How to change your GST/HST filing frequency (and when you can’t)

Your filing frequency was assigned, not chosen

When a business registers for GST/HST, the CRA assigns a reporting period from its annual taxable supplies: $1,500,000 or less is assigned annual, over $1.5M up to $6,000,000 quarterly, and above $6,000,000 monthly. Most owners never revisit it. That default is worth questioning in two specific situations — and locked against you in a third.

Filing more often: open to anyone, any time

An annual or quarterly filer can elect a more frequent period whenever it wants. The business case is refunds: a company that usually claims more input tax credits than it collects — exporters and other zero-rated businesses are the classic case — gets its money back per return. On an annual cycle that refund arrives once a year; on monthly, twelve times. The election is made on form GST20 or, faster, through the “File an election” service in My Business Account.

Filing less often: the 12-month rule

Moving the other way is restricted. A monthly or quarterly filer can only elect a less frequent period once its taxable supplies have stayed below the threshold of its assigned period for 12 months. And here is the part that quietly costs shrinking businesses money and time: the CRA never adjusts your period downward on its own. Revenue falls below the threshold, and nothing happens — without an election you keep filing monthly forever, twelve filings a year for a business that qualifies for one.

The revenue figure is not simply your sales

The threshold amount is your taxable supplies for the immediately preceding fiscal year — but adjusted. It includes zero-rated supplies and the taxable supplies of associated businesses, and excludes supplies made outside Canada, zero-rated exports, exempt supplies, financial services, goodwill, and sales of capital real property. Two businesses with identical revenue can sit on opposite sides of a threshold once the adjustments run, so the figure is worth computing rather than eyeballing.

The mechanics and the timing

A change also changes your deadlines: monthly and quarterly returns are due one month after each period, annual returns three months after year-end — the full calendar is on the GST34 page. Whichever way you move, align the switch with your books: a mid-year change creates a stub period that still needs its own return, and the instalment rules for annual filers switch on and off with the period. If the decision interacts with the quick method or with instalments, settle all three at once rather than one per year.

Common questions

Related reading

• GST20: the reporting-period election
• GST34: the GST/HST return and its deadlines
• GST/HST instalments for annual filers
• The GST/HST quick method

General information current as of August 2026, not advice for your situation. Please speak with a CPA about your circumstances.