Jewellery store cross-border tax: US suppliers, metal exports, and online sales

Buying stones, findings, and mountings from US suppliers

Most independent jewellers buy at least some inventory from US wholesalers and stone dealers — loose diamonds, coloured gemstones, findings, and mountings that are not made or sourced domestically. Cut and polished diamonds and most finished gemstones generally enter Canada with no duty under the tariff schedule, though findings, mountings, and settings made of base or precious metal can carry a duty rate that depends on the material and the item’s country of origin, so it is worth confirming per product line rather than assuming everything from a US supplier is duty-free. The 5 percent GST due at the border on a commercial import is a full input tax credit for a GST/HST-registered store, provided the customs paperwork ties back to your books — a customs broker earns their fee here on anything beyond occasional small parcels shipped by courier.

Anyone importing rough, uncut diamonds needs a Kimberley Process certificate under Canada’s participation in that scheme — a requirement that does not touch most retail jewellers buying cut and polished stones, but matters immediately if you ever buy rough for a custom-cutting arrangement. Paying US suppliers in USD also means the exchange rate on the day you pay, not the day you ordered, is what sets your landed cost — worth tracking per invoice rather than at an average rate for the month.

Keep the customs entry for every US purchase filed alongside the same purchase log you already keep for buying from the public — an ITC claim or a duty question is much faster to resolve when the customs paperwork and the purchase record live in the same place instead of two different filing systems.

The border side, at a glance

Selling scrap and estate metal to a US refiner

Gold and silver bought from the public that is not resaleable as jewellery often gets sold on to a refiner, and US refiners are a normal part of that market. A sale delivered to a US buyer is a zero-rated export for GST/HST — no tax charged on the sale, and your input tax credits stay intact — provided you keep the shipping and sale documentation that proves the metal actually left Canada. On the income side, an occasional sale to a refiner south of the border does not create US tax exposure for a Canadian business with no physical presence there; it is simply a sale reported on your Canadian return. A settlement sheet from the refiner showing weight, purity, and price paid, alongside the shipping documentation, is what we look for to support the zero-rating and the sale amount reported — informal arrangements without that paperwork are harder to defend on review.

Selling pieces online to US customers

A finished piece shipped to a US customer through your website or an online marketplace is also a zero-rated export, and occasional sales of this kind generally do not create a US permanent establishment or US income tax exposure under the Canada-US treaty. Where this gets more attention is volume: if online sales to US customers grow into a meaningful, sustained revenue stream, some US states can apply economic nexus rules to sales tax that are worth revisiting at that point — a threshold most independent jewellers with an occasional US sale online never approach, but one worth knowing is there before an online channel becomes a real part of the business. This is a straightforward sale of goods, not a services contract, so the withholding certificates that apply to cross-border service income for other clients generally do not apply here — the paperwork burden on an occasional retail sale stays light. For the bookkeeping behind these purchases and sales, including how to record USD transactions in Canadian books, see our jewellery bookkeeping guide, and for broader treaty and filing questions our cross-border tax services page covers the full toolkit.