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GST/HST

When do you have to register for GST/HST?

You must register once taxable sales pass $30,000, measured two ways over calendar quarters. Here's how each test works, and why you charge before you apply.

By Matthew Reeves, FounderAugust 9, 2026 · 8 min read
Show figures for

Quebec runs its own corporate tax regime through Revenu Québec, and Cadence doesn't currently serve Quebec. The figures below are Ontario's.

Summary

GST (goods and services tax) and HST (harmonized sales tax) are one sales tax under two names. The tax falls on your customer rather than on your business. Registering means opening a GST/HST account with the Canada Revenue Agency (the CRA) and charging tax on your invoices. You then send the CRA that tax, minus the GST/HST you paid on your own purchases.

You have to register once you stop being a small supplier, the CRA’s term for a business small enough that the law doesn’t require it to collect.1 For 2026 the line is $30,000 of taxable sales, meaning almost everything you sell. The exceptions are a short list of exempt items (e.g. residential rent, most health care and most financial services). The $30,000 gets measured two different ways, and either one can catch you:2

  1. Across four calendar quarters in a row, the three-month blocks starting January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1. If the four quarters before the current one total more than $30,000, you stay a small supplier until the end of the month following the last of them. Four quarters ending March 31 therefore leave you a small supplier through April 30, and you charge tax on your first sale after that.
  2. Inside a single calendar quarter. If your sales within one quarter pass $30,000, you stop being a small supplier immediately before the sale that took you over. That sale is taxable in full, not just the part above $30,000. There’s no extra month in this test, and it also runs during the four-quarter test’s extra month, so a large sale then ends that month early.

The day you have to start charging is your effective date of registration, and you have 29 days from it to send the CRA your application.3 The tax is owed from your effective date even if you apply on day 29.

In our view, if your customers are mostly other GST/HST-registered businesses, register from the day your corporation starts invoicing rather than tracking the threshold. A registered customer subtracts the tax you charged from their own GST/HST bill, so charging them costs them nothing. The cost of going early is that you file returns and pay the CRA from day one, and cancelling later means waiting past a fiscal year end.4 That advice reverses if you sell to consumers, or to buyers who can’t recover the tax because what they sell is itself exempt (e.g. dentists, insurers and residential landlords). For those buyers your tax is a straight price increase. Once you’re registered, our quick method calculator shows whether the quick method would leave you ahead.

What registering does

A GST/HST registration is a sub-account, which the CRA calls a program account. That sub-account hangs off the same nine-digit business number your payroll and corporate tax already use. Once you’re registered you charge the rate for the province where the sale is treated as happening, which the CRA calls the place of supply. For goods that’s usually where they’re delivered, and for services it’s usually the customer’s business address on your file.5 The rate is 5% in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec and the three territories. The rate runs to 13% in Ontario, 14% in Nova Scotia, and 15% in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island.

Then you file a return: start with the tax you collected from customers, subtract your input tax credits (the GST/HST you paid on your own business costs, e.g. software, rent, equipment and professional fees), and send the CRA what’s left. A business that isn’t registered charges no tax and recovers none of the tax it pays, although later registration can recover some tax on property still on hand.6 Your registered customers need your GST/HST number on any invoice of $100 or more before they can claim their own credit. If your number hasn’t arrived by your effective date, charge the tax anyway and send the number on later.

GST/HST isn’t the whole sales-tax picture in British Columbia: the province also runs its own 7% provincial sales tax (PST) in 2026, and a business located there that sells or leases taxable goods, or provides software or taxable services, in the ordinary course of business must register to collect PST (a small-seller exception exists).7 The register-early logic above has no PST equivalent: PST carries no input tax credit, so a registered business customer can’t recover the PST you charge them, and we’d register only once the obligation applies.

GST/HST isn’t the whole sales-tax picture in Saskatchewan: the province also runs its own 6% provincial sales tax (PST) in 2026, and every business operating or making retail sales in Saskatchewan must register for a PST number, with no equivalent of the federal $30,000 threshold for ordinary businesses (the only carve-out is a narrow one for small home-based traders).7 The register-early logic above has no PST equivalent either: PST carries no input tax credit, so even a registered business customer can’t recover the PST you charge them.

