Canadian Checkout Tax Wizard

For merchants using Shopify, Stripe, or WooCommerce. Choose your province, product type, revenue, platform, and where you ship. We’ll show the likely GST, HST, PST, QST, and RST checkpoints you need to think about before taxes are wrong at checkout.

📅 Updated March 2026🧮 Interactive Tool🇨🇦 Canada-specific

Merchant setup

Where is your business based?

What are you selling?

Physical goodsApparel, packaged products, hardware, retail orders Digital goods / software / SaaSApps, subscriptions, downloads, online memberships ServicesConsulting, agencies, implementation, professional work

Annual taxable revenue level

Under $30,000Still likely a small supplier federally $30,000 to $60,000Threshold territory — registration timing matters Over $60,000Assume registration is likely already required

Checkout platform

How do you fulfill sales?

Do you already hold any registrations?

None yetI’m still figuring out what should be switched on GST/HST onlyFederal registration exists, provincial extras may not Federal + some provincialI already collect in at least one PST/QST/RST province

Which provinces or territories do you sell into?

This is practical setup guidance, not legal advice. Borderline cases still need a Canadian accountant or indirect-tax specialist.

Your likely Canadian tax picture

Select your setup and click Show likely obligations. This tool is tuned for real merchant questions: Do I need GST/HST yet? When do BC or Saskatchewan sales tax rules start to bite? Is Quebec different? What will Shopify, Stripe, or WooCommerce actually handle for me?

What this wizard is trying to solve

Federal threshold: most Canadian merchants start with the CRA small-supplier test around $30,000 in taxable revenue.
Destination-based checkout: online tax usually depends on where the customer receives the supply, not just where your business is based.
Provincial extras: BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec are where setup mistakes usually happen because GST/HST alone is not the full story.
Platform mismatch: the processor or cart can calculate tax, but only after you tell it which registrations you actually hold.

Useful source links

CRA GST/HST

Registration thresholds, place-of-supply basics, charging tax in Canada.

CRA GST/HST for businesses →

Revenu Québec QST

QST registration, rates, and Quebec-specific administration.

Revenu Québec GST/HST and QST →

BC PST

BC provincial sales tax guidance for goods, software, and some services.

BC PST guide →

Saskatchewan PST

Retail sales tax guidance, including software and many digital supplies.

Saskatchewan PST guide →

Manitoba RST

Retail sales tax rules for taxable goods and certain digital supplies.

Manitoba RST guide →

Shopify tax setup

How Shopify uses registrations, product taxability, and overrides.

Shopify tax settings →

WooCommerce tax setup

Base location, tax classes, rates, and CSV import.

WooCommerce tax docs →

Stripe Tax

Stripe’s tax engine and registration-based collection logic.

Stripe Tax docs →

Two honest caveats

Services are the messiest category. Provincial sales tax on services varies a lot more than merchants assume. This tool flags likely issues, but it cannot replace a province-by-province service tax memo.
Digital products need extra care. If you sell software, subscriptions, or downloads across Canada, Quebec, BC, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba deserve a real setup review — especially once you cross threshold.

Short version for busy Canadian merchants

If you are under the federal small-supplier threshold, you may not need to register for GST/HST yet. Once you cross it, most merchants need to turn on GST or HST collection fast, because backdating the tax bill out of your own margin is brutal.

The second trap is thinking GST/HST is the whole Canadian tax story. It is not. WooCommerce merchants, Shopify stores, and Stripe-led custom checkouts all run into the same provincial edge cases: BC PST, Saskatchewan PST, Manitoba RST, and Quebec QST.

Where merchants usually get burned

Shopify: the tax engine can calculate rates cleanly, but only after you enter the registrations you actually have. If you register late, Shopify does not magically know which old orders should have included tax.

Stripe: subscription and SaaS businesses love Stripe because Stripe Tax is powerful, but it still depends on your registration map, product tax codes, and nexus settings. Wrong product classification equals wrong tax collection at scale.

WooCommerce: tax flexibility is great, but the burden is on you. If your store adds provinces one by one and rates were entered manually, stale tax tables are a classic source of Canadian checkout errors.

Merchant type	Most common miss	Why it hurts
Shopify store	GST/HST is on, QST/PST registrations are not	Checkout looks fine in Ontario and quietly wrong in Quebec or BC
Stripe SaaS	Product tax code left generic	Digital supplies get mis-taxed across multiple provinces
WooCommerce store	Manual rate table never updated	Old tax logic sticks around long after the business expanded
Hybrid online + local pickup	Pickup orders treated like shipped orders	The merchant assumes one rate fits every flow

Bottom line

If your business is growing and you sell across more than one province, treat tax setup as part of checkout architecture — not bookkeeping cleanup. The right processor matters, but so do tax registrations, rate tables, and product taxability rules.