Canada GST/HST: rates, registration & place-of-supply

• 5% GST only — Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Saskatchewan, Yukon (BC, MB and SK add their own provincial sales tax separately).
• 5% GST + 9.975% QST — Quebec. QST is administered by Revenu Québec, not the CRA, and is filed on its own return.
• 13% HST — Ontario (5% federal + 8% provincial, combined into one return).
• 14% HST — Nova Scotia since 1 April 2025 (5% federal + 9% provincial, combined into one return).
• 15% HST — New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island (5% federal + 10% provincial, combined into one return).

• Ontario (HST)
• Quebec (GST+QST)
• British Columbia (GST+PST)
• Alberta (GST-only)
• Nova Scotia (HST)
• New Brunswick (HST)
• Prince Edward Island (HST)
• Newfoundland and Labrador (HST)
• Saskatchewan (GST+PST)
• Manitoba (GST+PST)
• Northwest Territories (GST-only)
• Nunavut (GST-only)
• Yukon (GST-only)

You must register for GST/HST once your worldwide taxable supplies cross $30,000 in any single calendar quarter, or across the four most recent consecutive quarters combined. You have 29 days to register from the day you cross the threshold.

Below $30,000 you are a small supplier and not required to register. Many small businesses still register voluntarily — once registered, you can claim input tax credits (ITCs) on the GST/HST you pay on your business purchases, which for many service businesses is worth more than the admin overhead of a return.

Place-of-supply is the rule that decides which rate applies to a sale that crosses provincial lines. The customer's address — not your business address — usually drives the answer:

• Tangible goods — the rate of the province where the goods are delivered.
• Services to businesses (B2B) — the rate of the province where the customer's business is located (the address you have on file).
• Services to individuals (B2C) — typically the rate of the province where the service is performed, or where the customer ordinarily resides for services delivered remotely.
• Real property — the rate of the province where the property is located.
• Intangibles (digital products, IP) — generally the rate of the province where the customer can use them, with some restrictions.

HelloBooks uses the address fields on your customer record to route each line to the right rate. If a customer has multiple addresses, you can override the place-of-supply per invoice.

The GST/HST return is a short form with a handful of key lines:

• Line 101 — total sales and revenue for the period (everything, including zero-rated and exempt).
• Line 105 — GST/HST collected.
• Line 108 — Input Tax Credits (the GST/HST you paid on business purchases).
• Line 109 — net tax (line 105 minus line 108). This is what you owe — or, if line 108 is bigger, what you're refunded.

HelloBooks structures your CAD ledger so each transaction maps cleanly to these return positions — GST/HST collected on sales posts to a line-105 account; ITC-eligible GST/HST on purchases posts to a line-108 account. The in-app CRA return preview that totals every line and presents the return in the CRA layout is on the roadmap. Until then, your accountant can pull the totals from the trial balance and file through CRA My Business Account or GST/HST NETFILE.