GST/HST isn’t the whole sales-tax picture in Manitoba: the province also runs its own 7% retail sales tax (RST) in 2026, and anyone carrying on business in Manitoba needs a valid RST number before making taxable sales in the province, unless annual taxable sales sit under a small-business cap (we don’t state the cap’s dollar figure here).7 The register-early logic above has no RST equivalent: RST carries no input tax credit, so even a registered business customer can’t recover the RST you charge them.

Sales tax stays a one-account affair for a business based in Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland and Labrador: none of those provinces runs a separate general provincial sales tax, so the GST/HST registration with the CRA is the only sales-tax registration on ordinary sales.7

The $30,000 test

Three things about the $30,000 figure catch owners out, and all three push your measured sales total higher than owners expect. As such you reach the line sooner than you think.

First, the test runs on calendar quarters, not on your corporation’s own financial year.8 A corporation with a June 30 year-end still measures January to March, April to June, and so on.

Second, it counts gross revenue from taxable sales anywhere in the world, before expenses. Zero-rated sales count too, meaning sales taxable at a rate of 0%, such as most exported goods. Exempt sales are the ones left out, and exempt isn’t the same as zero-rated. On both, the customer pays no tax. What’s different is that exempt sales don’t count toward the $30,000, and you can’t claim back the GST/HST you paid on costs tied to them. That’s also why a dentist can’t recover the tax you charge them.

Third, it counts what you billed rather than what you banked, using the date payment became due. That date is the earliest of four: the day you issue the invoice, the date on the invoice, the day the customer has to pay under a written contract, and the day you would have invoiced but for an undue delay. Anything a customer pays you before it becomes due, such as an advance payment for work, counts when you receive it.9 So an invoice raised on December 20 and paid in February counts in the October to December quarter.

The two ways to cross the line

The CRA’s own worked examples tell the two tests apart.10 For the single-quarter test, take a company with $12,900 of sales in the January to March quarter, comfortably under $30,000. The company then makes one $45,000 sale on April 11. The $45,000 passes $30,000 on its own inside the April to June quarter. The $12,900 sits in the earlier quarter and plays no part in this test. The company stopped being a small supplier immediately before that sale, which is why the sale itself is taxable in full: in Ontario that is 13% HST on the $45,000, or $5,850in British Columbia that is 5% GST on the $45,000, or $2,250in Alberta that is 5% GST on the $45,000, or $2,250in Saskatchewan that is 5% GST on the $45,000, or $2,250in Manitoba that is 5% GST on the $45,000, or $2,250in New Brunswick that is 15% HST on the $45,000, or $6,750in Nova Scotia that is 14% HST on the $45,000, or $6,300in Prince Edward Island that is 15% HST on the $45,000, or $6,750in Newfoundland and Labrador that is 15% HST on the $45,000, or $6,750 of tax on a price the owner had quoted as tax-free, and the next section explains why collecting it later isn’t certain. Its effective date is April 11, and its application is due by May 10.

For the four-quarter test, take a business whose four quarters ending March 31 total $32,000. The business stays a small supplier through April. Its effective date is May 2, the day of its first sale after that month, and its application is due by May 31. If no sale comes for months, the effective date is the day of the next one.

If you crossed the line months ago

The tax is owed from your effective date whether or not you charged it. You may be able to bill past customers, though suing for undercharged tax requires proper disclosure and accounting for or remitting the tax to the CRA. An amended invoice can sometimes meet the disclosure requirement, subject to the agreement and other legal restrictions.11 If you can’t collect it, your corporation funds the tax.

Registering late but with the true effective date still beats both alternatives, which are registering from today and leaving it alone. You can claim back the GST/HST you paid on your own costs for the whole stretch between your effective date and now, which offsets part of the bill. A late return carries a penalty of 1% of the amount owing. Another 0.25% of that amount is added for each full month the return is late, counting a maximum of 12 months. On $10,000 owed and six months late, the penalty is $100 plus six lots of $25, or $250. A return showing nothing owing, or a refund, carries no late-filing penalty at all.12 Interest runs on the unpaid tax at the CRA’s prescribed rate, which it resets every quarter, and the current quarter’s figure is on our CRA interest rates page.13

