GST/HST for Canadian small business

GST/HST is the tax owners most often get wrong because the money is never yours. It lands with revenue, looks like revenue and gets spent like revenue, until the period closes and the amount owing is real. Most sales tax problems trace back to that, not to technical errors.

The guides below follow the order decisions usually arise: whether to register, which filing period to choose, whether the quick method pays, and how to claim back tax on your purchases. Read the one that matches your stage.

One habit helps whatever guide you need: move the sales tax portion of every deposit to a separate account the day it lands. It needs no software and removes the whole problem this page is about.

Registering, or deciding not to yet

• GST/HST registration guide — the small supplier threshold, what happens when you cross it, and how registration actually gets done. Read it in your first year of real revenue.
• Zero-rated vs exempt supplies — two categories that both mean “no tax charged” and behave completely differently for input tax credits. Read it if you are not sure your sales are taxable at all.
• BC PST for small business — the provincial sales tax that runs alongside GST in British Columbia, with its own registration and rules. Read it if you sell goods or certain services in BC.
• Setting up CRA My Business Account — the portal where the GST account lives and where filings and balances are visible. Do this before the first return is due.

Filing and remitting

• Online GST/HST filing — what a filing engagement covers and how the return moves from bookkeeping to submitted. Read it if the filings keep arriving late.
• GST/HST filing deadlines — the due dates for monthly, quarterly and annual filers, which are not the same as the payment dates for annual filers. Check it once a year.
• Instalments for annual filers — the quarterly payments annual filers can be required to make during the year. Read it if you chose annual filing to reduce paperwork and got a notice anyway.
• GST/HST calculator — adds or backs out sales tax at each province’s rate. Useful when quoting, and when working out what a tax-included invoice really contained.

Every return and payment date for the year is on the GST calendar for 2026.

The quick method question

• The GST/HST quick method explained — how the simplified remittance rate works, who is eligible, and the trade-off you accept on input tax credits. Read it before your first full year of filings.
• Quick method vs regular calculator — runs both methods against your own revenue and expenses so the choice is arithmetic rather than opinion. Run it annually; the answer changes as your cost base changes.

What the province charges on top

• British Columbia — 5% GST plus a separate 7% PST, filed to the province on its own schedule. Read it if you sell into BC.
• Manitoba — 7% retail sales tax, administered provincially and filed separately from GST.
• Alberta — GST only, with no provincial sales tax to register for at all.
• Ontario, a single 13% HST, one registration and one return.

Claiming tax back

• Input tax credits — what you can claim back on business purchases, what documentation CRA expects, and the common over-claims. This is the guide most worth reading properly.
• Vehicle and mileage claims — the record keeping behind vehicle costs, which affects both the income tax deduction and the sales tax you can recover.
• Bookkeeping mistakes that break a GST filing — the coding errors that quietly produce wrong returns. Read it if your filings never reconcile to the books.

Keeping it running without thinking about it

• Bookkeeping and accounting services — where the GST account is reconciled monthly rather than reconstructed each quarter. Read it if filing season is currently an archaeology project.
• All CRA deadlines in one place — sales tax dates alongside corporate, payroll and personal ones, so nothing is tracked in isolation.

Sales tax rarely sits on its own. If the business is incorporated, the corporate tax hub covers the return that GST filings ultimately have to agree with, and payroll is the third remittance stream most owners are juggling at the same time.

Sales tax by city

Sales tax is the area where a Canadian business gets the most genuinely different answer depending on the province it operates in — one harmonized return, two registrations, or a federal tax and nothing else. These pages work through it city by city.

• GST/HST filing in Abbotsford — zero-rated agricultural sales, structural refund positions and filing frequency.
• Chilliwack — the basic groceries line, and one business running two tax treatments.
• GST and PST filing across the Fraser Valley — who registers for which, the assigned period, and where the two taxes come apart on farms, trades and processors.
• Langley — two registrations, two returns, and collecting PST at the till.
• Mission — the rolling $30,000 threshold and when voluntary registration pays.
• Surrey — tax points on deposits and progress billings, and PST on real property work.
• Maple Ridge — PST self-assessment on goods and software bought from outside BC.
• Aldergrove — the $30,000 federal test against the $10,000 BC small seller test.
• Vancouver — place of supply, interprovincial rates, exports and non-resident customers.
• Toronto — one 13% HST, fully recoverable input tax, and the Quick Method arithmetic.
• Ottawa — HST on one side of the river and 9.975% QST on the other.
• Calgary — 5% and nothing else, and why the whole risk sits on input tax credits.
• Edmonton — recovering the full tax on capital purchases, and instalments for annual filers.
• Winnipeg — Manitoba retail sales tax, which is neither PST nor HST and never comes back.