inputs is a permanent cost and no election changes that. Zero-rated supplies are the opposite: you charge 0% and still claim full ITCs, which is why exporters are usually in a permanent refund position. [9]

First-year mechanics, federally

The business number and the RT account

Registration produces one business number, with sales tax carried on it as a program account. If you already have a BN it is reused; if not, "you will get one at the same time as your GST/HST account registration." [8] GST/HST sits under the RT program identifier, so a first sales-tax account is your nine-digit BN followed by RT 0001.

Decide three things before you start, because the form asks and the answers have consequences: your effective date of registration, your fiscal year for GST/HST, and your total annual revenue. [8] The revenue figure sets your reporting period; the effective date determines the first invoice you must charge tax on.

Reporting periods are assigned, not chosen

RC4022 sets out the assignment as a table, and the thresholds are worth memorising because they also govern when you must change:

[9]

The revenue that counts is "the total revenue from your taxable supplies of property and services made in Canada in your immediately preceding fiscal year", including zero-rated supplies and "those of your associates", and excluding supplies made outside Canada, zero-rated exports, zero-rated financial services, exempt supplies, taxable sales of capital real property and goodwill. [9]

Crossing a threshold mid-year moves you mid-year, and the obligation is yours to notice: go over $1,500,000 in the first quarter of a fiscal year and "you have to report quarterly beginning on the first day of your second fiscal quarter of that fiscal year", with a phone call to the CRA to tell it. [9]

A short first year is annualised, and this catches new registrants. RC4022's own example: a corporation that registered on 1 November 2024 and reported $300,000 of taxable sales to 31 December 2024 was registered for only 61 days, so its revenue is computed as "$300,000 x 365/61 = $1,795,081.97", and "Since this amount is more than $1,500,000, XYZ Corp will be required to file its returns on a quarterly basis in 2025." [9] A strong two months at the end of a stub year can put you on quarterly filing for a year in which you never approach $1.5 million.

Charities and most listed financial institutions are assigned annual reporting "regardless of their revenues", and can elect otherwise on Form GST20. [9]

Deadlines, and the split between filing and paying

Monthly and quarterly filers "have to file your GST/HST return and remit any amount owing no later than one month after the end of your reporting period." Annual filers "usually have to file your return and remit any amount owing no later than three months after the end of your fiscal year." [9] [10]

Then the exception that trips sole proprietors. Where you are an individual with business income, file annual returns and have a 31 December year-end, "Your GST/HST payment is due by April 30" but "you have until June 15 to file your GST/HST return." [9] The money moves six weeks before the paperwork. A registrant listed financial institution with an annual period gets six months. [9]

Electronic filing is now universal in practice: "The mandatory electronic filing threshold of $1,500,000 … has been removed for reporting periods that begin on or after January 1, 2024, which means that electronic filing is now required for all GST/HST registrants, other than selected listed financial institutions and most charities." [9]

Instalments — the $3,000 test most annual filers do not expect

Annual filing does not mean annual payment. "If you are an annual filer and your net tax for the previous fiscal year was $3,000 or more, and your net tax for the current fiscal year is $3,000 or more, you have to make quarterly instalment payments during the current fiscal year, even if you have a rebate that reduces your amount owing to less than $3,000." [9] Instalments are "due within one month after the end of each of your fiscal quarters" — 30 April, 31 July, 31 October and 31 January. [9]

New registrants are caught by a prorating rule of their own. RC4022's example: a sole proprietor whose first 20-day fiscal year produced $200 of net tax computes "$200 (net tax) ÷ 20 (days) × 365 = $3,650", and because that exceeds $3,000 must make quarterly instalments of $912.50 the following year — with the first instalment and the prior year's balance both due on 30 April. [9] Two payments on one day, in year two, for a business that filed annually precisely to avoid a payment schedule.

There is a safe harbour: pay instalments equal to one quarter of last year's net tax, in full and on time, and "the CRA will not charge instalment interest, even if your net tax for the year is more than the instalments you made." [9] Basing instalments on a current-year estimate that proves too low attracts interest on the shortfall.

Claiming back what you paid, and the documents that decide it

You recover GST/HST on purchases "by claiming input tax credits (ITCs) on line 106," and five conditions must all hold: the purchase was for consumption, use or supply in your commercial activities; you were a registrant in the period the tax was paid or became payable; the tax was paid or payable by you; you hold sufficient documentary evidence; and you claim in time. The expense must also be "reasonable in quality, nature, and cost in relation to the nature of your business." [11]

The limit is generous but finite: most registrants must claim by the due date of the return for the last reporting period ending within four years after the period in which the credit could first have been claimed, while listed financial institutions and persons over $6 million in both the current and preceding fiscal years get two years. [11]

Documentation is the condition that actually fails, and the requirements scale in three bands by the size of the sale — under $100, $100 to $499.99, and $500 or more:

[9]

The operative line is the sixth. From $100 up, you need your supplier's GST/HST registration number on the document — not their word that they are registered. A year of supplier invoices without registration numbers is a year of ITCs you may not be able to defend, and it is the single most common reason a first CRA review reduces a refund. Fix it in your accounts-payable process in month one, not in month thirty.

Below $1 million in revenue there is a simplification worth using. The simplified method for claiming ITCs lets eligible registrants skip separating the tax in their records: eligibility requires worldwide taxable revenues (including associates') of "$1 million or less" in the last fiscal year, the same limit for the preceding quarters of the current year, and "$4 million or less in taxable purchases made in Canada in your last fiscal year". [9] You then total your taxable purchases and multiply by "5/105 for purchases on which you paid 5% GST", "13/113", "14/114" or "15/115" as applicable. [9] No form is required, but "you have to use it for at least one year if you continue to qualify", and listed financial institutions cannot use it. [9] You still keep the underlying invoices.

The quick method: a different way to compute what you remit

The quick method is not a simplification of paperwork but a different remittance formula: you charge tax normally and remit a fixed percentage of your tax-included revenue, giving up ITCs on operating expenses in exchange.

Eligibility is a hard limit and a residency test. Revenues "(including the GST/HST) from annual worldwide taxable supplies … are not more than $400,000 for either the period consisting of the first four consecutive fiscal quarters out of your last five fiscal quarters, or the period consisting of the last four fiscal quarters", and "You must have a permanent establishment in Canada." [38] Note that the $400,000 is measured including the tax, which makes the real sales ceiling lower than it looks.

A long list of businesses is shut out, and it is exactly the list of businesses most likely to hear about the method from their advisers: "persons that provide legal, accounting or actuarial services in the course of their professional practice"; "persons that provide book keeping, financial consulting, tax consulting or tax return preparation services"; listed financial institutions; public institutions; municipalities; non-profit public colleges, school authorities and universities; hospital authorities; charities; and non-profits with at least 40% government funding. [9] [38] An accountant cannot use it; a marketing agency can.

The remittance rate depends on two things at once: where your permanent establishment is, and which rate you charged on the supply. For a service business — one that does not meet the 40%-goods-for-resale test — the rates are:

[38]

For a reseller of goods — where the cost of goods is at least 40% of total revenue — the rates are lower, running from 1.8% on 5% supplies with a 5% PE up to 10.4% on 15% supplies with a 5% PE, and dropping to 4.4%, 3.9% and 3.3% for 13% supplies depending on the province of the establishment. [38]

On top of the rate there is a credit: "you are entitled to a 1% credit on the first $30,000 of revenue from your eligible supplies (including the GST/HST) … in each fiscal year", provided the election "is in effect at the beginning of a fiscal year, or if you are a new registrant, on the day you became a registrant", and unused credit cannot be carried forward. [38]

Worked through: an Ontario consultancy with $200,000 of fees charges 13% HST, collecting $226,000 including tax. Under the quick method it remits 8.8% of $226,000 = $19,888, less the 1% credit on the first $30,000 ($300), so $19,588 — against $26,000 collected. It keeps $6,412 and forfeits ITCs on operating expenses. The method wins whenever the ITCs you give up are worth less than that spread, which is the ordinary case for a service business with low costs, and loses immediately in a year with a large equipment purchase.

Two carve-outs make that less brutal than it sounds. You "cannot claim input tax credits for your operating expenses", but you "may be eligible to claim ITCs for certain purchases such as purchases of land and purchases for which you can claim a capital cost allowance for income tax purposes, such as computers, vehicles, and other large equipment and machinery." [9] So the laptop is still recoverable; the rent, phone and software are not.

You elect on Form GST74, or through My Business Account. The deadline differs by filing frequency: annual filers must elect "by the first day of your second fiscal quarter"; monthly and quarterly filers "by the due date of the return for the reporting period in which you begin using the quick method." [38]

Charging, disclosing, and the tax you forgot to charge

You must tell customers the tax is there, in one of three ways: show that the total "includes the GST/HST", show the tax "separately", or show "the GST/HST rate that applies to the supply." [9]

Liability attaches on invoicing, not on collection: "You are liable for the GST/HST you charge on property or services on the earlier of: the day you receive payment [or] the day the payment is due", and "If you issue an invoice before you receive the payment, include the GST/HST charged on this invoice in the reporting period that includes the date of the invoice, even if you have not yet collected the tax." [9] An unpaid invoice is still a remittance obligation in the period you issued it.

And forgetting to charge does not cancel the tax: "If you are required to charge the GST/HST but did not charge it, you are still liable for the tax. You have to include the GST/HST that you failed to charge in your return for the reporting period during which you should have charged the tax." [9] The tax comes out of your margin, retroactively, unless the customer agrees to pay it late.

Corrections have their own channel. "If you need to change a return you have sent to the CRA, do not file another return." An omitted ITC goes "on your next return, on line 106"; an increase in tax charged or collected is adjusted in My Business Account or by a signed letter to your tax centre quoting the business number, the period and the corrected line numbers. [9]

Penalties and interest, with the sections that impose them

Founders under-price this risk because the headline percentages look small. They compound, and two of them are indexed to how long you wait rather than how much you owe.