Waiting for an old unregistered period to go stale isn’t something we’d recommend. The CRA’s four-year reassessment window runs from the later of the day a return was due and the day it was filed. A separate rule lets the CRA assess at any time where an amount was misstated through neglect or carelessness.14

How often this changes

Re-run the decision, rather than just the quarterly arithmetic, when any of these happen:

  • Your customer mix moves in either direction between consumers and GST/HST-registered businesses.
  • You start invoicing clients outside Canada, since whether those sales are zero-rated turns on carve-outs that catch consulting and professional work in particular.
  • You incorporate or buy a second company. Two companies under the same control usually have to combine their sales for this test, and that gets retested at the start of every calendar quarter.15
  • You change how you bill, e.g. moving from invoicing on completion to invoicing on signature, which pulls revenue into an earlier quarter because the count runs from when payment first becomes due.

Closing thoughts

The expensive version of this problem almost never starts with someone reading the rules wrong. Rather, it starts with an owner who assumed they were comfortably under the line, and who found out fourteen months later when the bookkeeping was finally caught up. Running the four-quarter number off a sales report takes a few minutes each quarter, and it’s the only part of this that has to happen on a schedule. If you do register, open a second bank account for the tax, because collected GST/HST sitting in the account you pay yourself from is how a filing deadline turns into a cash-flow problem.

How we handle it

We work out your effective date from your billing records rather than your bank deposits, register the account, and file the returns on the schedule the CRA assigns you.16 Where the date has already passed, we put together the revenue breakdown the CRA asks for on a backdated registration. We then file the catch-up returns with the input tax credits claimed against them.17 GST/HST returns are included from our Year-Round Tax Partner package up, on our pricing page.

Footnotes

  1. One group registers whatever its sales. Canada Revenue Agency, “When to register for and start charging the GST/HST”, requires self-employed taxi drivers and commercial ride-sharing drivers to be registered before their first fare. Their effective date is the day they start supplying taxable passenger transportation services. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

  2. Canada Revenue Agency, “When to register for and start charging the GST/HST”. The $30,000 is set by Excise Tax Act s.148(1)(b), which also sets $50,000 for a public service body such as a charity or non-profit. The amount isn’t indexed and hasn’t changed since the tax was introduced, so the year here is a verification date rather than an annual reset. The four-quarter test is s.148(1) and the single-quarter test is s.148(2). GST/HST Memorandum 2-2, “Small suppliers”, paragraph 51 states the extra month as conditional on not exceeding the threshold under s.148(2) during it. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

  3. Canada Revenue Agency, “When to register for and start charging the GST/HST”, which states the deadline as within 29 days of the effective date. Excise Tax Act s.240(2.1) sets it as before the day that is 30 days after the day the person first makes a taxable supply otherwise than as a small supplier. The CRA and the memorandum both give the effective date as no later than the day of that supply. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

  4. Excise Tax Act s.242(2). The Minister shall cancel a registration on request, effective after the last day of a fiscal year of the person, where that person is a small supplier and has been registered for at least one year ending on that day. A corporation registering three months into its fiscal year therefore waits past the following year end. The rule covers any small supplier asking to deregister, not only one who registered voluntarily. The CRA’s own page, “Register voluntarily for a GST/HST account”, puts it as “you may need to remain registered for at least one year”. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

  5. Canada Revenue Agency, “GST/HST calculator (and rates)”, rate table. GST is 5% in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon. HST is 13% in Ontario, 14% in Nova Scotia (reduced from 15% on April 1, 2025), and 15% in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island. Verified 2026-08-09. GST 5% and Ontario HST 13% are stated with their source on our ecommerce GST/HST guide, which owns those two figures. Which province’s rate applies is the place-of-supply rule. Guide RC4022, “General Information for GST/HST Registrants”, sets out separate rules for goods, services, personal services, services relating to real property, and intangible personal property. ↩

  6. Canada Revenue Agency, GST/HST Memorandum 2-2, “Small suppliers”, paragraphs 56 to 59: an unregistered small supplier cannot claim input tax credits. On registering you can also recover tax on inventory and capital property on hand at your effective date, and on services and rent prepaid for periods after it. You can’t recover it on services already used up (Guide RC4022, “New registrants”). The $100 invoice threshold for showing your registration number is in the Input Tax Credit Information (GST/HST) Regulations, s.3, regulations current to 2026-06-17. Verified 2026-08-09. Scope rechecked 2026-09-25 against CRA Becoming and Ceasing to be a Registrant, June 2026, paragraphs 11–20. ↩

