What happens if I file my simplified GST/HST return late?
The simplified route reports tax you have already charged Canadian consumers, and it gives you no input tax recovery to set against it. So a late period leaves the whole of the tax you collected sitting outstanding, with interest running on it, and the return itself still owed. The registration stays live once granted, which means each reporting period since the effective date has a return due whether or not you traded in it. The practical response is to establish the effective date, list every period from it, file the missing ones in date order, and deal with the charges once the account shows the correct periods.
Do I have to file if I made no Canadian sales that quarter?
Yes. What creates the filing obligation is the registration, not the sales. A period in which you sold nothing to Canadian consumers is still a reporting period and still needs its return. Because the simplified route carries no input tax recovery, a nil period really is nil rather than a refund claim, and that is exactly why registrants assume it can be skipped. Skipped periods are the usual reason an account moves from quiet to a demand to file, and they are also the hardest thing to reconstruct years later, because there is no sales data to point at.
Should I have registered under the normal GST/HST rules instead?
That is a modelling exercise rather than a form-filling question. Simplified registration is lighter to operate and recovers no tax on your own costs. Normal registration is heavier and does recover it. If your only Canadian expenditure is negligible, the administrative saving wins. If you buy Canadian hosting, contractors, advertising or professional services, the tax on those costs is a real annual amount that the simplified route writes off. Work out both on your actual cost base before you file more periods, and record the reasoning, because the route you are registered under governs the return you have to file now.
Can a platform be liable for tax on sales it only facilitated?
It can. The simplified regime reaches both non-resident digital suppliers and the platform operators who facilitate sales to Canadian consumers, so the registrant for a given sale is not always the business that made the product. In a late filing this is the first thing to settle, because two parties each assuming the other reported the same sale produces either a double report or a gap. Read the platform terms and the settlement records to decide who facilitated what, then allocate the sales before any return is prepared.
How far back do I have to file if I registered years ago?
Back to the effective date of the registration. Every reporting period from that date forward has a return attached to it, so the scope of a catch-up is set by the account rather than by how far back your records happen to be usable. Get the account history first and write out the periods in order. Where the billing system cannot tell you what was sold to Canadian consumers in an early period, the figure has to be rebuilt from payment processor settlement files and refund records rather than guessed at.
Will the CRA chase a return when no tax was collected?
An outstanding return is outstanding on its own account. Where you collected nothing there is no balance for interest to run on, but the period is still unreported, and unreported periods are what prompt correspondence and then a demand to file. The asymmetry catches people out because they measure their exposure by the tax and the account measures it by the returns. Filing the empty periods is usually quick once the reporting periods are correctly identified, and it removes the thing that generates the letters.
What is cross-border tax?
Cross-border tax is what applies when income, assets or people touch more than one tax system at once — someone living in one country and earning in another, a company selling or hiring abroad, a family holding property in a second country. The work is rarely one country's rules applied harder; it is reconciling two sets of rules and claiming the relief that stops the same income being taxed twice at full rates. See what we do.
How many days can I spend in a country before I become tax resident?
It depends on the country, and a day count is only ever the start. Many use a threshold in a tax year, some also look at averages across several years, and some have no day test at all and decide on where your home and life are. Two countries can both conclude you are resident, which is what the treaty tie-breaker exists to settle. Counting days without checking the tie-breaker is how people end up filing as resident nowhere. See the residency tie-breaker.
