Windward Software Wiki

Online Sales: Which Taxes Do You Collect for Each Province?

As an online retailer accepting and shipping orders across Canada, the list of taxes you should be collecting and remitting on your online sales as of 2010 looks like this:

• B.C. - HST
• Alberta – GST
• Saskatchewan – GST & PST voluntarily (*unless is home province)
• Manitoba – GST & PST
• Ontario - HST
• Quebec – QST
• New Brunswick – HST
• Nova Scotia – HST
• Newfoundland & Labrador – HST
• Prince Edward Island – GST & PST voluntarily (*unless is home province)
• Northwest Territories – GST
• Nunavut – GST
• Yukon – GST

(*In your home province, registration for PST/RST is mandatory if you are selling taxable goods and/or services.)

This means that you should register as a Provincial Sales Tax Vendor with each of the provinces you will be doing business with and will be expected to collect and remit the sales tax accordingly.

What can you do to get around all this additional paperwork and bookkeeping related to your online sales? Not much. Some Canadian-based online businesses limit the areas they ship to. An Ontario based business, for instance, might only accept orders from and ship to customers in Ontario. Others only sell non-taxable goods and/or services.

The online sales picture is further complicated by the fact that goods and/or services that may be tax-exempt in one province may be treated differently in another. So take all the information above as a guide only and be sure to check with the Finance/Revenue Ministries of the individual provinces to ascertain whether or not you have to collect and remit provincial tax when you are shipping to customers who reside there.

When it comes to taxes, you can't afford to be wrong.