E-commerce accountant in Vancouver

Sales tax across provinces

Selling online means selling everywhere, and Canadian sales tax follows place-of-supply rules — broadly, the tax reflects where your customer is, so the rate can differ by province. You generally must register once taxable sales pass the $30,000 small-supplier threshold over four consecutive quarters, and selling through some marketplaces shifts collection responsibility to the platform. It is the most error-prone part of e-commerce accounting, and where we spend the most care.

Inventory and cost of goods sold

For a product business, inventory is central: it must be valued and tracked properly because it flows directly into cost of goods sold and therefore your tax. Sellers holding stock across warehouses or fulfilment centres need that reflected accurately. We set up bookkeeping that keeps inventory, COGS and margin reliable rather than guessed.

Platform fees, processors and the rest

Online sellers carry costs a storefront does not — platform commissions, payment-processing fees, advertising, software and shipping — all of which are deductible and all of which need to be captured cleanly from your sales channels. Connecting your store and processor to proper bookkeeping is what turns a pile of payout reports into an accurate corporate tax return.

The sales-tax trap for online sellers

The single biggest accounting risk for a growing Vancouver online store is sales tax, because e-commerce breaks the simple assumption that you charge one local rate. Sell to a customer in Ontario and the applicable tax can differ from a sale to one in BC or Alberta; sell through a large marketplace and the platform may be responsible for collecting the tax on your behalf under facilitator rules; cross the small-supplier threshold and registration becomes mandatory whether or not you noticed. Sellers who get this wrong often do not find out until volume is high and the exposure has compounded across thousands of orders. The fix is to get the treatment right early: register at the right time, configure your store to charge correctly by destination, understand which of your sales channels handle tax for you, and reconcile what was collected against what gets remitted. We set this up before it becomes a problem, and clean it up methodically for sellers who come to us after it already has.

What EverStone handles for you

One CPA, one fixed fee quoted up front, everything below covered:

• T2 corporate tax return and year-end financial statements
• GST/HST registration and multi-province place-of-supply setup
• Inventory and cost-of-goods-sold bookkeeping
• Platform, processor and advertising costs captured
• Reconciliation of sales channels to your books
• CRA correspondence handled for you

Fixed fees, fully online

EverStone is an Abbotsford CPA firm, and every engagement runs online — video calls, e-signature and secure document exchange — so you never lose a day to an office visit. You are not billed by the hour or the phone call: your fee is a fixed amount agreed before any work starts, so you can ask a question in June without watching a meter. The same CPA handles your file all year, which means the person who prepares your return is the person who answers when you call. See what it costs or book a free, no-obligation consult and leave with a clear written quote.

About the author

Sunny Dhillon, CPA

Founder of EverStone CPA and a member of the Chartered Professional Accountants of British Columbia (CPABC). More about Sunny →