Do you charge GST/HST on shipping in Canada?

You buy a label, charge your buyer for shipping, then notice tax on both documents. That does not necessarily mean the same tax was collected twice. Your store purchases transport from a supplier and makes its own sale to a customer. The outgoing sale needs its own tax calculation; eligible tax on the incoming purchase is handled through your input tax credits.

This article concerns ordinary Canadian webshop orders under the regular GST/HST regime, with official guidance checked on 14 October 2026. Decide what your customer bought before deciding which checkbox to enable. A product sold with delivery, a standalone courier service and a purchase consisting entirely of zero-rated goods can produce different answers.

Is your customer buying delivered goods or a separate delivery service? #

CRA Info Sheet GI-202 distinguishes a single supply of goods with delivery from separate supplies. Where goods and delivery form a single supply, the tax treatment generally follows the goods. The CRA gives delivered basic groceries as a zero-rated example. Where delivery is supplied separately, its GST/HST treatment depends on the service destination regardless of the goods’ tax status.

Read your actual selling terms. Who supplies delivery to the buyer? What obligation does the merchant accept? Can the buyer acquire that service separately? Record the conclusion alongside the checkout setting. An invoice split into “product” and “shipping” is useful for transparency, but that display alone does not resolve the legal single-or-multiple-supply question.

Keep the customer contract separate from the supplier contract. A sender preparing your order or a carrier accepting the parcel does not become the retailer of the goods just because it touches the shipment. Avoid making an AirPost-specific tax classification from a general CRA platform example: contractual roles and the invoice issued for each service still require verification.

Which province sets the GST/HST rate on a delivered order? #

Use the place-of-supply rule for the actual supply. The CRA’s ordinary goods example has a British Columbia furniture store delivering a mattress to Toronto and charging 13% Ontario HST. The seller’s home province does not fix one rate for every customer. Conversely, a customer’s billing address alone does not establish where legal delivery occurs.

For ordinary goods you send by courier to the buyer, start with the delivery destination and the contract’s delivery terms. If the buyer collects the goods, review the pickup location instead. A later trip home with those goods does not make an in-person pickup identical to a sale the seller agreed to deliver to another province.

The CRA’s current collection page gives Nova Scotia HST as 14% from 1 April 2025. Old rate lists showing 15% there can produce incorrect tax on product and shipping lines. Preserve the date of the rate review and test the provinces you serve against current official guidance. Do not import another province’s PST logic into the GST/HST rate calculation.

How would a C$13.70 delivery charge change at checkout? #

AirPost’s domestic Canadian options, retrieved on 14 October 2026, showed Canada Post Expedited Parcel for a small parcel from approximately C$13.70, platform fee included. Your sender’s agreed remuneration comes on top. That displayed amount is a route-budget reference; it does not state the GST/HST your own customer owes or prove the tax content of your supplier invoice.

For an arithmetic test only, set your customer’s pre-tax delivery charge equal to that C$13.70 reference. At 5%, C$13.70 × 0.05 rounds to C$0.69, giving a delivery-line total of C$14.39. At 13%, the tax rounds to C$1.78 and the delivery-line total is C$15.48. This models your customer charge; it is not an after-tax AirPost quote.

If instead you promise a final tax-inclusive delivery price of C$13.70, the arithmetic reverses. At 5%, its tax content is C$13.70 × 5 ÷ 105, or C$0.65 rounded. At 13%, it is C$13.70 × 13 ÷ 113, or C$1.58. You retain less pre-tax revenue when the customer total stays fixed. Make your checkout price convention explicit before comparing shipping margins.

The AirPost rate page describes an ECB-based currency conversion and payment in euros. Save the actual supplier invoice and currency treatment for bookkeeping rather than treating its Canadian-dollar display as your tax document. Do not add the platform fee again to a rate that already includes it. Keep agreed packing remuneration as its own budget component.

What happens when the parcel contains taxable and zero-rated goods? #

GI-202 says that when goods at different rates are supplied separately on a delivered basis, delivery forms part of those supplies and must be reasonably apportioned. Each allocated portion follows the corresponding goods. This differs from a standalone delivery service, which is assessed separately. Your software needs to preserve those distinctions rather than applying one tax category to every shipping line.

Consider a calculation exercise where a documented reasonable allocation gives half of the C$13.70 customer delivery charge to ordinary Ontario-taxable goods and half to zero-rated basic groceries. Each portion is C$6.85. The 13% portion generates C$0.89 rounded; the 0% portion generates no GST/HST. Taxing all C$13.70 at 13% would generate C$1.78, despite the split treatment.

The equal division is an explicit exercise assumption, not a prescribed CRA allocation method or an observed basket. Use a method reasonable for your actual goods and retain its basis. Test a heavy taxable product beside a light zero-rated item, then reverse the mix. A method that produces convenient tax results without reflecting the shipment is harder to support than a documented allocation.

Why is GST on your carrier invoice not simply passed through? #

The carrier invoice belongs in your purchases. The order invoice belongs in your sales. A registered store may recover eligible purchase GST/HST through an input tax credit when the conditions are met, while reporting tax collected from the customer. The purchase tax is not automatically the number to copy into checkout, and it should not be described as a second tax charged directly to that customer.

Use the supplier’s actual documented tax amount and registration information for any ITC claim. A foreign VAT charge, a currency conversion or a fee paid to an unregistered supplier is not Canadian GST/HST merely because the service relates to a Canadian parcel. If the supplier invoice has no Canadian tax line, do not manufacture one by applying 5% to the label cost.

CRA guidance requires invoices to show the applicable rate and tax amount, or clearly state that the price includes tax. Show HST as the combined rate, rather than separating it into federal and provincial pieces. Records normally need to be kept for six years from the end of the last year to which they relate, subject to the CRA requiring longer retention.

Which delivery cases should you test before accepting orders? #

1. 1

   Compare pickup and delivery

   Use the same product with the two actual contractual arrangements. Check whether the place-of-supply outcome changes.

2. 2

   Test product tax categories

   Run an ordinary taxable basket, a zero-rated basket and a mixed basket. Keep the delivery allocation where required.

3. 3

   Check inclusive and exclusive prices

   Verify that the advertised delivery price, payment total and invoice use the same convention.

4. 4

   Reconcile both invoices

   Match the customer’s delivery revenue to the order and the purchased transport to the shipment. Record each document’s actual tax independently.

For stock and dispatch arrangements, AirPost’s seller page explains the local sender model. The GST/HST small supplier rules for online stores help decide when federal collection begins. Registration, product classification and delivery supply are separate fields your checkout needs to get right.