Failure to file. Section 280.1 imposes a penalty on "Every person who fails to file a return for a reporting period as and when required", equal to the sum of "(a) an amount equal to 1% of the total of all amounts each of which is an amount that is required to be remitted or paid for the reporting period and was not remitted or paid" and "(b) the amount obtained when one quarter of the amount determined under paragraph (a) is multiplied by the number of complete months, not exceeding 12, from the day on or before which the return was required to be filed to the day on which the return is filed." [36] The CRA expresses the same rule as A + (B × C), where A is 1% of the amount owing, B is 25% of A and C is the number of complete months overdue to a maximum of 12. [9] A return twelve months late on $40,000 of net tax therefore carries $400 + (12 × $100) = $1,600, before interest. Note the relief: no penalty applies where there is "a $0 amount owing or the CRA owes you a refund on that return". [9]

Demand to file. "If you receive a demand to file a return and do not do so, a penalty of $250 will be charged." [9]

Failure to file electronically. Since periods beginning on or after 1 January 2024, paper filing by a registrant required to file electronically costs "$100 for the first return that is not filed electronically" and "$250 for each subsequent return". [9]

Misreporting specified amounts. For recaptured ITCs, grandparented housing resales, the transitional tax adjustment and provincial transitional new housing rebates, penalties are "generally 5% of the difference between what is reported and what should have been reported plus 1% per month until the amounts are corrected (to a maximum of 10%)." [9]

False statements and gross negligence. Section 285 reaches "Every person who knowingly, or under circumstances amounting to gross negligence, makes or participates in, assents to or acquiesces in the making of a false statement or omission" in a return or other document, and the penalty is the greater of $250 and 25% of the understated net tax, overstated rebate or understated tax payable. [37] RC4022 does not describe this penalty at all — it is a statute-only exposure, which is part of why it surprises people. [9]

Interest. Section 280(1) is the charging provision: where "a person fails to remit or pay an amount to the Receiver General when required under this Part, the person shall pay interest at the prescribed rate on the amount, computed for the period beginning on the first day following the day on or before which the amount was required to be remitted or paid and ending on the day the amount is remitted or paid." [35] The prescribed rate is "the basic rate plus 4%", the basic rate being derived from 90-day Treasury bills, "adjusted quarterly, and rounded up to the nearest whole percentage." [9] Interest compounds daily, and section 280(4.1) makes compounded interest itself an amount required to be remitted. [35]

Interest runs the other way too, but at a lower rate and with a delay: the CRA pays interest on a refund only from "30 days after the day you file the return" or 30 days after the period ends, whichever is later, at the basic rate for corporations and "the basic rate plus 2%" for everyone else. [9] You pay basic plus 4%; a corporation is paid basic. That four-point spread is a real argument for filing quarterly when you are in a refund position.

Two consequences beyond money. Neither penalties nor interest on GST/HST is deductible for income tax: "You cannot claim an income tax deduction for any penalty paid or payable for failing to file a GST/HST return", and the same for interest. [9] And "When a corporation fails to remit net GST/HST owing, the directors may be liable to remit that amount" — unremitted sales tax pierces the corporation in a way that ordinary trade debt does not. [9]

If you find an error before the CRA does, the Voluntary Disclosures Program exists: a valid disclosure must be "voluntary", contain "complete information", involve "the application or the potential application of a penalty" and generally cover information "more than one year overdue", and it lets you "avoid penalties and prosecution … You will only have to pay the taxes owing plus interest." [9] The word doing the work is "voluntary" — it must be before "any compliance action being initiated against you".

The four provincial regimes, each from its own statute

A federal GST/HST registration is not a licence to sell into a provincial-tax province. Each of the four has its own Act, its own registration, its own definitions of what is taxable, and its own reach over sellers who have no premises, staff or presence in the province at all. This section takes each from its own legislation and its own bulletins.

British Columbia: the widest reach in Canada, and a statute that says so

What the tax is on. The Provincial Sales Tax Act charges 7% three separate times, in three separate sections. On goods: "the rate of tax payable … on tangible personal property is 7% of the purchase price" (s. 34(1)), imposed on the buyer by s. 37(1) — "A purchaser who purchases tangible personal property at a sale in British Columbia must pay to the government tax at the applicable rate under section 34." Liquor is 10% (s. 34(2)). [42] On software: "A purchaser in British Columbia who purchases software for use on, through or with an electronic device ordinarily situated in British Columbia must pay to the government tax at the rate of 7%" (s. 105(1)). On telecommunication services: 7% under s. 130(1). [42] The Act is "current to September 1, 2026."

"Software" is defined far more broadly than most founders assume. Section 1 includes "software that is delivered or accessed by any means", "infrastructure as a service", "software as a service", "an application programming interface", and the right to receive updates. [42] The ministry's guidance applies that to things nobody files under "software": "Web hosting is a type of electronic storage and therefore is considered infrastructure as a service (IaaS). As a result, web hosting is taxable as software", and the same for data backup. [43]

The line between a taxable software subscription and an untaxed content subscription is drawn on functionality: "if a customer purchases access to a website that provides them with the ability to employ some degree of functionality on the website beyond merely viewing website content, the customer is purchasing a right to access software, which is subject to PST", with indicators including that "the functionality of the website goes beyond merely viewing content", "the customer can use the website to manipulate files or create new files", and that the usage agreement grants a software licence. [43]

Telecommunication services are equally broad — phone, fax, television, radio, internet access, email, text, and the right "to download, view or access … audio books, music, ringtones … TV programs, movies and other videos" by a device ordinarily situated in BC, all at 7% on "the total purchase price, which includes sign-up, access, airtime, usage, service and other charges". [43] Streaming is inside this definition. The statutory definitions match (s. 1, "telecommunication service"). [42]

Where the device is decides the tax, and the ministry publishes the tie-breakers. Stationary devices "are ordinarily situated in B.C. if they're located at an address in B.C.", and where the billing address differs the provider "should use the address where they provide the service or the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the device instead of the billing address" — with the published example of a company whose BC office computers are billed to a Toronto head office, where "As the devices are ordinarily situated in B.C., PST applies to the internet services." [43] Mobile devices generally follow the billing address, failing which the area code, the IP address or the address where the service is provided. [43] And the burden is on the seller: "Service providers that do not charge PST because their customer's electronic device is not ordinarily situated in B.C. must keep evidence to show why they did not collect PST." [43]

Five out-of-province scenarios, not four. The current edition of Bulletin PST 001 — "Issued: October 2012, Revised: August 2023" — sets out five, three for sellers elsewhere in Canada and two that reach sellers anywhere in the world. [19]

[19]

Scenario 2 is the one that catches technology businesses with no BC presence and almost no BC revenue: a Toronto SaaS company that runs one geo-targeted campaign into Vancouver and signs a single $400 customer is inside it, because there is no threshold. Scenario 4 is the one that catches e-commerce: a third-party fulfilment warehouse in Richmond creates a registration duty for a seller in Ohio.

On soliciting, the bulletin draws the line worth memorising: "If you have only a website that is accessible from anywhere in the world, which does not target B.C. customers, you are not soliciting sales in B.C. However, if you have a website and also solicit sales in B.C. by other means, such as through targeted internet advertisements, promotional flyers or newspaper advertisements, you are soliciting sales in B.C." [19] One geo-targeted campaign into Vancouver crosses it. Note also that Scenario 4's lease limb is a prohibition, not merely a duty: without a valid PST number "you are prohibited from leasing goods in these circumstances." [19]

The statute backs all of this with prohibitions rather than requests. Section 169 says "A vendor must not sell or provide tangible personal property in British Columbia at a retail sale unless the vendor … is registered under section 168 at the time of sale", with parallel subsections for software and taxable services. [42] Section 179(2) requires a collector to remit "amounts of tax levied under this Act by the collector, whether or not collected", and s. 179(3) requires anyone who collects "an amount as if it were tax" to remit it too. [42] Section 184 deems collected tax to be "held in trust for the government" and "held separate from and … not form a part of the person's money, assets or estate". [42] That trust characterisation is why the penalty for keeping it is so severe.

The ministry restates the remittance rule in plainer words, and extends it to your own pricing errors: "You must report and remit to us all PST … you have charged, whether or not you have actually collected it from your customer. This includes tax you may have charged incorrectly, such as: At an incorrect rate (for example, you charged 10% PST on general goods instead of 7%) [or] On a non-taxable good or service." [21] Over-charging is not a windfall and not a wash; it is a remittance obligation, and your customer's remedy is a refund claim against the province.

Registration, filing and the commission. Registration is online through eTaxBC, in person at a Service BC Centre, or by fax or mail on Form FIN 418 — though the ministry's forms page now lists FIN 418 as online only, with no downloadable PDF, so the paper route described in the bulletin no longer has a form behind it on the website. [19] [44] Online registration "takes approximately 15 to 25 minutes", the number issued "is 11 characters long and is in this format: PST-1234-5678", and "Your registration can take up to 21 business days to be processed." [18]

Reporting periods are assigned by PST collectable per year — monthly only above $12,000, monthly or quarterly from $6,000 to $12,000, quarterly or semi-annual from $3,000 to $6,000, and quarterly, semi-annual or annual at $3,000 or less — with returns and payment "received on or before the last day of the month following the end of the reporting period." [21] Electronic filing is mandatory at "$1.5 million or more in total Canadian sales and leases in the last 12 months", and — from 1 October 2026 — for anyone selling the newly taxable professional services regardless of size. [21]

Filing on time pays a small, real amount: "If you are registered for PST and report and pay on time, you are entitled to receive a commission of up to $198 per reporting period", and "If you have more than one PST account, you may claim commission for only one account." [21] The statutory basis is s. 185(1) of the Act. [42]

And the sanction for not registering is a filing frequency. "If you're required to be registered but don't apply, your filing period is monthly" — you do not get the small-business calendar you would have qualified for, and you must "Collect PST on your sales and leases, and Report and pay the PST to us by the due date each month". [21] Not registering also does not remove the duty: "If you're required to register, but you do not register, it does not remove your obligation to collect and remit PST. You're still considered a collector." [18]

Penalties are the steepest on this page. Bulletin CTB 005, "Issued: July 2011, Revised: February 2026", sets out the ladder. The late-filing penalty is (5% × A) + (1% × A × B), where A is the amount not levied, remitted or paid at the filing due date and B is the number of complete months late to a maximum of 12; the bulletin's own worked example puts a $1,000 return one month late at "($1,000 × 5%) + ($1,000 × 1% × 1) = $60." [45] Compare the federal equivalent: the same $1,000, one month late, costs $12.50 federally and $60 in British Columbia.