  7. For Ontario: Canada Revenue Agency, Charge and collect the GST/HST - Which rate to charge. Verified 2026-08-13. 13% across every period in CRA's rate-history table (back to 2013-04-01). HST applies in Ontario on or after 2010-07-01 per RC4058 applicable-rates table.For British Columbia: Province of British Columbia (Ministry of Finance), and the Canada Revenue Agency for the GST component, B.C. provincial sales tax (PST) - Province of British Columbia. Verified 2026-09-24. The general PST rate is 7%, and a 2026 Act extended the tax to five kinds of professional service from October 1, 2026. The province paused that extension in September 2026 with a regulation that exempts all five services from October 1, 2026.For Alberta: Canada Revenue Agency, Charge and collect the GST/HST - Which rate to charge. Verified 2026-08-13.For Saskatchewan: Saskatchewan Ministry of Finance, Information Bulletin PST-5, Registration and Reporting Requirements (revised July 2025). Verified 2026-08-13. No PST rate or base changes announced in the 2026-27 budget document.For Manitoba: Manitoba Finance - Taxation Division, Retail Sales Tax - Province of Manitoba. Verified 2026-08-13.For New Brunswick: New Brunswick Department of Finance and Treasury Board, Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) - Finance, and Transitional Rules for the New Brunswick HST Rate Increase (March 30, 2016). Verified 2026-08-13. HST has applied in NB since April 1, 1997 under the CITCA. The provincial component rose from 8% to 10% (13% to 15% total) effective July 1, 2016, per the NB Finance transitional rules notice of March 30, 2016.For Nova Scotia: Government of Nova Scotia - Finance and Treasury Board (official news release), Province Lowers HST, Raises Income Thresholds for Nova Scotians (March 31, 2025). Verified 2026-08-13. Provincial portion cut from 10% to 9% on April 1, 2025, lowering the combined rate from 15% to 14%. Budget 2026-27 states it is 'maintaining the HST at 14 per cent, after a one per cent cut' - no 2026 change.For Prince Edward Island: PEI Department of Finance and Affordability (Taxation and Property Records), Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) | Government of Prince Edward Island. Verified 2026-08-13. HST implemented April 1, 2013 under the CITCA signed November 26, 2012, and the rate is unchanged by Budget 2026.For Newfoundland and Labrador: Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Finance, Harmonized Sales Tax – Department of Finance, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. Verified 2026-08-13. Provincial portion rose from 8% to 10% effective July 1, 2016, making the combined rate 15%. NL has participated in HST since July 1, 1997. No sales-tax changes in Budget 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  8. Canada Revenue Agency, “When to register for and start charging the GST/HST”, footnote 2. A calendar quarter is a three-month period beginning January 1, April 1, July 1 or October 1. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

  9. Excise Tax Act s.148(1)(a) counts consideration that became due in the four calendar quarters “or that was paid in those four calendar quarters without having become due”. Section 152(1) sets when consideration becomes due. The due date is the earliest of the day the invoice is first issued, the invoice date, the day the recipient must pay under a written agreement, and the day the supplier would have issued an invoice but for an undue delay. Goodwill, financial services and sales of capital property are excluded from the count by s.148(1)(a), which is why a business selling its van or its goodwill doesn’t add that to the total. Verified 2026-08-09. A true security deposit is not consideration merely because it was received; subsection 168(9) distinguishes it from an advance payment, as clarified here on 2026-09-25. ↩

