Tax & Trade Blog

With the new Canadian fuel charge provided for in the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (the “GGPPA”), many Canadian and non-resident oil and gas companies doing business in Canada with fossil fuel products have now successfully registered. 

Now comes the unexpectedly difficult part: monthly reporting.

General Reporting Requirement

In general, the GGPPA imposes timely reporting requirements including monthly returns for most businesses that are not “road carriers”.  Most returns are due the last day of the calendar month (1) following a registrant’s reporting period OR (2) following the reporting period in which a charge became payable for non-registrants.

Since the GST was first implemented in 1991, a continual source of misconception has been that the GST represents a single tax.  In fact, there are potentially four different applications of the GST – i.e., reflected in Divisions II through IV.1 of the Excise Tax Act (“ETA”). When combined with the provincial HST component, further permutations can occur.

A major source of work (because of mistakes made by Canadian residents and non-residents alike) has been the application of Divisions II and III of the ETA, which are reviewed here, and which can quite counterintuitively result in the application of both a 5% GST and up-to a 15% GST/HST on one single supply of goods.  Effectively, tax applying twice on a single transaction!

As we wrote in a previous blog post, the federal government amended subsections 256.2(3.1) and (3.2) of the Excise Tax Act (the “ETA”) to introduce an enhanced GST/HST residential rental property rebate applicable to new purpose-built rentals (the “Enhanced Rebate”), which took effect on September 14, 2023.

On July 17, 2024, the Real Property (GST/HST) Regulations (the “Regulations”) were published in the Canada Gazette, providing guidance on the implementation of the Enhanced Rebate, including the prescribed conditions and definitions of eligible properties.