Above that sit three assessment penalties: 10% "on first assessments if the facts indicate you were aware of the obligation but did not charge, collect, pay or remit the correct amount", and on all assessments where "you were previously advised of an error … and you make the same error again"; 25% for "Wilful Evasion, Fraud or Gross Negligence"; and 100% where "Taxes collected are deemed funds held in trust for the province … if you collected tax and wilfully did not remit it." [45] The statute authorises each — s. 205(a) the 100%, s. 205(b) the 25%, s. 205(c) the 10% — and s. 202 adds a separate 25% penalty for wilfully failing to register. [42] Interest "is calculated and compounded monthly", with a grace rule: "No additional interest is applied if you pay the amount in full within 30 days from the issue date on the Notice of Assessment." [45] At the far end, s. 230(4) exposes an individual to "a fine of not less than 50% and not more than 200% of the amount of tax not levied, remitted or paid", imprisonment for up to two years, or both. [42]

Bad debts are recoverable, within four years. If you remitted tax you never collected and later write the account off, "you may be eligible to claim an adjustment on your tax return or apply for a refund". The limits are strict: "the bad debt must be written off within four years of the date you paid or remitted the tax, and we must receive your refund claim within four years from the date the bad debt was written off", and "we cannot issue a refund of less than $10." [46]

Records: five years. "You must keep books, records and any documentation relating to your business for 5 years", destroying earlier records only at your discretion absent an outstanding appeal, and needing "written permission from us" to destroy them sooner. [47]

What changes on 1 October 2026. Budget 2026 extends the PST to five classes of professional service: "Accounting services, including bookkeeping and assurance services"; "Architectural services"; "Engineering and geoscience services"; "Security services, including private investigation services"; and "Non-residential real estate services", itemised as rental property management, strata management and trading services for non-residential real estate. [18] The ministry directs providers to "Notice 2026-001: Notice to providers of professional services" for registration timelines. [18] On the same date, "residential phone services are no longer exempt from PST", the current exemption running only "until September 30, 2026." [43]

If you run an accounting, architecture, engineering, geoscience, security or non-residential real-estate practice and serve BC clients, your position changes weeks after this page's verification date, and the mandatory-electronic-filing rule catches you on day one regardless of revenue. See the British Columbia province guide.

A documentation note. Bulletin PST 002, Charging, Collecting and Remitting PST, no longer exists: it has been withdrawn and its subject matter redistributed across the "Small business guide to PST" and "Reporting and paying PST" pages and Bulletins CTB 001 and CTB 005, all cited above. Bulletin PST 107 has likewise been retired as a PDF and republished as a web page dated 13 July 2026, which the ministry's index labels "(previously published as Bulletin PST 107)". Any checklist still citing PST 002 or the PST 107 PDF is citing documents the province has removed.

Saskatchewan: no threshold at all, and the duty lands on the buyer too

Saskatchewan is the outlier in Canada. There is no small-supplier relief from PST: "All businesses operating in Saskatchewan must be licensed or registered with the Ministry of Finance for PST purposes." [22] Depending on the business you get either a vendor's licence number or a registered consumer number. [23]

That distinction matters more than it looks. A vendor's licence is for a business that sells taxable goods or services and must therefore collect the 6% from customers. A registered consumer number is for a business that does not sell taxable items but buys them — often from out-of-province suppliers who do not collect — and must self-assess. A consultancy with no taxable sales still lands in the second category. So a one-person consultancy billing $20,000 a year may have no federal registration obligation and still owe a Saskatchewan one: the federal $30,000 threshold buys you nothing here, and there is no equivalent provincial number to hide behind.

The rate is 6%, "a six per cent sales tax", applied to goods and to services "consumed or used in Saskatchewan" — a consumption test, not a delivery test, which is why professional services supplied remotely into the province need checking rather than assuming. [22]

Saskatchewan also puts a duty on the buyer, which is the province's real enforcement mechanism. Where you purchase from "a supplier who did not collect the tax, such as an unlicensed supplier located outside Saskatchewan, you must self-assess and pay the PST directly to the Revenue Division." [22] An unregistered out-of-province vendor therefore saves its Saskatchewan customer no tax at all — it moves the paperwork onto the customer, who notices, and who now has a reason to buy from your registered competitor. In Saskatchewan, registering is a sales argument before it is a compliance one.

Registration runs through SETS, the province's online tax service, the online new-business form, an existing SETS login, or by mail. [23]

Filing frequency is assigned by tax collectable: annual up to $4,800, quarterly from $4,800 to $12,000, monthly above $12,000. Returns are due on the 20th of the following month on paper, or the last day of that month if you file and pay electronically — the extension requires both. And the nil-return rule is explicit: "if there is no tax to report for the period, you must still file a 'NIL' return." [24] A dormant Saskatchewan registration is not a dormant obligation. See the Saskatchewan province guide.

Manitoba: a conjunctive nexus test, an inventory trap, and a threshold that is not the federal one

Manitoba requires an RST number from "any person carrying on a business in Manitoba, except for small businesses with annual taxable sales under $30,000 … before making any taxable sales in the province." [26] Cross the threshold and you get one month to register; applying is free.

The $30,000 matching the federal number is a coincidence, not harmonisation. The federal test looks at worldwide taxable supplies over four consecutive calendar quarters and aggregates associated persons; Manitoba's looks at annual taxable sales. You can be over one and under the other, and the two are computed from different books.

Sub-threshold Manitoba businesses do not simply ignore the tax — they switch sides of it. They "pay RST on their purchases and not collect RST on the selling price", must state on the invoice that RST is included in the price, and "RST must not be itemized on the invoice." [26] That is an unusual, positively worded prohibition: showing RST as a line item while under the threshold is itself a breach. The exception is also unavailable to businesses using out-of-province suppliers that do not collect Manitoba RST, to tobacco and liquor sellers, and to out-of-province businesses that have not paid RST on goods bought for resale in Manitoba. [26]

For an out-of-province seller, registration is required where the seller causes the goods to be delivered in Manitoba, and "solicits the order for the sale in Manitoba, directly or through an agent, by advertising or any other means," and accepts orders originating in Manitoba — or, independently, where "the seller holds inventory of taxable goods in the province." [26] Selling only exempt goods, or only goods for resale, keeps you out.

Compare the two solicitation tests carefully, because they are not the same. British Columbia carves out a passive website: a site "accessible from anywhere in the world, which does not target B.C. customers" is not solicitation. [19] Manitoba's wording — "by advertising or any other means" — contains no such carve-out. [26] A business relying on BC's website safe harbour should not assume Manitoba grants the same one.

There is a separate trap for buyers, and it is the one that catches service businesses with no Manitoba sales at all: a Manitoba vendor that brings in, "in each of two or more months, within the same calendar year, tangible personal property purchased outside of the province with a fair value of $800 or more," must register and self-assess RST. [26] Two months of ordering equipment from Ontario creates a registration obligation on its own, independent of anything you sell.

You register through TAXcess or on paper, free of charge, and you will hold two numbers that are not interchangeable: a 7-digit RST number and a 15-digit account number that appears on the return. [26] Filing frequency follows tax collectable — monthly at $5,000 or more per month, quarterly from $500 to $4,999, annual under $500 — and the deadline carries a clock time: "no later than 4:30 p.m. on the 20th day of the month following" the period, moving to the next working day when the 20th is a weekend or holiday, with annual returns due by 20 January. [26] It is the only sales-tax deadline in Canada expressed as a time of day. See the Manitoba province guide.

Quebec: the QST, from the statute rather than from the administrator

Revenu Québec's own website refuses automated access, and an earlier version of this page therefore declined to state Quebec's rules and flagged them as unverified. That was the right call on the evidence then available, but it was not the only route to the facts: the Act respecting the Québec sales tax is published in full by the Éditeur officiel du Québec on LégisQuébec, in French and English, and it answers every question the administrator's pages would have. Everything in this section comes from the statute itself. [48]

The rate and the charge. Article 16 is the Quebec analogue of section 165: "Every recipient of a taxable supply made in Québec shall pay to the Minister of Revenue a tax in respect of the supply calculated at the rate of 9.975% on the value of the consideration for the supply. However, the rate of the tax in respect of a taxable supply that is a zero-rated supply is 0%." [48]

Article 17 adds a self-assessment charge that has no clean federal equivalent: a person who "brings into Québec corporeal property for consumption or use in Québec" pays 9.975% on the value of the property, unless tax was already payable on the supply or the person is a registrant bringing it in exclusively for commercial activities. [48] There is a de minimis: property coming from elsewhere in Canada is outside the charge where the total tax that would be payable "is $35 or less in the calendar month" in which it was brought in. [48]

The first $30,000 threshold — the ordinary one. Article 294 mirrors the federal small-supplier test, with the same two numbers: a person is a small supplier for a calendar quarter and the following month where the relevant total "does not exceed the sum of the total referred to in paragraph 2 and $30,000 or, where the person is a public service body, $50,000". [48]

The registration duty is article 407: "Every person who makes a taxable supply in Québec in the course of a commercial activity engaged in by the person in Québec is required to be registered, except where (1) the person is a small supplier; (2) the only commercial activity of the person is making supplies of immovables by way of sale otherwise than in the course of a business; or (3) the person is not resident in Québec and does not carry on any business in Québec." [48]

That third exception is the whole reason the second regime exists. Ordinary registration cannot reach a supplier with no Québec presence, so Québec built a parallel one.