  10. GST/HST Memorandum 2-2, “Small suppliers”, Example 4: $12,900 of sales in March, a $45,000 sale on April 11, small-supplier status ceasing immediately before that supply, effective date April 11, registration by May 10. Canada Revenue Agency, “When to register for and start charging the GST/HST”, Example 4: $32,000 across the four quarters ending March 31, and a first sale after the extra month on May 2. Verified 2026-08-09. The memorandum’s own example does not name a province. Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST rate table for the Ontario rate; the $5,850 is our arithmetic on the example's $45,000. Verified 2026-08-13.Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST rate table for the British Columbia rate; the $2,250 is our arithmetic on the example's $45,000. Verified 2026-08-13.Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST rate table for the Alberta rate; the $2,250 is our arithmetic on the example's $45,000. Verified 2026-08-13.Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST rate table for the Saskatchewan rate; the $2,250 is our arithmetic on the example's $45,000. Verified 2026-08-13.Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST rate table for the Manitoba rate; the $2,250 is our arithmetic on the example's $45,000. Verified 2026-08-13.Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST rate table for the New Brunswick rate; the $6,750 is our arithmetic on the example's $45,000. Verified 2026-08-13.Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST rate table for the Nova Scotia rate; the $6,300 is our arithmetic on the example's $45,000. Verified 2026-08-13.Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST rate table for the Prince Edward Island rate; the $6,750 is our arithmetic on the example's $45,000. Verified 2026-08-13.Canada Revenue Agency GST/HST rate table for the Newfoundland and Labrador rate; the $6,750 is our arithmetic on the example's $45,000. Verified 2026-08-13. ↩

  11. Excise Tax Act s.224 allows a supplier to sue a recipient for uncollected tax only where the supplier has complied with s.223(1) and has accounted for or remitted the tax to the Receiver General. Section 223(1) allows the tax to be disclosed in prescribed manner, in the invoice or receipt, or in a written agreement with the recipient. Verified 2026-08-09. CRA P-116 accepts later disclosure where contractual/common-law restrictions do not prevent it. The original invoice need not always have stated the tax, a correction checked 2026-09-25 against that older policy statement. ↩

  12. Canada Revenue Agency, Guide RC4022, “General Information for GST/HST Registrants”, under “Penalties”. The formula is A plus (B times C), where A is 1% of the amount owing, B is 25% of A, and C is the number of complete months the return is overdue, to a maximum of 12. The guide states that the penalty applies unless there is a $0 amount owing or the CRA owes you a refund on that return, and Excise Tax Act s.280.1 bases it on amounts not remitted by the due date. A separate $250 penalty applies where you don’t file after the CRA demands a return. Neither penalty is deductible for income tax. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

  13. Canada Revenue Agency, “Prescribed interest rates” (https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/prescribed-interest-rates.html), the CRA’s index of quarterly rate pages. Each quarterly page carries a table whose GST and HST rows show the rate on overdue remittances, the basic three-month Treasury bill rate rounded up to a whole percentage plus four points, set each quarter under section 2 of the Interest Rates (Excise Tax Act) Regulations, SOR/2006-230. Every published quarter is stated, with its CRA page, on our CRA interest rates page, which owns the figure, and this guide states no rate of its own. Verified 2026-09-06. ↩

  14. Excise Tax Act s.298(1)(a) bars an assessment of net tax more than four years after the later of the day the person was required to file the return and the day the return was filed. Section 298(4)(a) allows an assessment at any time where there is a misrepresentation attributable to neglect, carelessness or wilful default. Whether s.298(1) starts running at all for a person who never registered and had no reporting period is unsettled, which is why we wouldn’t plan around it. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

  15. GST/HST Memorandum 2-2, “Small suppliers”, paragraph 25, and Excise Tax Act s.127. Association between corporations follows the Income Tax Act control tests in ss.256(1) to 256(6), with separate tests for partnerships and trusts, and an individual is associated with a corporation they control. Section 148 does not split one threshold between associates: each person adds all its associates’ taxable supplies to its own, which is harsher. Sales you invoice in your own name as a sole proprietor come into the same count. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

  16. Canada Revenue Agency, Guide RC4022, “General Information for GST/HST Registrants”, assigned and optional reporting periods. Annual taxable supplies of $1,500,000 or less are assigned an annual reporting period, with monthly or quarterly filing available by election. We ask for quarterly where an annual deadline looks likely to catch an owner out. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

  17. Canada Revenue Agency, “Request a GST/HST registration to be backdated by more than 30 days”, which asks for a written breakdown supported by spreadsheets, sales journals or similar records showing when revenue first exceeded $30,000. Verified 2026-08-09. ↩

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