Canada Sales Tax in 60 Seconds 🧭

Let's say you did $1M in sales on $250k manufactured cost.

You owe tax during two key events, we’ll call event #1 & event #2.

Event #1 - Container import
- Ex: 5% GST on $250k FOB = $12.5k tax

Event #1 is fully refundable. To get the money back, you need to have a valid GST number & B3 forms for each import, and then ask for it back.

Event #2 - On Sales
- Ex. 8.39% avg. on $1M sales = $83.9k tax

Event #2 is not refundable and is paid quarterly or annually based on your size, but you can bake this cost into your sales price to protect margins. If that $1M was all USA sales via 321 cross-border, then you wouldn’t owe Canada anything here.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐛𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐈 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞:

#1 - Missing documents
- GST number + B3 forms for each import.

#2 - Lack of awareness
- Don't know about this refund & how to claim it.

Even if you’re small, set this up well now.

Many brands die a death of accumulated operational inefficiencies like this.