The short version
GST is the federal Goods and Services Tax, charged at 5% across Canada. HST is the Harmonized Sales Tax, which combines the GST with a provincial portion in participating provinces and is charged as a single rate. PST is a separate provincial sales tax charged on top of GST in provinces that have not harmonized. Québec has its own version, the QST, which works much like GST.
So a customer in Ontario pays HST, a customer in British Columbia pays GST plus PST, a customer in Québec pays GST plus QST, and a customer in Alberta pays GST only.
Rates by province as of 2026
These are the general rates. Specific products can be exempt, zero-rated or taxed at a different rate, especially under provincial sales taxes, so always check the rules for what you sell.
Nova Scotia’s HST dropped from 15% to 14% on April 1, 2025. Rates change occasionally, which is one reason to keep tax rates in your POS and accounting system rather than hard-coding them into price lists.
- Alberta, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut: GST 5%
- British Columbia: GST 5% + PST 7%
- Saskatchewan: GST 5% + PST 6%
- Manitoba: GST 5% + RST 7%
- Ontario: HST 13%
- Québec: GST 5% + QST 9.975%
- New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island: HST 15%
- Nova Scotia: HST 14%
Who administers each tax
The CRA administers GST and HST everywhere except Québec, where Revenu Québec administers both GST and QST for most businesses. Provincial sales taxes are administered by each province: the BC Ministry of Finance for PST, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Finance, and Manitoba Finance for RST. Each has its own registration, returns, filing frequency and deadlines.
That means a business in BC files a GST/HST return with the CRA and a separate PST return with the province. A business in Ontario files a single HST return with the CRA.
Which taxes you can recover
This is the most important practical difference. GST, HST and QST are value-added taxes: registered businesses can claim back the tax they pay on business purchases (as input tax credits for GST/HST and input tax refunds for QST). For a registered business, these taxes are mostly a pass-through. You collect them from customers and pass them on, minus what you paid suppliers.
PST in BC and Saskatchewan and RST in Manitoba are retail sales taxes. Generally, there is no credit for PST you pay on things you use in your business, so PST on equipment, supplies or software is a real cost. Businesses usually do not pay PST on inventory bought for resale, because they provide their PST number to the supplier to buy it exempt. Record recoverable and non-recoverable tax differently in your books: GST/HST paid goes to a receivable account, while PST paid becomes part of the cost of the item or expense.
Selling across provinces
Under GST/HST place-of-supply rules, goods are generally taxed based on where they are delivered. If a business in Alberta ships a product to a customer in Ontario, it charges 13% HST, not 5% GST. Services have their own rules, often based on the customer’s address.
Provincial sales taxes add another layer. BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Québec can require out-of-province sellers to register and collect their provincial tax when they sell into the province above certain thresholds, including online sellers and digital services. If you ship nationally, review each province’s registration rules. Marketplaces like Amazon collect and remit some of these taxes on your behalf in certain cases, which your books need to reflect so you do not remit the same tax twice.
Invoices, receipts and pricing
Invoices and receipts should show the tax separately by type, along with your GST/HST registration number (and QST or PST number where applicable). Your customers need that information to claim their own credits. Tax-included pricing is allowed in Canada if the receipt states that tax is included, which is common in cafés and bars.
Set up your point of sale and accounting with the right tax codes by province and product category. SeroPOS lets you configure tax rates per item and location, and SeroBooks handles GST, HST, PST and QST for every province, including the separate returns each province requires.
Zero-rated versus exempt
Two terms cause a lot of confusion under GST/HST. Zero-rated supplies are taxable at 0%. Basic groceries, most prescription drugs, many medical devices, and exports fall into this category. You charge no tax to the customer, but because the supply is technically taxable, you can still claim input tax credits on the costs of making it. A grocery store selling mostly zero-rated food can therefore receive regular GST/HST refunds.
Exempt supplies are outside the tax. Examples include most residential rents, many health care and dental services, educational services and most financial services. You charge no tax, and you cannot claim input tax credits on the costs related to those supplies. A business that makes both taxable and exempt supplies has to apportion its ITCs between them.
Provincial sales taxes have their own exemption lists, which do not line up neatly with GST. For example, an item can be GST-taxable but PST-exempt, or the reverse, and children’s clothing, certain safety equipment, and some services are treated differently from province to province. When you set up tax codes in your POS or accounting system, build them from the provincial rules, not by copying GST categories.
Common mistakes
Most sales tax problems come from charging the seller’s local rate on goods shipped elsewhere, claiming credits for PST, forgetting that zero-rated sales still need to be reported, and not registering for PST when a business starts selling into BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Québec. A quarterly review of tax collected by province, compared with where your customers actually are, catches most of these early.
A simple safeguard is to review your tax setup whenever something changes: a new product category, a new province you ship to, a new sales channel such as a marketplace, or a rate change announced in a provincial budget. Each of those is a moment when tax codes that used to be right can quietly become wrong, and catching it in the first month is far cheaper than correcting several returns later.