How to File Your GST-HST Using CRA My Business Account

Hello everyone. Today I'm going to show you how to file your GST HST return using Revenue Canada. That is CRA's my business account. This is actually a relatively simple and straightforward process as long as you have the information required from your GST and HST accounting. Generally, if you're using software you can pull out a report, the GSTHST report, or if you have a spreadsheet, you want to make sure that you have your total sales, the total GSTHST collected on those sales, the total GST and HST that you paid on expenses. And that's pretty much it. That is all, all that CRA requires. Additionally, you want to make sure that you know that the period that you are filing for, generally speaking, if you're a sole proprietor, this period will end on December 31st, unless you're doing it quarterly or monthly. And then you'll have to determine what the quarter is or monthly will just be the month in question. So let's go ahead and see how this works. Once you're in TRA my account, you will go to GSTHST on the left hand side. Click on that. Alternatively you can click on this RT0001. This is usually Triple 01. It could be0002 or 3, rarely depending on the status of your account. So let's go over here. I'm going to click on this and here I can just click on the RT001 and you'll see you have various options. Here you can view and pay your account balance. You have direct deposit transactions, installment payments and something to keep in mind if you have or if you owe more than $3,000 in a previous year for GST, HST and and you remit your taxes on an annual basis. You do have to pay installment. It's very important that you do this. So we are simply going to go to file a return.

And here I always say no to knowing your location. I'm not really sure why CRA wants to know my location. So I just close that. Okay, so we are going to select a return for these purposes. It's a goods and services harmonized sales tax return for registrants GST 34. So let's click on that and then we'll click on next.

Now you have to enter your reporting period. In our case the reporting period is simply the calendar year which is 0101 2023-31st. December.

31St, obviously the month first, December 31st, 2023.

So now you have some options here. You can file a NIL return or which is also known as a zero dollar return. And this is for those of you that have no activity in your businesses but are registered for GST and hst. And potentially in the future you might have some activity but for now nothing has really happened in your business. So you can click on that if it's a $0 return. Alternatively, the other options are if you have exempt supplies, zero rated exports, etc. Then you will check this box.

Some of these are beyond the scope of this video. Exempt supplies and zero rated exports refers to sales that you make potentially to international clients, clients or customers that are outside of Canada, including the US on which you do not charge gsthst. Those are referred to as zero rated exports. And so you would click on that as it gives you the option to enter those amounts and it helps you you properly calculate your reporting period threshold amount. So that's something to keep in mind if you have international sales. I do not. What I have is a very simple return. So I am not going to check that. In addition, you have all of these other options that you can select. None of these really apply to a typical small business. Okay, so I'm going to click on next.

And now I simply have to enter these boxes which are sales.

Total GST and HST and adjustments for the period. These are the amounts that are collected on those sales, the amounts that you have charged to your customers and clients. And box 108 is the total amount of GSTHST that you have paid on expenses which you are allowed to claim back. So this gets reduced from this and you'll see how this works. If you've paid installment payments towards your GST hst you would enter them here.

And then these are other amounts. Again, they don't really apply in our case. They are part. They're slightly more complex so not necessarily in this context. And these boxes will be automatically calculated which is why they're grayed out. So I have my report right here. So I'm going to take a look at this. I have generated this report from QuickBooks Online and you simply go to file your sales tax and you save this report as a PDF. So I have line 101. The amount is 14, 39 and 10 cents. So I'm going to enter that here. That's line 101. And you'll notice in the QuickBooks report it has 101. So so it tells you exactly what the boxes are.

101 is always your total sales.

And then I can ignore 135 136. I'm going to go straight to 105. I go here. I see that the total GST adjustments for the period is $169.95. In other words, this is the total amount that I collected on my sales. Enter that and then the next box is 108 and 108 is the amount that I paid on my expenses which is 278.25.

So I will enter that here.

There were no installments due but again if you have them you would enter them here and that will reduce the amount of GSTHST payable. None of these other boxes apply so I am just going to click on next.

And here it gives me a nice little summary of my GST and hst. If I go here you can see I have net tax which is minus 108.30 because the amount that I paid on expenses actually exceeded the amount that I collected on sales. So I have a refund to claim. Let me go back, make sure that agrees to my report. I see that it does net tax and the balance is -108.30. So that all looks good to me. And now I certify that the information given is to the best of my knowledge to incorrect and I am going to simply submit this return. Now since this is a refund there won't really be any additional steps. However, if you have an amount payable, CRA will give you instructions on how to pay the amount. I am going to now submit this.

And you'll see that it says my return has been successfully filed, gives me a confirmation number and it gives me all of the other information. I'm going to go down here. Save this as a PDF it has now downloaded so I can open that up and see that the PDF. Ideally you want to save this into an accounting folder so you don't have to scramble and look for it when you need it in the future. And it's very easy for this to just get lost in the download folder, which is usually the default location where PDFs get saved.

Once you've saved your return in the appropriate location, CRA will prompt you to make payment if you owe an amount and there are several ways to make payments and those ways for gst, hst, ar, you can either pay through online banking, you can go through my payment where you can use your VISA Debit, your debit, MasterCard or Interac online and then there's pre authorized debit. I'm going to go through the first two briefly the Third one requires you to sign up and fill out a form. The instructions are relatively clear on cra, so you can do this, but if you use one of the first two ways, it might be a little easier. So the first one is to pay by online banking, and here it gives you instructions on how to do that. So first of all, to pay using online banking, you need to have a business bank account. If you do have a business bank account, you will have an area within online banking with most banks that is called the business tax filing service or online banking service for businesses. You can sign up for this if you haven't already done so. And then once you do that, you would go to the section where it asks you to make a business payment and you have to add a payment type and the payment type in this case. And this is really important because there are different types of GSTHST payment types. This is the one that you want. You simply want to enter the amount of the payment. You don't want to file the return again, which means you do not want to enter your total sales and the amounts collected and the amounts paid, because that has already been filed and submitted. So once again, just make sure you select gstp. This will be available under federal and as a payment type. And once in there, you simply enter your GST account number, the period, potentially maybe not even, and the amount owing.

The next payment type is by using my payment. And this is perhaps the easiest way to do this. So in order to do that, you would click on my payment. It takes you to this screen for GSTHST. You would enter your account number for your GST. It ends in RT Triple 01, usually sometimes 2 or 3. And the amount that you would put is the amount payable according to your GSTHST return. So if this is a positive, that is your GST collected, you exceeds your gst, your input tax credits, your GST and HST input tax credits. You will have a positive here, and that is the amount that you have to pay. Once you do that, you click on Next, it will prompt you to enter your debit card information and it will simply take it directly from your bank account. So that's really it. Again, it's very simple to do this process and just make sure that you do it on time. If you're a sole proprietorship, this deadline is June 15. However, all payments should be made by April 30 to avoid interest, which can be steep, especially given that interest rates have increased. If you're a corporation, then your deadline for filing the annual GST HST return is March 31st and if you don't file by that date, then penalties will apply as well as interest. So I hope this was helpful.

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