Thinking of opening an online shop in 2024? Don’t forget sales tax! Selling to customers located in different Canadian jurisdictions (provinces and territories), may require that you register for and/or collect and remit a regional sales tax (a separate process from GST registration). British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, and Saskatchewan all maintain their own sales tax regimes.
For this reason, and also for financial decision making purposes, it is important to track sales to different jurisdictions and the online sales platform that you select will play a role in how you accomplish this tracking. Some platforms will assist you in tracking and calculating the applicable sales tax, others will even integrate with a third party service that files and remits the calculated taxes on your behalf.
There are benefits and drawbacks to the different levels of service, but the key is that you should be informed about sales tax thresholds and requirements before you begin selling into a new jurisdiction and also be prepared for the investment in admin time if you a required to register in multiple regions. In other words, think ahead!
Check out an example of a quick reference page from Shopify below and contact your CPA if you have any questions.
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/taxes/canada/canada-tax-reference
Cedar Creek CPA 