How to Set Up a GST/HST Account with the CRA (When You Must, How to Register, What It Costs)

Just incorporated? The GST/HST account is usually the first tax account your new corporation needs — and since November 2025 the CRA only opens them online. Tell us what accounts you need set up → and CRS will handle the registrations alongside your registry work, or read on and do it yourself in about 20 minutes.

Every Canadian corporation that sells taxable goods or services eventually meets the same rule: stay under $30,000 in revenue and GST/HST registration is optional; cross it and you must register, charge, file and remit. This guide covers exactly when registration becomes mandatory, how the $30,000 small-supplier test really works (the single-quarter trap included), how to register now that the CRA has gone online-only, what rate to charge in each province, and how often you'll file. The rules below are the CRA's, verified on canada.ca at the time of writing — the figures are the government's, not ours.

What is a GST/HST account?

A GST/HST account is a program account attached to your corporation's nine-digit Business Number (BN) — the CRA's identifier for your company. The GST/HST account adds the letters RT and a four-digit reference, so it looks like 123456789 RT 0001. It sits alongside your corporation's other program accounts — RC for corporate income tax, RP for payroll — each a separate registration on the same BN.

Before you create anything, check whether your corporation already has a BN: most incorporations trigger one automatically, and it appears on CRA correspondence and your incorporation paperwork. You can also search your corporation — registry records often show the BN. Opening a second BN for a corporation that already has one is the classic setup mistake, and untangling it means calls to the CRA.

When do you have to register? The $30,000 small-supplier rule

You must register once your corporation is no longer a small supplier. The test: total worldwide taxable supplies — revenues before expenses, including zero-rated sales and the sales of associated companies, but excluding financial services, sales of capital property and goodwill — measured two ways:

1. Over four consecutive calendar quarters. Stay at $30,000 or under across the current quarter plus the four before it and you remain a small supplier. Creep over across four quarters and you keep small-supplier status until the end of the month following the quarter in which you crossed; your registration effective date is no later than your first sale after that, and you must register within 29 days of it.
2. In a single calendar quarter. Exceed $30,000 in one quarter and your small-supplier status ends immediately. The sale that put you over the line is already taxable — your effective date is no later than that day, and you have 29 days to register.

The single-quarter rule is the trap. A corporation that lands one large contract can owe GST/HST on that very invoice while the owner still believes the "first $30,000 is free." If a big sale is coming, register before you invoice it.

Two more cases sit outside the threshold entirely: taxi and ride-share operators must register from their first fare, regardless of revenue, and a business making only exempt supplies (long-term residential rent, most health care, and similar) generally cannot register at all.

Should you register voluntarily before $30,000?

You may register voluntarily any time your corporation makes taxable supplies in Canada — and for most incorporated businesses it's worth doing early. Registration is what unlocks input tax credits (ITCs): the GST/HST your corporation pays on equipment, software, rent, professional fees and inventory comes back on your return. A startup spending money before revenue arrives is usually leaving refunds unclaimed every month it stays unregistered. The CRA normally sets a voluntary registration's effective date as the day you request it, or up to 30 days earlier.

The cost of registering early is discipline, not dollars: from the effective date you must charge GST/HST on every taxable sale, file on schedule even for nil periods, and remit what you collect. If your books aren't ready for that, fix the books first — then register.

How do you register a GST/HST account with the CRA?

Online — that's now the only standard route. The CRA's own announcement is blunt: "Starting November 3, 2025, registrations for new business number (BN) or Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) program accounts must be done online." Phone callers to the business enquiries line are redirected to the portal. The steps:

1. Sign in to your CRA account (or register for one). From the account, choose Add account → Business Account → Business Registration Online (BRO).
2. Have the corporation's details ready: legal name exactly as incorporated, the existing BN if one was issued at incorporation, head-office address, directors' names and SINs, a description of the business activity, your estimated annual taxable revenue, and the effective date you want.
3. Add the RT (GST/HST) program account. BRO issues the BN (if new) and the RT account immediately — there is no government fee.
4. Record what you're assigned: the full account number, your reporting period and your first filing due date. They drive everything that follows.

Paper registration survives only for edge cases the CRA lists — reactivating a closed program account, a business whose owners are all non-residents, and a business owned by another business. Quebec is its own lane: Revenu Québec administers the GST in Quebec, so a Quebec business registers for GST and QST together with Revenu Québec, not through BRO (certain financial institutions excepted).

Rather not learn a portal for a one-time task? CRS sets up CRA program accounts — GST/HST and payroll — as part of getting a new corporation operating, the same way we handle your registry filings.

What rate do you charge once registered?

The rate follows the place of supply — where your customer takes delivery or where the service is performed — not where your corporation lives:

BC (7% PST), Saskatchewan (6% PST) and Manitoba (7% RST) run separate provincial sales taxes with their own registrations, and Quebec's 9.975% QST is administered with the GST by Revenu Québec. An Alberta corporation selling to an Ontario customer charges 13% — crossing provincial lines is exactly when owners start charging the wrong rate, so set your invoicing software's tax tables up front.

How often do you file — and when does the CRA expect money?

The CRA assigns a reporting period from your annual taxable supplies: $1.5 million or less files annually (the default for most new corporations), over $1.5 million to $6 million quarterly, and over $6 million monthly. A smaller registrant can elect a more frequent period, which is worth doing when ITCs regularly exceed the tax you collect — exporters and startups in a build phase often file quarterly to get refunds faster instead of waiting a year.

Each return reports the GST/HST you charged, subtracts your ITCs, and remits the difference (or claims the refund). Mark the due dates the moment the CRA assigns them: GST/HST remittances are the money the CRA pursues most aggressively, because it was never yours — you collected it in trust.

One distinction worth pinning down early: the GST/HST return is a different filing from your T2 corporate income tax return, and both are different again from the registry annual return that keeps the corporation itself alive. Three filings, three schedules — our corporate year-end checklist puts them on one page.

Set up the accounts once, correctly

A new corporation usually needs the same short list in its first month: the GST/HST account, a payroll account if it will pay salaries, invoicing set to the right tax rates, and the registry side — minute book, registered office, annual return reminders — in order. CRS handles the registrations and the registry work together, so nothing is missed and nothing is duplicated. Tell us what you need set up →, or if you're still at the incorporation stage, start with how to incorporate in Alberta or federal vs. provincial incorporation.