Selling online in Quebec: the tax wall every store eventually hits

The day you launch an online store, the technical part is usually the easy one. The real wall comes later, once sales start landing and you have to decide what to do about tax. Most merchants who call us after opening their online store in Quebec ask the same question, with a hint of worry: "Was I supposed to be charging GST this whole time?"

The answer hinges on a threshold, a destination rule, and two obligations almost nobody knows about until they break them. None of it is complicated once it's laid out flat. But the order in which you learn these rules matters: discovering them through a letter from Revenu Québec costs more than reading them today. That's the subject of this article, and it's the kind of groundwork we build into a transactional site from the start in our services.

The short answer, for the busy

In Quebec, you must charge GST (5%) and QST (9.975%) once your worldwide taxable sales exceed $30,000 in a single calendar quarter or across the four preceding quarters. Below that threshold you are a small supplier and registration is optional, but choosing not to charge also means you cannot claim input tax credits on your own business purchases. Tax follows the delivery destination, not your address: an order shipped to Ontario carries 13% HST, one to Nova Scotia 14% since April 2025. If you sell on Amazon or Etsy, the platform generally collects and remits the tax for you, a rule in force since July 2021. And Quebec's Consumer Protection Act governs every distance contract: mandatory disclosure before purchase, a copy of the contract within 15 days, and a cancellation right that can escalate to a credit-card chargeback.

The $30,000 threshold, and the calculation people get backwards

Revenu Québec treats you as a "small supplier" as long as your worldwide taxable sales (yours and your associates') stay at or below $30,000 in a given calendar quarter or across the four quarters preceding it. While you're under that threshold, you don't have to register for GST and QST, and you don't have to charge them.

The most common mistake is reading it as "$30,000 per calendar year". It isn't. The threshold runs on a rolling four-quarter window, and it also trips the moment a single quarter exceeds $30,000. A store that takes off after one good campaign can therefore cross the line mid-year, overnight, without noticing the change in status.

That leaves the real decision, the one even small suppliers should make deliberately: register voluntarily or not. Registering means adding tax to what your customers pay and remitting it to the government. In exchange, you recover input tax credits: the GST and QST you pay yourself on business purchases (inventory, software, advertising) come back to you. For a store that invests before it sells, that recovery often outweighs the nuisance of charging tax. Not registering keeps your displayed prices lower for consumers, but every dollar of tax you pay on expenses stays a sunk cost. There's no universal right answer: there's your cost structure.

Tax follows the destination, not your address

Here's the rule that surprises new merchants most. Once registered, you don't charge "Quebec taxes" to everyone. You charge the tax of the province where the goods are delivered. Tax specialists call these the place-of-supply rules, and for shipped goods, the place of supply is the destination province.

In practice: a customer in Montreal pays GST + QST. A customer in Ontario pays 13% HST. A customer in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, or Newfoundland and Labrador pays 15%. Nova Scotia dropped to 14% on April 1, 2025, a detail many tax tables still haven't fixed. For provinces without harmonized tax (British Columbia, Alberta, and others), you charge only the 5% GST.

The good news: this isn't a calculation you do by hand. A properly configured transactional platform applies the right rate based on the shipping address. The trap is the store thrown together quickly that charges 14.975% to all of Canada because that's the owner's rate. Your Ontario customers overpay, your Prairie customers too, and you're the one holding the error.

Marketplaces often collect the tax for you

If you sell on a marketplace rather than your own site, the picture changes. Since July 1, 2021, the federal digital-economy rules require distribution platform operators (Amazon, Etsy, eBay) to collect and remit GST/HST on sales they facilitate for certain third-party sellers. In practice, Etsy collects the tax on your sales to Canadian buyers even if you aren't registered. Revenu Québec applies similar logic for QST.

That doesn't mean you can ignore the subject. Those sales still count toward your $30,000 threshold, and once registered you still have to report them and reconcile what the platform collected against your own records. The platform lifts a burden; it doesn't erase your accounting obligation. And above all: the moment you also sell through your own store, you, and you alone, collect and remit. It's one of the variables in choosing between Shopify or a custom store.

The invoice: quiet, but mandatory

Once registered, your GST and QST registration numbers must appear on your invoices. That's more than a formality: a customer who is itself a business needs those numbers to claim its own tax credits. An invoice must also clearly show the tax collected, or state that the price includes GST and QST.

For a consumer store, this is set up once, in the automatic receipt configuration. For a store that also sells to businesses, it's a real point of friction if neglected: a B2B customer who can't recover its tax for lack of a number on the receipt rarely comes back.

The little-known trap: the distance contract

Here's the part almost no store handles well, because it isn't about tax but about the Consumer Protection Act (LPC). Every online sale to a Quebec consumer is a "distance contract", and the LPC imposes specific rules.

Before the contract is concluded, the merchant must disclose a list of information: name and contact details, a detailed description of each good, the price and fees, the total payable, the execution timeline, the delivery method, and the cancellation, return, and refund conditions. This has to be presented so the consumer can easily keep and print it. The merchant must then send a copy of the contract within 15 days of it being concluded.

If those obligations aren't met, the consumer gets a cancellation right: within 7 days for a disclosure failure, and up to 30 days if the copy of the contract was never sent. They can also cancel if you don't deliver within the promised 30 days. And the tool that gives all this teeth: the chargeback. If you don't refund within 15 days of a valid cancellation, the consumer can ask their credit-card issuer to reverse the charge. It isn't a favour from the merchant; it's a right set out in the law.

The lesson isn't to fear the LPC, it's to build the store to respect it by default: clear terms, a compliant automatic receipt, a return policy shown before payment. Done from the start, it's invisible. Bolted on after a complaint, it's a full redo.

Where to start

The sequence is simple. First, estimate honestly where you sit against the $30,000 threshold, and decide deliberately whether to register rather than letting chance decide for you. Then make sure your platform applies tax by destination and produces compliant invoices. Finally, align your terms, shipping, and return pages with the LPC requirements, before the first sale, not after the first complaint.

That's exactly the kind of foundation we lay when building a transactional store: the selling mechanics and the compliance designed together, not patched on one after the other.

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This article explains tax and legal obligations to help an SMB ask the right questions. It is neither tax advice nor legal advice. The thresholds, rates, and rules described here change and carry exceptions depending on your situation: validate yours with Revenu Québec, the Canada Revenue Agency, the Office de la protection du consommateur, or a professional before any decision. Where they differ, the official texts and the law prevail.