GST QUICK METHOD

If your business is operating at revenue of $400,000 or less, you need to stop what you are doing and read this!

Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) offers an elective GST filing method for small businesses who have less than $400,000 in annual revenues. It is called the Quick Method and, in my opinion, it is a highly under-utilized election.

Who should use the Quick Method?

• Other than a few industry specific exceptions, most businesses with less than $400,000 can use this election
• Businesses with the majority of their expenses not being subject to GST would want to utilize this method. For example, if your largest expense is payroll you would definitely want to consider this.

How does the Quick Method work?

Under this method you would still charge the applicable rate of GST/HST on your sales, but this is not the same as the amount of GST you end up remitting up to CRA. What you end up remitting is based on the quick method remittance rates which are less than the applicable rates of GST/HST you charged.

Yes, that is correct, you collect more GST from your clients than you send to CRA. You do not get to claim any GST paid under this method though because the part of the GST you collected but got to keep accounts for the ITCs you would have otherwise claimed. The intention behind this election is to streamline the GST process for small businesses, but it can end up saving your business money! Who doesn’t want to save some money?

If the majority of your expenses are not subject to GST anyways, you are going to end up ahead under the Quick Method. You can find all the specifics on CRA’s website but I’ll go through a quick example below.

A practical example

It may seem a little confusing and it does require a little bit of number crunching so I will just sum it up a little.

Let’s look at Joe’s Contracting Ltd. Joe owns this business and he provides handyman services to his customers. He has very little costs associated with supplies as the majority of the jobs require only labour so he has one employee that helps him out. His business is based in Alberta and he earns exactly $400,000 in revenue a year.

Under the regular method of GST, Joe would collect GST of $20,000 from his clients and send the whole $20,000 up to CRA.

Under the quick method, Joe would still collect GST of $20,000 from his clients, but the cheque he sends off to CRA is only $15,120.

If you can choose to send CRA $20,000 or $15,120 which one are you choosing? I would think Joe would prefer sending the smaller cheque as well.

And has an additional bonus – this savings will continue to happen every single year when he files his GST return as long as he continues to meet the criteria.

The bottom line

If you think you qualify for the Quick method but have never heard of it before, you may very well be sending too much money to CRA. Reach out to us to discuss.