Once your worldwide taxable revenue passes $30,000, HST registration stops being a choice. Ontario's rate is 13%. Cross the line without registering and the CRA can still assess you for tax you never charged — which means paying it out of your own margin.
Our charges include applicable taxes. Disbursements are extra and billed at cost — itemized upfront, in writing, never hidden.
From $563.87 taxes included
The test is total worldwide taxable supplies — revenue, not profit — including zero-rated sales and the sales of anyone associated with you. Exempt supplies do not count toward it.
There are two triggers and they work differently. If you exceed $30,000 in a single calendar quarter, you stop being a small supplier immediately: your registration takes effect no later than the day of the supply that took you over, and you must register within 29 days of that day. There is no grace period at all.
If you cross $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters without exceeding it in any single quarter, you get a short reprieve. You remain a small supplier until the end of the month following that quarter, and must be registered by then. Some businesses have to register regardless of revenue — taxi and ride-share drivers are the common example.
The obligation to charge HST attaches to your effective date of registration, not the date you got around to registering. Miss it and the CRA can assess you for tax you never collected. Going back to customers a year later for 13% they were never billed rarely works, so it comes out of your own pocket.
The offset is input tax credits: once registered, you recover the HST you paid on business purchases. Those credits need proper documentation, including the supplier's registration number on invoices above a set amount. A receipt saying 'HST included' with no registration number is a denied credit on audit.
This is also why voluntary registration below the threshold can make sense. A startup buying equipment, paying for a build-out or selling zero-rated exports is often in a refund position from day one. The trade-off is that you must then charge HST to customers who may not be able to recover it, and file returns on schedule from then on.
The rate depends on where the customer is, not where you are. Place of supply rules mean an Ontario business selling to an Alberta customer often charges 5% GST rather than 13% HST. Getting this wrong is expensive in both directions: undercharge and you owe the difference, overcharge and you have to refund it.
Exempt and zero-rated are not the same thing, and the difference decides whether you get input tax credits. Zero-rated supplies — basic groceries, exports, most prescription drugs — are taxed at 0% and you still recover the HST on your inputs. Exempt supplies — residential rent, most health care, most financial services — carry no HST and no input tax credits, so the tax on your costs becomes a real, unrecoverable expense.
The CRA assigns your reporting period based on annual taxable supplies: smaller registrants file annually and larger ones quarterly or monthly. You can elect to file more often, which is worth doing if you are usually in a refund position. If you qualify, the quick method — available where taxable supplies are $400,000 or less — lets you remit a flat percentage of your tax-included sales instead of tracking every input credit.
Yes. The threshold applies to individuals, partnerships and corporations alike — it is about taxable revenue, not about being incorporated. It is measured across everything you supply, including revenue from a side business you carry on personally, so two small ventures can push you over the line together.
Yes, and it often pays. You start recovering HST on business purchases immediately, which matters if you are buying equipment, fitting out premises or selling zero-rated exports. Once registered you must charge and file even if revenue falls back below the threshold, so treat it as a commitment rather than an experiment.
Fix it quickly. Tax you collect is the Crown's from the moment you collect it, and it does not get the collection protections that apply to assessed income tax — the CRA can move against you immediately. Correcting it voluntarily, potentially through the Voluntary Disclosures Program, is far better than being found.
Exports of goods and many services supplied to non-residents are zero-rated, meaning you charge 0% and still claim input tax credits on your costs. The conditions are specific, and services are considerably harder to get right than goods. Do not assume a foreign billing address makes a supply zero-rated.
Open your file tonight — a licensed Ontario lawyer will confirm everything with you by tomorrow.