The second $30,000 threshold — the specified registration system. Article 477.5 imposes it: "Every person (other than a registrant or a person that carries on a business in Québec) that is a specified supplier at any time, a distribution platform operator in respect of a supply made at any time or an accommodation platform operator in respect of a supply made at any time is required at that time to be registered under this division if the threshold amount of the person for any period of 12 months that includes that time (other than a period that begins before 1 July 2021) exceeds $30,000." [48] The application "must be filed with the Minister by a person on or before the day from which the person is required to be registered" — on the day the duty arises, not afterwards.

The regime reaches three kinds of person: foreign and Canadian specified suppliers, distribution platform operators, and accommodation platform operators, the latter defined by reference to a "digital platform through which a person facilitates the making of a supply of short-term accommodation situated in Québec by another person that is not registered". [48] A marketplace or a short-term rental platform is registered in its own right, on its own threshold.

Article 477.6 makes a registered specified supplier a collection agent — it "shall, as a mandatary of the Minister, collect the tax payable by the specified Québec consumer under section 16" — and article 477.7 requires the invoice or agreement to show either the tax "in a manner that clearly indicates the amount of the tax" or that the amount "includes the tax payable". [48]

Why a specified registrant gets no input tax refunds. Quebec does not say so in a single prohibition; it says so through definitions, and the chain is worth following because it is the difference between a recoverable tax and a permanent cost.

1. Input tax refunds are granted by article 199, and only to a person who is a registrant: an ITR arises where tax becomes payable "during a reporting period of the person during which the person is a registrant". [48]
2. "Registrant" is defined in article 1 as "a person who is registered, or who is required to be registered, under Division I of Chapter VIII". [48]
3. The specified system registers you under Division II, and article 477.5 applies expressly to a person "other than a registrant". [48]
4. The arithmetic confirms it. Article 477.11 computes a Division II person's "specified net tax" as A − B, where A is the tax collected or collectible under article 16; there is no input-tax-refund element in the formula at all. [48]

So a specified registrant collects 9.975% and remits it, and every dollar of QST on its own Québec costs is a permanent expense. This mirrors the federal simplified regime exactly, and the decision is the same one: if you have real Québec input tax, being outside the ordinary system is expensive.

Specified-system mechanics. The reporting period "corresponds to the calendar quarter" (art. 477.8); returns are filed "within the month following the end of the reporting period" (art. 477.10); positive specified net tax is remitted by the filing deadline and a negative amount can be claimed as a refund (art. 477.13, 477.14). [48] A foreign supplier may elect to determine its specified net tax in a foreign currency, in which case the Minister pays any refund "in that currency" (arts. 477.14, 477.15). [48]

What this changes for the ordinary Quebec business. If you are located in Quebec, you are a Division I registrant: you charge 5% GST and 9.975% QST, you claim ITCs federally and input tax refunds provincially under article 199, and both returns go to Revenu Québec because it administers the federal tax here as well. [9] The QST is a recoverable, value-added tax for you — structurally unlike BC PST, Saskatchewan PST or Manitoba RST, and structurally like the HST. That is the single most important correction this section makes: Quebec's provincial tax behaves like a VAT, not like a retail sales tax, and modelling it as an unrecoverable cost overstates your costs by nearly ten points on every business input.

If you sell into Quebec from outside it and carry on no business there, article 407(3) keeps you out of ordinary registration, and article 477.5 pulls you into the specified system once you pass $30,000 over any 12 months — with quarterly returns and no input tax refunds. See the Quebec province guide and, for foreign founders, the from-abroad Quebec guide.

One honest limit. This section is built from the statute, not from Revenu Québec's administrative guidance, because revenuquebec.ca refuses automated access. Registration forms, published administrative positions, and Revenu Québec's own filing-frequency practice for Division I registrants are therefore not stated here. Confirm the procedural detail with Revenu Québec directly. [27] [28]

What Saskatchewan actually taxes, and what getting it wrong costs

Saskatchewan's tax base is wider than most founders expect, because services are enumerated in the statute rather than left to a general rule. Section 3(1)(k) of The Provincial Sales Tax Act — consolidated to 25 June 2025 — lists them, and the list reads like a directory of professional services: "computer services", "credit reporting, credit rating or collection services", "accommodation services", "real estate services", "repair or installation services", "security or private investigation services", "telecommunication services", "veterinary services", "accounting services", "advertising services", "architectural services", "commercial building cleaning services", "employment placement services", "engineering services", "legal services", services relating to real property, and "electronic distribution services that are delivered, streamed or accessed through an electronic distribution platform". [53]

Bulletin PST-46, "Issued: December 1995, Revised: February 2025", turns that list into an operational instruction: "Individuals or businesses engaged in the following activities are providing taxable services and must be licensed as vendors to collect tax on these services", and adds lodging "for a period of less than 30 consecutive days", extended warranties, dry cleaning, printing-adjacent services and "Internet services". [50]

Two things follow that are easy to miss. Saskatchewan taxes accounting, engineering, architectural and legal services today — the same categories British Columbia only reaches on 1 October 2026. A national professional-services firm is already inside Saskatchewan's base. And Saskatchewan taxes insurance contracts: PST-5 describes the tax as applying "to taxable goods and services and insurance contracts consumed or used in Saskatchewan." [49] That makes three provinces — Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador and Saskatchewan — that tax insurance outside the GST/HST system.

PST-5 ("Issued: June 1984, Revised: July 2025") also sets out the non-resident test in three cumulative acts: a non-resident makes "retail sales in the province" where it "Makes tangible personal property available for purchase in Saskatchewan; Accepts orders to purchase tangible personal property that originate in Saskatchewan; and, Causes the tangible personal property to be delivered in Saskatchewan." [49] Note what is absent: no solicitation limb, and no revenue threshold. Saskatchewan's test is narrower than BC's in one respect and far broader in another.

The bulletin also warns what happens next: "Non-resident businesses that do not collect and remit the tax due on sales to Saskatchewan consumers could be assessed penalty and interest charges in an audit, in addition to the taxes that are due." [49]

Marketplaces and platforms collect instead of you. Since the Act was amended to add "marketplace facilitator" and "marketplace seller" as defined terms, platform operators register in their own right: "Marketplace facilitators and operators of electronic distribution platforms and online accommodation platforms must be licensed for purposes of collecting and remitting Saskatchewan PST." [49] [53]

The relief for the seller is real but conditional. Information Notice IN 2020-08 ("Issued: June 2020, Revised: March 2022") says a marketplace seller selling "exclusively" through a licensed facilitator "is not required to be licensed as a vendor", but only if it verifies two things: that the operator "holds a valid PST licence" and that it "is collecting Saskatchewan PST on sales … made through their platform". [51] "Exclusively" is doing real work — one direct sale off-platform and the exemption is gone. Saskatchewan publishes an online registry for exactly this check, and suppliers "are required to use the registry to verify that a business holds a valid PST vendor licence before selling goods or services tax free for resale." [49] Platform fees themselves are partly taxable: charges "that cover taxable services, such as website design, update or maintenance, support services, marketing services" are subject to PST, while "charges in relation to sales commission and transaction processing fees are not". [51]

Penalties changed on 1 October 2024, and the cap came off. Saskatchewan's penalty regime is not in the PST Act — s. 8.1 defers collection and enforcement to the general revenue-administration framework — but Bulletin GENERAL-1, "Issued: September 2024", sets it out. [52] [53]

[52]

The removal of the $500 cap on the failure-to-pay penalty is the change that matters: a 10% penalty with no maximum turns a large late remittance from an annoyance into a material loss. Interest is "at the prime interest rate plus 3 per cent … from the date the tax was to have been remitted", reset every six months, not applied to penalty charges, and waived beyond the assessment if the whole assessment is paid "within 30 days of the assessment date." [52]

Two administrative details differ from British Columbia and are worth transcribing into your calendar. Saskatchewan requires records to be kept six years — "Records that are at least six years old may be destroyed without obtaining permission" — where British Columbia requires five. [49] [47] And the electronic-filing extension is precisely stated: "The due date for PST returns filed and paid electronically is the last day of the month following the end of the reporting period. The due date for non-electronic filing … is the 20th day of the month". [49] Filing electronically but paying by cheque forfeits the extension, because the rule requires both.

Manitoba: streaming, platforms, and two numbers that recently changed

The Manitoba base is set by section 3(1) and section 4(1) of The Retail Sales Tax Act, and Bulletin No. 030, "Summary of Taxable and Exempt Goods and Services", revised 2 July 2026, is the working index to it. [56] [57]

Streaming and online platforms have been inside the base since 1 December 2021. Bulletin No. 064, "Issued: May 2021. Revised: May 2023", defines a streaming service as a subscription conferring "the right, whether exercised or not, to download, view or access, by means of an electronic device" music, audio programs "(including podcasts or radio broadcasts but excluding audiobooks)", or "Television programs, movies or other video", and applies RST to those sales "to purchasers that are ordinarily resident in Manitoba". [54] Audiobooks are carved out of the streaming definition; BC's telecommunication rules put them in. Two provinces, two answers, same product.

