Do I charge GST on my Shopify sales

Whether you charge GST/HST on a Shopify order depends on two things: whether you are registered, and where your customer is.

If you are a GST/HST registrant, you generally charge the tax on your taxable sales to Canadian customers. Which rate you charge is set by the "place of supply", broadly where the goods are delivered: a parcel sent to one province is taxed at that province's rate, whatever province your business sits in. It is the destination that drives the rate.

Shopify can apply the right rate automatically once you have entered your registration details and set up your tax regions, which is why online sellers rarely calculate any of this by hand. When a payout lands in TALISK_HQ, the tax that was collected flows through to your GST worksheet, so what you charged and what you report line up.

Two things that trip sellers up

• Sales to customers outside Canada are generally zero-rated (taxed at 0%), but they still count as taxable supplies. See zero-rated vs exempt.
• If a marketplace, rather than your own storefront, collected the tax, that tax may not be yours to report at all.

Where it gets specific to you

The precondition to all of this is registration, and whether you are required to register is a threshold question. The mechanical part is whether the $30,000 threshold is worldwide; whether you have crossed it, and from what date, is your accountant's call. TALISK_HQ shows you what was collected across every channel; the registration decision is theirs.