GST/HST and provincial tax coding across your client base

Each client profile carries its own province, and tax handling follows from it. A firm in Halifax serving a client in Calgary gets Alberta treatment on that client's file without anyone changing a global setting. Extracted tax amounts are kept as their own field rather than being folded into the gross, which is what makes an input tax credit total meaningful later.

Where a province charges PST on top of GST rather than a harmonised rate, the two components are handled separately, because they behave differently on a return.

Quebec files use GST 5% plus QST 9.975% on the same pre-tax base (combined 14.975%) for province defaults and draft assist. Receipt tax itself is taken from printed GST and QST lines when present (otherwise $0 - not invented from the rate). Meals and entertainment still apply the usual 50% claimable fraction. Staff review remains required before filing or QuickBooks push, and Revenu Quebec registration and returns stay your firm's responsibility.

Business-use percentage is set on the ledger line, after a run, and not on the client profile beforehand. The reason is practical: you cannot sensibly decide that vehicle costs are seventy percent business until you can see which lines are vehicle costs. Setting a blanket percentage in advance mostly produces a number nobody can defend.

So the allocation field lives on each line, editable during review, and the reports carry the percentage through to the totals. A reviewer can see the gross amount, the allocated amount, and the reasoning in the notes on the same row.

Reports are built so the person signing off can trace a total back to a document. The bookkeeper report lays out categories with business-use percentages applied and a source appendix identifying the files behind the figures. A category matrix shows totals by month and year and exports to CSV when the number needs to move into a return or a working file.