Which province’s sales tax do I charge customers in other provinces?

Place-of-supply rules for goods: the delivery address decides

The place of supply for a physical good is generally where it is delivered or made available to the customer. That applies when you sell and ship the good to a customer in another province. It is not the province your business operates from, and not the customer's billing address, if that differs from where the goods actually go. A shipment from an Ontario warehouse to a Nova Scotia customer is taxed at the rate that applies where the package lands, not at Ontario's rate.

This is the same logic that applies to any retailer shipping across provincial lines. The tax follows the goods, so your invoicing system needs the ship-to address, not just the bill-to address, to charge the correct rate. A business shipping from a single Ontario location to customers across the country needs its e-commerce platform or invoicing software configured with each province's rate. A single default rate applied to every order will not work.

Place-of-supply rules for services: the customer's address on file

Most services are taxed based on the customer's address on record, commonly their home or business address. That is not where the work was actually performed, or where your business is located. A consultant based in Ontario doing work for a client whose address on file is in Alberta generally charges GST at Alberta's rate. That is true even though the consultant is sitting in Ontario the whole time.

Certain services carry their own specific place-of-supply rules instead of the general customer-address rule. This applies particularly to services connected to real property in a specific province, or admission to an event held in a specific location. A service tied to a physical place generally follows that place, rather than the customer's address. A contractor renovating a property in Manitoba, for example, generally follows Manitoba's rules for that job regardless of where the contracting business itself is registered.

A business selling a mix of standard consulting services and services tied to a specific property may need to apply both rules side by side. Which rule applies depends on which service is being invoiced. An engineering firm that both advises clients remotely and inspects sites in person is a good example. It is worth reviewing each service line separately, rather than assuming one rule covers the whole invoice.

Sales tax rates by province

Rates and registration rules do shift over time. Treat this table as a starting point, and confirm the exact current rate for a specific province before finalizing an invoice. This matters particularly for the Atlantic provinces. A rate change there is more likely to catch an out-of-province seller off guard than a change in a province they deal with every day.

Registering separately for BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, or Quebec

GST/HST registration with the CRA does not automatically register you to collect provincial sales tax. That includes British Columbia PST, Saskatchewan PST, Manitoba's retail sales tax, and Quebec's QST. Each of these provinces runs its own separate sales tax system, with its own registration process and its own rules for when an out-of-province seller has to register. That generally happens once the seller is considered to be carrying on business there, or crosses that province's own sales threshold.

Each province sets its own threshold and definition of carrying on business. Confirm the current registration trigger for each province where you have meaningful sales, rather than assuming one province's rule applies everywhere. This matters most for e-commerce sellers shipping goods across the country. A growing online store can end up needing several provincial registrations well before its overall revenue feels large. Each provincial registration then comes with its own separate return and remittance schedule, to track alongside the federal GST/HST return.

Sales to US customers: zero-rated, no GST/HST at all

Sales exported to customers in the US or elsewhere outside Canada are generally zero-rated. No GST/HST is charged, though the sale still counts toward your $30,000 small supplier threshold for Canadian GST/HST registration purposes. This is a Canadian tax question only. It says nothing about whether you might separately owe US state sales tax, once your sales into a given state cross that state's own economic nexus threshold. That is a different system entirely, run by each state rather than by the CRA. See do I charge GST/HST on sales to US customers and what is economic nexus for Canadian online sellers for how the two systems interact.

How we handle multi-province sales tax for clients

We track a client's sales by destination province to flag when a provincial PST or QST registration is triggered. That beats waiting until a sizeable amount of unregistered sales has built up in one province. For e-commerce businesses selling across the country, we fold this into the same review we use for the federal $30,000 threshold. That way, both sides of the picture are checked at once. We also keep each province's filing schedule on the same calendar we already use for federal GST/HST deadlines.