For platforms the duty is the operator's and it is unconditional: "The online sales platform operator is responsible for the proper collection of RST, including determining the tax status of goods and services for sale, and is required to collect and remit RST on all taxable sales made through their platforms, regardless of whether the online seller is registered as a vendor or in the case of goods, they are shipped to the purchaser in Manitoba from an address outside of Canada." [54] The transitional refund provision in the same bulletin fixes the operative date at 1 December 2021. [54]

The $30,000 registration exception is recent, and Manitoba publishes the mechanics of leaving and re-entering it. Bulletin 004 was revised in June 2024 to carry it, alongside a notice titled "Registration Requirement Eliminated for Small Business" dated 2 March 2024. [26] Two mechanics matter. A registered business that drops under the threshold "may cancel their RST number", but "must self-assess RST on any existing inventory, purchased tax exempt for resale while registered, prior to their RST number being cancelled" — deregistering triggers a tax bill on the stock you bought exempt. [26] And on the way up, "Businesses are given one month to register and implement a system to collect and remit RST on their sales." [26]

Interest is published, unlike British Columbia's. Manitoba sets the rate "every January 1 and July 1", and it is 7.45% from 1 July 2026 to 31 December 2026, down from 7.95% a year earlier. [55] Bulletin 004 refers to penalty charges on late returns without quantifying them, and no Manitoba bulletin on penalties was found in the province's own 153-row publication index — so the RST penalty percentages are stated here as unpublished rather than guessed. [26]

Quebec: place of supply, filing bands and penalties, from the statute

Quebec's place-of-supply rules are not a separate system to learn — they are, almost word for word, the federal rules. Compare them directly.

Goods. Article 22.7: "A supply of corporeal movable property by way of sale is deemed to be made in Québec if the property is delivered in Québec to the recipient of the supply." [48] That is Schedule IX Part II section 1 in Quebec's vocabulary, with the deeming rules for what counts as delivery at article 22.9.

Services. Article 22.15.0.1 is the address cascade, and it tracks the federal regulation clause by clause: a service is supplied in Québec if "in the ordinary course of the supplier's business, the supplier obtains an address in Québec that is (1) if the supplier obtains only one address that is a home or a business address in Canada of the recipient, the home or business address obtained by the supplier; (2) if the supplier obtains more than one address described in subparagraph 1, the address described in that subparagraph that is most closely connected with the supply; or (3) in any other case, the address in Canada of the recipient that is most closely connected with the supply." [48] The first paragraph "does not apply … where the service is performed entirely outside Canada."

Intangibles. Article 22.11.1: a supply of incorporeal movable property whose "Canadian rights can only be used primarily in Québec is deemed to be made in Québec", with a companion rule at article 22.11.2 carrying the same $300 in-person carve-out the federal regulation uses. [48]

The practical payoff is that one place-of-supply determination usually serves both taxes. If the federal rules put a service in Quebec, article 22.15.0.1 will almost always agree, because both run on the same address obtained in the same ordinary course of business. You do not need two answers; you need one, documented once.

Filing bands mirror the federal ones too. Article 459.0.1 assigns a monthly reporting period where "the threshold amount of the registrant for the fiscal year or fiscal quarter … exceeds $6,000,000", and article 461 ends the quarterly-filing election once "the threshold amount of the person for the second or third fiscal quarter … exceeds $1,500,000." [48] Article 468 requires a return for every reporting period, with six months for a listed financial institution filing annually; article 470 requires a non-registrant with net tax to remit to file "within one month after the end of the reporting period." [48] The $1.5 million and $6 million lines are the same numbers as the federal ones, which is a rare mercy: a Quebec registrant's two returns fall due on the same cadence.

Penalties and interest are in a different Act. The Tax Administration Act carries them, and the numbers are harsher than the federal equivalents in one respect and gentler in another. Section 59: a person who fails to file a return as and when prescribed "incurs a penalty of $25 for each day during which the failure continues, up to $2,500." [58] That is a flat daily charge with a hard cap, unlike the federal percentage-of-tax formula — cheaper on a large liability, far more expensive on a small one, and it reaches $2,500 in 100 days.

Section 59.2 is the one to fear, because it escalates on the calendar rather than on the amount:

"Every person who fails to deduct, withhold or collect an amount he was required to deduct, withhold or collect under a fiscal law incurs a penalty of 15% of that amount. Every person who fails, within the time prescribed by law or by an order of the Minister, to pay or remit an amount he was required to pay or remit under a fiscal law incurs a penalty equal to (a) 7% of that amount, where the delay does not exceed seven days; (b) 11% of that amount, where the delay does not exceed 14 days; or (c) 15% of that amount, in other cases."

[58]

Read the thresholds: 7% at one week late, 11% at two weeks, 15% thereafter. A remittance fifteen days late costs 15% of the amount — where the federal penalty for a month's delay is 1% plus a quarter of that. Quebec charges more for being slightly late than Ottawa charges for being very late, and the escalation is complete within a fortnight.

Interest is charged under section 28 "at the rate determined according to the rules provided by regulation", with refund interest set by reference to Québec savings bonds and published quarterly in the Gazette officielle du Québec. [58] The rate itself is a moving regulatory figure and is not stated here.

One point of relief: Quebec's large-business restrictions on input tax refunds have been repealed, so a Division I registrant's ITR entitlement under article 199 is not clawed back by size the way it was under the former regime. [48]

Non-residents of Canada: two federal doors

For a business with no presence in Canada, the first question is factual, not formal. Whether you are carrying on business in Canada is "a question of fact requiring consideration of all relevant facts," weighing where your agents are, where delivery happens, where payment is made, whether you hold inventory here and where contracts are made. [15] There is no bright line.

Section 143 is the statutory backdrop: a non-resident's supply of personal property or a service made in Canada is "deemed to be made outside Canada" unless it is made in the course of a business carried on in Canada, or the person is registered, or the fulfilment-warehouse rule applies, or it is an admission the non-resident did not buy from someone else. [32]

Normal registration. A non-resident carrying on business in Canada and not a small supplier registers in the ordinary way, with the ordinary consequences including input tax credits, against the worldwide $30,000 threshold. Such a registrant must generally post security of "50% of your estimated net tax" for the 12 months after registering, minimum $5,000 and maximum $1 million — waived where you estimate Canadian taxable supplies of "not more than $100,000 annually and your net tax will be between $3,000 remittable and $3,000 refundable annually." [15] That is a real cash-flow event, routinely omitted from incorporation checklists.

Simplified registration, for the digital economy. Since 1 July 2021 a lighter regime applies to non-resident vendors of digital products and services and to distribution and accommodation platform operators. [12] Four categories are caught: cross-border digital products and services; the supply of qualifying goods in Canada; platform-based short-term accommodation; and distribution platform operators facilitating any of them. [13] The threshold is "more than $30,000 CAD" over a 12-month period. [14] Simplified is available for digital products and services and for platform-based accommodation but not for the supply of qualifying goods, and you must choose one: "You may not be registered under both at the same time." [13]

The price of the simpler regime is the figure that should drive the decision: a simplified registrant "would not be allowed to claim input tax credits (ITC)." [14] The CRA's definition of "registrant" in RC4022 makes the same structural point the Quebec statute makes: it "generally excludes a person that is registered or required to be registered under special rules applicable to digital economy businesses". [9]

Federal and Quebec, side by side. A foreign SaaS business selling to Canadian consumers faces two parallel regimes with the same threshold and the same trade-off, and must assess each separately:

Work out your Canadian and Québec input tax before picking a door — and note that you may be inside the federal simplified regime and the Québec specified system at the same time, with two registrations, two returns and two remittances. Track B founders should read this alongside the from-abroad track and /business-address/non-residents/.

Registration, counter by counter

There is no single window in Canada. A business selling into four provinces can hold four registrations with four different bodies, obtained four different ways, each with its own number format.

Two practical notes. British Columbia's 21 business days is the only published lead time on this table, and it is roughly a calendar month — so a BC registration is not a same-week fix for a launch date, and Scenarios 2 and 4 of Bulletin PST 001 require you to be registered before the first supply, not merely to have applied. [19] And before you touch the federal form, settle three answers, because they are asked and they bind: your effective date of registration, your GST/HST fiscal year, and your total annual revenue. [8]

Six businesses, priced

Each profile is worked through the rules above with the verified rates. Figures are arithmetic on those rates, not quotations, and none of them is advice about your own facts.

1. A Montreal service business selling Canada-wide

A consultancy in Griffintown, $240,000 of fees, clients in four provinces.

Who you deal with. One counterparty for both taxes: Revenu Québec administers the GST/HST in Quebec, and a business physically located there files with Revenu Québec on its forms. [9] Ignore any checklist that sends you to the CRA to open a GST/HST account.

What you charge. Not 14.975% to everyone. Services follow the recipient's address obtained in the ordinary course of business. [30] So on $60,000 of fees to each of four clients: a Montreal client pays 5% GST + 9.975% QST ($8,985); a Toronto client 13% ($7,800); a Halifax client 14% ($8,400); a Calgary client 5% ($3,000). One registration, four rates, one month. [6]

What you recover. Both taxes on your Quebec inputs: ITCs federally and input tax refunds under article 199 provincially, because you are a Division I registrant. [48] On $40,000 of Quebec operating costs that is roughly $3,990 of QST and $2,000 of GST recovered — money an equivalent BC business would lose on the provincial half.

Where you are still exposed. Selling services into British Columbia is generally outside BC PST unless you supply software or telecommunication services — and Scenario 2 has no revenue threshold. [19] From 1 October 2026 the BC expansion reaches accounting, architecture, engineering and geoscience, non-residential real estate and security services. [18] And Saskatchewan's PST reaches services "consumed or used in Saskatchewan," with universal licensing and no threshold — so a single Regina client is worth checking, not assuming away. [22]

2. An online seller in Alberta shipping everywhere

$500,000 of goods, shipped nationally, no premises outside Alberta.

