GST/HST for Canadian small business

GST/HST is the tax owners most often get wrong, and the reason is structural: the money is never yours. It arrives in the same bank account as revenue, it looks like revenue, and it gets spent like revenue — and then a filing period closes and the amount owing is real. Almost every painful sales tax conversation traces back to that one confusion rather than to a technical error.

The guides below cover the decisions in the order they usually arise: whether to register at all, which filing period to choose, whether the quick method is worth it, and how to claim back the tax you paid on your own purchases. Read the one that matches your stage rather than working through all of them.

One habit is worth adopting regardless of which guide you need: move the sales tax portion of every deposit into a separate account the day it lands. It is unglamorous, it takes no software, and it removes the entire category of problem the rest of 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.

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.

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.
• Virtual bookkeeping across Canada — how remote bookkeeping works in practice for an owner outside the Fraser Valley.
• 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.