US mowers, US trucks, Canadian lawns: the landscaper border file

Your fleet is American even when your customers never are

Zero-turns, skid steers, aerators, dump trailers, plow trucks — the working assets of a Canadian landscaping company are dominated by US brands. Buy them from a Canadian dealer and the border is invisible: the dealer was the importer, and every border cost is already inside the sticker price. The cross-border tax file opens the day you go direct — a used skid steer from a Michigan dealer, a trailer from a US online listing, a plow truck at a US auction — because from that point the import is yours to get right.

Three charges can hit a machine at the border — each with its own rules

Regular customs duty follows origin. Equipment that qualifies as CUSMA-originating enters Canada duty-free, but origin belongs to where the machine was built, not where you bought it — an offshore-built unit purchased from a US seller keeps its true origin and can carry the MFN rate for its tariff item.

Canada's counter-tariff surtaxes are a separate layer. The broad lists covering most US consumer and equipment goods were revoked effective September 1, 2025, but the steel, aluminum and vehicle surtaxes remained, and the government has amended the lists more than once since. We check the exact tariff item against the current orders in the week you commit to a purchase — surtax answers from last season are worthless.

The third charge is the predictable one: 5 percent GST on the customs value, collected at the border. A GST-registered company recovers it as an input tax credit, but only when the entry names your company as importer of record. Machines cleared under a seller's or courier's account are how ITCs go missing. Direct importers also need a CARM registration with CBSA before the first commercial entry.

Trucks and trailers are their own category

A pickup or plow truck imported directly from a US seller runs through the Registrar of Imported Vehicles process, and Canada's vehicle surtax can apply depending on where the truck was assembled and its content — the answer genuinely differs truck by truck, and the surtax can erase an auction discount entirely. Steel trailers and steel attachments deserve the same check against the steel-products surtax list before you wire a deposit.

• Before you commit: bill of sale, serial-number and build evidence for origin, the tariff item, and the current surtax status of that item.
• At the border: your company as importer of record, broker entry naming the right value in Canadian dollars.
• In the books: the machine's cost for CCA is the landed Canadian-dollar cost — price at the exchange rate, plus duty, surtax and freight — while border GST stays out of cost because it comes back as an ITC.

The rare US job, briefly

A landscaping company with no US location that takes the occasional job across the border generally stays out of US federal income tax — under the Canada-US treaty, business profits without a permanent establishment are taxable only in Canada. But sending crews raises immigration questions that belong to an immigration lawyer, and state-level rules do not follow the treaty, so we treat US jobs as a flag-first conversation, not a form to file after the fact.

The border is episodic — the payroll cycle is every single year

For most landscaping companies the cross-border file opens a few times a year at most. The file that never closes is seasonal payroll: crews hired in April, overtime through the summer, layoffs and a stack of ROEs in November, then rehires in spring — with WSIB and source deductions running through all of it. That cycle, done cleanly, saves more than any auction discount, and it is where our fixed-fee work earns its keep — see our landscaping payroll service. For the import side and everything else Canada-US, the full toolkit lives at cross-border tax services. Boutique firm, cloud-first, fixed fees quoted after a discovery call.

Source: Department of Finance Canada — Canada's response to US tariffs.