Moving company tax services: HST that follows the destination, a fleet the T2 rewards

HST follows the destination, not your address

The place-of-supply rule for freight transportation is destination-based: a domestic move is taxed at the rate of the province where the goods are delivered. Quote software and dispatchers rarely know this, so long-distance movers routinely charge Ontario's 13% on jobs that legally carry 5% — overcharging customers and over-remitting tax that is painful to unwind later. Regular routes into Quebec eventually raise QST registration questions too, which we review once Montreal stops being occasional.

Deposits have their own timing rule: HST is not due when a booking deposit is received, only when it is applied against the move. And when a customer cancels and forfeits the deposit, the amount kept is deemed to include HST — a detail that decides whether the forfeiture nets you 100 cents or 88.5 on the dollar.

Packing, materials, and storage: one supply or three

Services a carrier supplies as part of the move — packing, loading, unpacking, and the materials used to do it — are incidental to the freight service and take the same tax treatment as the move itself. Packing materials bundled into a Calgary job go at 5%; the identical boxes sold at your counter are a 13% Ontario retail sale. Storage sits on both sides of the line: storage-in-transit during a continuous move generally stays part of the freight service, while ongoing monthly storage after the move is finished is a separate taxable supply at your warehouse's provincial rate. We set the invoice templates so each revenue type lands in the right tax code without dispatch thinking about it.

Movers who act as agents for a van line, or subcontract the linehaul to another carrier, step into the interlining rules: settlements between carriers inside one continuous movement are zero-rated, and only the carrier that invoices the shipper charges destination-rate tax. Booking those settlements as taxable sales double-counts HST nobody owed.

The fleet on the T2: the 40% class and the 30% class

Truck CCA turns on a weight rating. A truck designed for hauling freight with a gross vehicle weight rating of 11,788 kg or more belongs in Class 16 at 40% declining balance — that captures tractors and the heaviest straight trucks. Everything lighter — cube vans, five-ton straight trucks below the threshold — sits in Class 10 at 30%, alongside trailers. The split matters because a mixed fleet depreciates at two speeds, and misclassifying a heavy unit into Class 10 leaves real deductions on the table in the expensive early years. Dollies, pads, and shop equipment fall into Class 8, and small tools under $500 each deduct fully in Class 12. Timing matters too: a truck must be available for use to start claiming, so a December delivery helps the current year while a January one does not. Repairs that keep a unit on the road are deducted now; a box swap or engine replacement that extends its life is capital and joins the truck's class instead.

Fuel, road taxes, and the rest of the T2

Fuel is usually the second-largest cost after wages, and it leaks two ways: HST on fuel purchases goes unclaimed when drivers pay cash without cards, and per-litre costing goes stale — the federal fuel charge came off road fuel on April 1, 2025, and quotes built on old cost assumptions quietly overprice or undermargin. We put the fleet on cards, sweep the ITCs monthly, and reprice the cost-per-kilometre model each quarter. Heavy units crossing provincial or US lines pull the company into IFTA fuel-tax reporting; regular US jobs add DOT authority and USD revenue, which we cover on our moving company cross-border tax page. The T2 itself rounds out the file: the small business deduction on the first $500,000 of profit, instalments once tax owing recurs, damage-claim payouts deducted in the year settled, and a crew cost structure that belongs on our moving company payroll page rather than in a shoebox of e-transfers.