Federal. At $500,000 you are well over the threshold and assigned an annual reporting period, since you are under $1.5 million — but a national shipper in a refund or near-refund position should consider electing quarterly. [9]

Rates. Goods follow delivery, and delivery is deemed at the destination you ship to. [34] Ship to Ontario, charge 13%; Nova Scotia, 14%; New Brunswick, PEI or Newfoundland and Labrador, 15%; within Alberta or into Saskatchewan, Manitoba, BC or the territories, 5% federally. [6] The CRA's own example is a Vancouver store charging 13% into Toronto — a seller in a non-HST province charging HST. [5]

The provincial layer, which Alberta does nothing to protect you from. In British Columbia, selling taxable goods plus accepting BC orders plus delivering into BC plus soliciting puts you in Scenario 1; add more than $10,000 of BC revenue over the previous or next 12 months and it is Scenario 3; use a BC fulfilment house and it is Scenario 4, with no threshold at all. [19] A plain website that does not target BC is not solicitation; a geo-targeted ad campaign is. In Manitoba, delivery plus solicitation "by advertising or any other means" plus accepting Manitoba orders triggers registration, as does holding inventory there. [26] In Saskatchewan, if you do not register your customers must self-assess the PST themselves. [22]

If a marketplace facilitator collects payment from your customers, BC puts the registration duty on the facilitator rather than you. [18] Check what your platform actually does. See the Alberta province guide.

3. A British Columbia consultant with Quebec clients

GST/HST rate. Quebec is a non-participating province, so a service supplied to a Quebec client attracts 5% GST, not 13% or 15%, and the recipient-address rule puts the place of supply in Quebec. [6]

Where you file that 5%. You are located in British Columbia, not Quebec, so RC4022's rule sending Quebec-located businesses to Revenu Québec does not apply; you file with the CRA. [9] The test is where your business is, not where your customer is.

QST. Article 407(3) keeps you out of ordinary Quebec registration if you are not resident there and carry on no business there. But article 477.5 is a separate question: if you are a specified supplier and your threshold amount exceeds $30,000 over any 12 months, you must register under Division II, charge 9.975%, file quarterly and claim no input tax refunds. [48] Whether your particular services are "specified supplies" made to "specified Québec consumers" is the fact question to settle before you invoice.

Your BC PST position is set by what you supply rather than to whom. Software or telecommunication services put you inside the BC rules regardless of revenue; from 1 October 2026 five professional-service classes join them. [20]

4. A Toronto SaaS company with one Vancouver customer

$800,000 of subscription revenue, all Canadian, one BC customer worth $400 a year, acquired through a geo-targeted LinkedIn campaign.

Federally this is straightforward: subscriptions follow the customer's address, so Ontario customers pay 13%, BC customers 5%, and so on. [30] At $800,000 you are assigned quarterly reporting. [9]

Provincially it is not. BC treats "software as a service" as software (s. 1 of the Act), and Scenario 2 of Bulletin PST 001 requires registration where you sell taxable software for a device ordinarily situated in BC, accept BC orders and solicit in BC — with no revenue threshold. [42] [19] The geo-targeted campaign is what converts a passive website into solicitation. [19]

So a $400 customer creates a BC registration, a monthly-to-annual return cycle, and 7% PST to charge and remit — and if you had not registered, "your filing period is monthly" and you are "still considered a collector" for the tax you failed to charge. [21] [18] The compliance cost dwarfs the revenue. The commercial decision — decline BC customers, or register — is a real one, and the answer is usually to register, because the 25% penalty for wilfully failing to register under s. 202 is assessed on the tax, not on the profit. [42]

Do not forget the web hosting either: BC treats hosting and data backup as IaaS and therefore as taxable software, so your own infrastructure spend with a BC-billed provider may carry 7% you cannot recover. [43]

5. A foreign SaaS business with no Canadian presence

A US company, $600,000 CAD of Canadian consumer subscriptions, no staff, no inventory and no office in Canada.

Are you carrying on business in Canada? A question of fact, weighed on the RC4027 factors. [15] Assume not.

Federal. You are over $30,000 CAD in 12 months, so simplified registration applies: you charge the rate for the customer's province, file under the simplified rules, and claim no input tax credits. [14] If instead you had Canadian hosting, contractor and agency spend of, say, $150,000 a year, the GST/HST on it — $7,500 at 5%, more where suppliers are in HST provinces — is forfeited under simplified registration and recoverable under normal registration. That number, not the paperwork, decides the door. Normal registration brings the security deposit: 50% of estimated net tax, minimum $5,000, waived only under $100,000 of Canadian taxable supplies. [15]

Quebec, separately. Article 477.5 is its own threshold and its own registration. If your Québec threshold amount exceeds $30,000 over any 12 months you register under Division II, collect 9.975% as "a mandatary of the Minister", show the tax on the invoice as article 477.7 requires, file quarterly and remit within the following month — with no input tax refunds. [48] You may elect to compute your specified net tax in a foreign currency. [48] Two regimes, two registrations, two returns, one business.

And a provincial layer on top. If you also ship physical goods held in a BC fulfilment house, Scenario 4 catches you from outside Canada with no threshold. [19]

6. A Halifax retailer that opens a second location in Moncton

$900,000 of retail sales, a fit-out in New Brunswick, no other provinces.

Rates. Nova Scotia sales are 14%, New Brunswick sales 15% — the two highest-band provinces, and different from each other since 1 April 2025. [5] A point-of-sale system carrying a single "Atlantic" rate is now wrong in one of the two stores.

One registration covers both, because both are participating provinces administered by the CRA. [16] No New Brunswick registration, no second return, no second calendar — the structural advantage of the harmonized regime, and the reason an Atlantic expansion is administratively cheaper than a westward one.

The fit-out. $180,000 of construction and equipment in Moncton carries 15% — $27,000 — all of it recoverable as input tax credits provided the documentation holds, and every invoice over $100 must carry the supplier's GST/HST registration number. [9] At $900,000 you file annually by assignment but will likely want quarterly, since a year-long wait for $27,000 is a year of free financing to the government — and the CRA pays refund interest only from 30 days after filing, at a rate 4 points below what it charges you. [9]

The provincial tax nobody mentions. Commercial insurance on the Nova Scotia store is not caught by a provincial premium tax, but had this expansion gone to St. John's instead, the commercial property policy would carry Newfoundland and Labrador's 15% tax on insurance premiums, unrecoverable. [40] And an Ontario expansion would bring the 8% RST on group benefits premiums. [39] Neither appears on a GST/HST return, and neither comes back.

Failure modes, and what each one costs

Charging your own province's rate to everyone. The most common and most expensive error. The rate follows the place of supply, and the CRA's own example has a Vancouver store charging 13% Ontario HST. [5] Consequence: undercharging leaves you liable for the difference under RC4022's "GST/HST not charged" rule, out of your own margin. [9] Overcharging is worse in British Columbia, where you must remit what you charged even "At an incorrect rate". [21]

Leaving a place of supply unresolved. Consequence: the tie-breaker does not default to 5%. An unresolved service goes to the participating province with the highest rate, currently 15%. [30] Ten points of tax on the whole invoice turns on a documented address.

Assuming a GST registration covers the provincial tax. It covers nothing outside the five HST provinces. British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba each require a separate registration, return and remittance to a different government, and Quebec runs its own statute. [18] [22] [26]

Ignoring PST as an out-of-province vendor. Being in Alberta or Ontario exempts you from nothing. BC reaches software and telecommunication suppliers with no threshold under Scenario 2 and inventory-holders anywhere in the world under Scenario 4; Manitoba reaches sellers who deliver, solicit and accept orders. [19] [26] Consequence: you are "still considered a collector" [18], your BC filing period becomes monthly [21], and s. 202 authorises a 25% penalty for wilfully failing to register. [42]

Treating Quebec as an ordinary GST province. A Quebec-located business files with Revenu Québec, not the CRA. [9] And if you sell into Quebec from outside it, article 477.5 imposes its own $30,000 registration duty with quarterly returns and no input tax refunds. [48] Consequence: an unregistered specified supplier has been collecting nothing on supplies the statute taxes at 9.975%, and the liability is the supplier's.

Modelling the QST as an unrecoverable cost. The mirror-image error, and it inflates a Quebec business case by nearly ten points. QST paid by a Division I registrant is recoverable as an input tax refund under article 199, exactly as GST is. [48] Only BC PST, Saskatchewan PST and Manitoba RST are true costs.

Assuming Saskatchewan has a small-supplier threshold. It does not. "All businesses operating in Saskatchewan must be licensed or registered." [22] Consequence: your Saskatchewan customers must self-assess on your invoices, which is a commercial problem before it is a tax one.

Measuring $30,000 on local sales, on profit, or on one company at a time. The test runs on worldwide taxable supplies, before expenses, aggregated with associated persons. [15] [9] Consequence: exceed $30,000 in one quarter and the supply that took you over is itself taxable, effective that day — an invoice you have already sent becomes tax-inclusive retroactively. [7]

Splitting a business across two corporations to stay under the threshold twice. Consequence: it does not work. Associated persons are aggregated, and association includes "two or more corporations" and "two persons, if they are associated with the same third person". [9]

Collecting invoices without supplier registration numbers. Consequence: from $100 up, the registration number is mandatory information for an ITC claim; without it the claim is unsupported. [9] This is the commonest reason a first CRA review reduces a refund, and it is unfixable retroactively if the supplier has since disappeared.

Choosing simplified registration with real Canadian costs. A simplified registrant cannot claim input tax credits. [14] Consequence: every dollar of Canadian input tax becomes a permanent expense — for a business with $150,000 of Canadian spend, thousands a year to save a few hours of administration.

Electing the quick method as an excluded profession, or in a capital-spending year. Accountants, bookkeepers, financial and tax consultants, lawyers and actuaries cannot use it at all. [38] Consequence: an invalid election is not a shelter. And even where valid, the method forfeits ITCs on operating expenses, so a year with a large fit-out is the wrong year to be in it — though capital purchases such as computers and vehicles remain claimable. [9]

Reading rates out of Schedule VIII. Consequence: three of the four provinces it lists carry prescribed rates that displace it, and Prince Edward Island is absent entirely. [3] [30] Start at the definition in s. 123(1), not at the schedule. [29]

Forgetting nil returns and clock times. Saskatchewan requires a nil return when there is no tax to report; Manitoba's deadline is 4:30 p.m. on the 20th. [24] [26] Consequence: the federal late-filing penalty does not apply to a nil return [9], but British Columbia's is computed on the amount not remitted and Saskatchewan's nil-return duty stands on its own.

Itemising RST on an invoice while under Manitoba's threshold. Consequence: a sub-threshold Manitoba business must state that RST is included and "RST must not be itemized on the invoice" — the prohibition is positive, and doing it the intuitive way is the breach. [26]

Spending the tax you collected. Consequence: the worst outcome on this page. British Columbia deems collected tax "held in trust for the government" and "held separate from" your own assets, and applies a 100% penalty where "you collected tax and wilfully did not remit it" — plus fines of 50% to 200% of the tax and up to two years' imprisonment under s. 230(4). [42] [45] Federally, unremitted net tax reaches the directors personally. [9] Sales tax is not working capital.

Missing a bad-debt claim window. Consequence: in British Columbia, relief for tax remitted on an uncollectible sale requires the debt to be written off "within four years of the date you paid or remitted the tax" and the claim received "within four years from the date the bad debt was written off"; miss either and the tax stays paid. [46]

Your annual maintenance calendar

Readiness checklist

• You can name the regime for every province you sell into, and the rate for each. [4]
• Your invoicing system sets the rate from the customer's delivery address or service address, not from your own. [30]
• You know which single address you rely on where a customer gives you more than one, and you have written down why. [30]
• You have decided your effective date, GST/HST fiscal year and total annual revenue before registering. [8]
• Your accounts-payable process captures the supplier's GST/HST registration number on every invoice of $100 or more. [9]
• If you are in Quebec, you are registering with Revenu Québec, not the CRA — and you are treating QST as recoverable. [9] [48]
• If you sell into Quebec from outside it, you have tested article 477.5's $30,000 threshold separately from the federal one. [48]
• You have run the BC, Saskatchewan and Manitoba out-of-province tests against your actual selling pattern, including BC Scenarios 2 and 4. [19] [22] [26]
• If you sell software, SaaS, hosting or streaming, you have checked BC's definition of software rather than your own. [42]
• You know whether a marketplace facilitator collects on your behalf, and therefore who registers. [18]
• Your budget treats GST/HST and QST as recoverable, and BC PST, Saskatchewan PST and Manitoba RST as costs. [11] [48]
• If you buy commercial insurance in Newfoundland and Labrador, or run a group benefits plan in Ontario, you have budgeted the provincial premium taxes. [40] [39]
• If you are a non-resident, you have priced the security deposit and chosen between simplified and normal registration on your Canadian input tax. [15] [14]
• You have a calendar entry for every return, federal and provincial, with the correct time of day where one applies. [26]
• Collected tax sits where you can remit it, not in working capital. [42]

Glossary

Canada's four regimes use four vocabularies, and the same word does not always mean the same thing.

What 2727 can and cannot support

2727 Coworking is a workspace and business-address provider in Griffintown, Montreal. On sales tax the honest scope is narrow, and worth stating precisely because address providers are often marketed as if they changed tax outcomes.

A mailing address does not by itself determine place of supply. The published rules turn on other things: goods are supplied where they are delivered, and the statute deems delivery at the destination shipped to [34]; services follow an address of the recipient obtained in the ordinary course of the supplier's business [30]; real property follows where the property sits [34]. Note the direction of that service rule — it looks at your customer's address, not yours. This page concerns your obligations as a supplier, and no published rule makes a supplier's mailing address determinative of place of supply. So no address, at 2727 or anywhere else, sets the rate you charge.

Nothing about an address creates or removes a registration duty. The federal threshold runs on worldwide taxable supplies [15]; the provincial tests run on delivery, solicitation, orders, inventory and revenue in that province [19] [26]; and Quebec's turn on residence, carrying on business, and the threshold amount in article 477.5 [48]. None asks where your mail goes.

One qualification, stated because it is the one place an address is adjacent to a real rule: RC4022's rule sending a business to Revenu Québec turns on "the physical location of your business", not on a mailing address. [9] Whether your business is physically located in Quebec is a question about where you actually operate, and it is one for your own advisers.

What the space genuinely supports. A real place to meet clients and receive correspondence in Montreal; a Quebec mailing address for a business that has decided, on its own advice, to be a Quebec business; and, for a federal or Quebec corporation, a legitimate registered-office address. It is not a registered office in any other province, and no registry, bank or tax authority is represented as "accepting" it. Where you should carry on business, and where that puts you for tax, is a question for your own accountant and counsel.

For the corporate side of that choice see federal vs provincial incorporation; from outside Canada start at /start-a-business-in-canada/from-abroad/ and /business-address/non-residents/; for the address roles themselves, /business-address/, /business-address/scenarios/federal-corporation/ and /business-address/scenarios/open-from-abroad/.

Where to go next in this research

• The hub: start a business in Canada, and the two tracks — founder inside Canada and founder outside Canada
• The other comparisons: federal vs provincial incorporation and Ontario vs British Columbia vs Alberta vs Quebec for non-residents
• The five HST provinces: Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador
• The GST-plus-provincial provinces: British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba
• GST plus QST: Quebec, and for foreign founders Quebec from abroad
• The GST-only jurisdictions: Alberta, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut
• Tools and the research index

Research method and limitations

Date verified: 7 September 2026. Every rate, threshold, deadline, penalty and dollar figure was fetched from an official source on that date or on 6 September 2026 and is quoted or cited to it. Nothing was taken from memory or estimated.

Sources and hierarchy. All fifty-eight references are tier 1–3: the Excise Tax Act, its regulations, The Provincial Sales Tax Act (British Columbia), The Provincial Sales Tax Act (Saskatchewan), The Retail Sales Tax Act (Manitoba), the Act respecting the Québec sales tax and the Québec Tax Administration Act (tier 1); the Canada Revenue Agency's guides and web pages (tier 3); and the finance ministries of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador (tier 3). No law-firm, accounting-firm, incorporation-service or blog page was cited, and none was needed. PDF bulletins were read with pdftotext -layout, not summarised from a landing page.

Tools used. WebFetch for canada.ca and laws-lois.justice.gc.ca; curl with a browser user-agent for gov.bc.ca, bclaws.gov.bc.ca, saskatchewan.ca, sets.saskatchewan.ca, gov.mb.ca and legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca; pdftotext -layout for the bulletins. Search budgets were exhausted, so discovery ran through the cluster's committed province guides and evidence files, then direct fetches of known official URLs, then link-harvesting from official index pages where a remembered URL proved wrong.

What this pass changed, and why. Four findings corrected or replaced material in the previous version.

1. Ontario's and Prince Edward Island's provincial components are no longer arithmetic. The earlier version presented both as the combined rate less 5%, because neither province's website could be reached and Schedule VIII was read as simply stale. Following the definition of "tax rate" in ETA s. 123(1) to the New Harmonized Value-added Tax System Regulations resolved both: PEI's 10% is prescribed by s. 33.3(3), and Ontario, for which no rate is prescribed, takes 8% from Schedule VIII operating as the residual under paragraph (c) of the definition. Every cell in the thirteen-row table now carries a publisher statement.
2. British Columbia has five out-of-province scenarios, not four. The current edition of Bulletin PST 001 (revised August 2023) splits the software and telecommunication rules across Scenario 2 (elsewhere in Canada, no threshold) and Scenario 5 (anywhere in the world, $10,000 threshold). The earlier version described four.
3. Quebec's QST is no longer stated as unverifiable. The earlier version declined to state Quebec's rules because revenuquebec.ca refuses automated access. LégisQuébec publishes the Act respecting the Québec sales tax in full and answers the same questions, so the rate, both $30,000 thresholds, the place-of-supply rules, the specified registration system, the input-tax-refund entitlement, the filing bands and the penalty provisions are now stated from the statute. This also corrected a substantive error of omission: the earlier version left readers to infer that QST might behave like BC PST. It does not — it is recoverable by a Division I registrant under article 199, like the GST.
4. The ITC documentary bands are $100 and $500, not the $30 and $150 figures that circulate widely. RC4022's current table is quoted in full.

What could not be verified, and is therefore not claimed.

• Revenu Québec remains unreachable. A single probe on 7 September 2026 returned the same bot-protection refusal recorded on 6 September. Revenu Québec's own administrative guidance, its registration forms including LM-1, and its published filing-frequency practice are therefore not stated here. Everything in the Quebec sections comes from the statute; references 27 and 28 are places for you to confirm procedure, not the basis of any figure on this page.
• Prince Edward Island's and Ontario's own tax pages are still unreachable — princeedwardisland.ca serves a Radware interstitial to every path tried, and ontario.ca's harmonized-sales-tax page returns 404. Nothing on this page now depends on either, since the federal instruments carry both rates. Ontario's retail sales tax on insurance and benefits plans was reached at a different ontario.ca path and is cited to it.
• British Columbia does not publish its PST interest rate. Bulletin CTB 005 refers only to "the prescribed rate", set separately; the percentage is not stated here. Manitoba's rate is published and is quoted; Saskatchewan's formula (prime plus 3%) is published and is quoted.
• Manitoba does not publish its RST penalty percentages. Bulletin 004 refers to "penalty charges" without quantifying them, and no penalties bulletin exists in Manitoba's own 153-row publication index. The figures are therefore recorded as unpublished rather than inferred from another province.
• Bulletin PST 002 no longer exists. British Columbia has withdrawn it; its content now sits in the Small Business Guide, the Reporting and Paying page and Bulletins CTB 001 and CTB 005, all cited. Bulletin PST 107 has been retired as a PDF and republished as a web page. Form FIN 418 exists only as an online eTaxBC flow; no PDF is published. Any checklist citing those three documents is citing material the province has removed.
• "PST and RST are not recoverable" is a conclusion, not a quotation. No provincial source says "there is no input credit"; it is drawn from BC, Saskatchewan and Manitoba each describing relief as an exemption at the point of purchase, set out above so you can weigh it yourself. Quebec is the opposite case, and there the entitlement is quoted (article 199).
• Not tested. No registration was filed, no return submitted, no ruling requested. Processing times and assessment practice are as published, not as observed.
• Three rate or base changes are already dated. Nova Scotia's provincial component fell to 9% on 1 April 2025; British Columbia extends PST to five professional-service classes and ends the residential-phone exemption on 1 October 2026; Saskatchewan's revised penalty schedule took effect 1 October 2024.

This is educational planning material, not legal, tax, accounting, immigration or banking advice. Sales tax turns on what you sell, to whom and where, and place of supply and carrying on business are fact-dependent determinations. Confirm your position with a Canadian tax professional and, where relevant, with the CRA or Revenu Québec directly.

Frequently asked questions

Which rate do I charge a customer in another province?

The one for the place of supply, which is the customer's side of the transaction rather than yours. Goods are supplied where they are delivered, and the statute deems delivery at the destination you ship to and "not … in any other province". [34] Services follow an address of the recipient that you obtain in the ordinary course of business. [30] The CRA's own example has a Vancouver store charging 13% Ontario HST on a Toronto delivery. [5]

Does the $30,000 threshold count only my sales in my own province?

No — worldwide taxable supplies, before expenses, and aggregated with associated persons. [15] [9] The statutory test looks at the four calendar quarters immediately preceding the current one, and separately at any single quarter. [2] Splitting a business across two corporations does not give you the threshold twice.

If I register for GST/HST, am I covered for provincial sales tax?

Only in the five HST provinces, where one registration carries both taxes. [16] British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba each require a separate registration, return and remittance, and Quebec runs its own statute. [18] [22] [26] [48]

Is there really no small-supplier threshold in Saskatchewan?

Correct, for PST purposes: "All businesses operating in Saskatchewan must be licensed or registered with the Ministry of Finance for PST purposes." [22] You get either a vendor's licence or a registered consumer number depending on whether you sell taxable items or merely buy them. [49] A very small Saskatchewan business can owe a PST registration and no GST registration.

Do I have to register for BC PST if I have no premises in British Columbia?

Possibly, and in two situations with no revenue threshold at all: supplying taxable software or telecommunication services to solicited BC customers from elsewhere in Canada (Scenario 2) means registering before the first supply, and holding inventory in BC at the time of sale — a fulfilment house counts — means registering before selling it, from anywhere in the world (Scenario 4). For goods delivered into BC there is a $10,000 threshold instead (Scenario 3), and Scenario 5 applies the same $10,000 test to software and telecommunication services supplied from outside Canada. [19]

Is my SaaS product taxable in British Columbia?

Probably. The Provincial Sales Tax Act defines "software" to include "software as a service", "infrastructure as a service" and "an application programming interface". [42] The ministry's test for a website subscription is functionality: a customer who can "manipulate files or create new files", rather than merely view content, is buying software. [43] Web hosting and data backup are treated as IaaS and are taxable as software.

Does having a website mean I am soliciting customers in a province?

Not on its own in British Columbia: "If you have only a website that is accessible from anywhere in the world, which does not target B.C. customers, you are not soliciting sales in B.C." A website plus targeted advertising, flyers or newspaper ads is solicitation. [19] Do not generalise that safe harbour: Manitoba's test catches solicitation "by advertising or any other means" with no equivalent carve-out. [26]

Can I get provincial sales tax back the way I get GST back?

It depends which province. GST and the HST provincial component are recovered as input tax credits. [11] Quebec's QST is recoverable by a Division I registrant as an input tax refund under article 199 — it behaves like a value-added tax, not a retail sales tax. [48] BC PST, Saskatchewan PST and Manitoba RST have no equivalent credit; relief comes as an exemption when you buy goods solely for resale, which is why BC warns that small sellers are "ineligible for certain PST exemptions". [20]

I am in an HST province. Do I have any provincial sales tax to worry about?

Possibly, on insurance. Ontario still levies "8% RST … on premiums paid under taxable insurance contracts, group insurance, and certain funded or unfunded benefits plans", and requires a vendor permit from a plan holder that self-administers a benefits plan with no third-party administrator. [39] Newfoundland and Labrador applies "a tax rate of 15% … to the taxable premiums for contracts of insurance relating to property, risk, peril or events in the province", collected by the insurer. [40] Saskatchewan taxes insurance contracts too. [49] None of these is an input tax credit.

Should I use the quick method?

Only if you are eligible and your input tax is small. The limit is $400,000 of worldwide taxable supplies including the GST/HST, you must have a permanent establishment in Canada, and accountants, bookkeepers, financial and tax consultants, lawyers and actuaries are excluded outright. [38] You remit a fixed percentage of tax-included revenue — 8.8% for an Ontario service business on 13% supplies — plus a 1% credit on the first $30,000, and you forgo ITCs on operating expenses while keeping them on capital purchases. [38] [9] Elect on Form GST74. It is the wrong choice in a year with a large fit-out.

Should a non-resident digital business use simplified registration?

It turns almost entirely on your Canadian input tax, because a simplified registrant "would not be allowed to claim input tax credits (ITC)." [14] With significant Canadian hosting, contractor or agency spend, normal registration usually wins despite heavier administration and the security deposit of 50% of estimated net tax. [15] You cannot hold both at once. [13] And Quebec is a separate decision with its own $30,000 threshold under article 477.5, its own quarterly returns and its own bar on input tax refunds. [48]

How bad are the penalties, really?

They vary by an order of magnitude between governments, which is why one calendar for everything is a bad idea. Federally, a late return costs 1% of the amount owing plus a quarter of that per complete month to a maximum of twelve. [36] British Columbia charges "(5% × A) + (1% × A × B)" — its own example puts $1,000 one month late at $60, five times the federal figure — and applies 10%, 25% or 100% assessment penalties above that. [45] Saskatchewan charges $50 for a late return and 10% for late payment with no maximum since 1 October 2024. [52] Quebec escalates fastest of all: 7% at seven days late, 11% at fourteen, 15% thereafter. [58]

Official references

1. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, section 165 (imposition of tax)
2. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, section 148 (small supplier)
3. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, Schedule VIII (participating provinces and tax rates)
4. Canada Revenue Agency: GST/HST calculator and rates by province and territory
5. Canada Revenue Agency: which GST/HST rate to charge and the place of supply
6. Canada Revenue Agency: GST/HST place-of-supply rules and rates
7. Canada Revenue Agency: when to register for and start charging the GST/HST
8. Canada Revenue Agency: open or manage a GST/HST account and register
9. Canada Revenue Agency: RC4022, General Information for GST/HST Registrants
10. Canada Revenue Agency: GST/HST reporting requirements and deadlines
11. Canada Revenue Agency: calculate input tax credits
12. Canada Revenue Agency: GST/HST for digital economy businesses
13. Canada Revenue Agency: find out if you need to register for the GST/HST as a digital economy business
14. Canada Revenue Agency: get ready to register for the GST/HST as a digital economy business
15. Canada Revenue Agency: RC4027, Doing Business in Canada – GST/HST Information for Non-Residents
16. Government of New Brunswick, Finance and Treasury Board: harmonized sales tax
17. Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Finance: harmonized sales tax
18. Province of British Columbia: register to collect provincial sales tax
19. BC Ministry of Finance: Bulletin PST 001, Registering to Collect PST
20. BC Ministry of Finance: Bulletin PST 003, Small Sellers
21. Province of British Columbia: report and pay provincial sales tax
22. Government of Saskatchewan: provincial sales tax
23. Government of Saskatchewan: apply for a PST number
24. Government of Saskatchewan: file your PST return
25. Manitoba Finance: retail sales tax
26. Manitoba Finance: Bulletin No. 004, Information for Vendors
27. Revenu Québec: basic rules for applying the GST/HST and QST
28. Revenu Québec: registering for the GST and QST
29. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, section 123 (definitions, including "tax rate")
30. Justice Laws Website: New Harmonized Value-added Tax System Regulations (SOR/2010-117)
31. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, section 142 (supply deemed made in or outside Canada)
32. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, section 143 (supply by a non-resident)
33. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, section 144.1 (supply deemed made in a province)
34. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, Schedule IX (Supply in a Province)
35. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, section 280 (interest on unpaid amounts)
36. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, section 280.1 (failure to file a return)
37. Justice Laws Website: Excise Tax Act, section 285 (false statements or omissions)
38. Canada Revenue Agency: RC4058, Quick Method of Accounting for GST/HST
39. Government of Ontario: Retail Sales Tax (insurance premiums, benefits plans and private vehicle sales)
40. Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Finance: Retail Sales Tax on Insurance Premiums
41. Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Finance: Insurance Companies Tax
42. BC Laws: Provincial Sales Tax Act, SBC 2012, c. 35
43. Province of British Columbia: telecommunication services (previously Bulletin PST 107)
44. Province of British Columbia: PST forms, including FIN 418
45. BC Ministry of Finance: Bulletin CTB 005, Penalties and Interest
46. BC Ministry of Finance: Bulletin CTB 001, Bad Debts
47. Province of British Columbia: small business guide to PST
48. Éditeur officiel du Québec: Act respecting the Québec sales tax, RLRQ c. T-0.1
49. Government of Saskatchewan: Bulletin PST-5, Registration and Reporting Requirements
50. Government of Saskatchewan: Bulletin PST-46, Service Enterprises
51. Government of Saskatchewan: Information Notice IN 2020-08, Electronic Distribution Platforms, Online Accommodation Platforms and Marketplace Facilitators
52. Government of Saskatchewan: Bulletin GENERAL-1, Penalty and Interest Charges
53. Office of the King's Printer, Saskatchewan: The Provincial Sales Tax Act, c. P-34.1
54. Manitoba Finance: Bulletin No. 064, Streaming Services and Online Platforms
55. Manitoba Finance: interest rates on outstanding tax debts
56. Manitoba Laws: The Retail Sales Tax Act, CCSM c. R130
57. Manitoba Finance: Bulletin No. 030, Summary of Taxable and Exempt Goods and Services
58. Éditeur officiel du Québec: Tax Administration Act, RLRQ c. A-6.002