Start an e-commerce business in Canada: register the business, choose between your own store and a marketplace, set up payments, and handle GST/HST by the province where each order is delivered.
Applies in: CA
An e-commerce business in Canada is an ordinary Canadian business with a website or marketplace listing in front of it. The steps that trip up new sellers are almost never the store setup — they are the tax registration, the rate charged to a customer in another province, and the pricing and privacy rules that apply the moment you take a stranger's money and personal information online. This guide walks through each one in order, with the figures taken from the Canada Revenue Agency, the Competition Bureau, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. This guide is process information, not legal or tax advice: where a figure was not verified on an opened official page, this guide states a check instead of a figure.
Before you take your first order, set up the business properly. If you operate under a name other than your own personal name, register that business name with your province or territory — the exact process and fee are provincial, so check your province's business registry. If you incorporate, do it federally or provincially first; the incorporation guide linked below covers that choice.
Then register for a business number (BN) with the Canada Revenue Agency. Business Registration Online (BRO) is the CRA's online service for registering a BN and CRA program accounts, and starting July 14, 2026, BRO is only available through your CRA account, according to Canada Revenue Agency, When to register for and start charging the GST/HST. Your BN is the identifier you will use for your GST/HST account, payroll, and import/export accounts if you need them. Open a separate business bank account at the same time: it keeps business income, platform payouts, and tax you collect for the government out of your personal spending, which makes the GST/HST return in section 4 far easier to file correctly.
Check your municipality too. Some cities require a home-based business licence even when you sell only online, and some restrict signage, storage, or customer pickup from a home address. There is no national list of municipal rules — check your city's business licence page before launch.
You have two ways to reach customers, and you can use both at once:
Your own online store. You build a storefront on a platform such as Shopify or WooCommerce, or on your own website, and you control the branding, the prices, the customer list, and the checkout. You also carry the whole job yourself: driving traffic, handling payments, collecting and remitting tax, and dealing with returns. This is the right choice when you want to build a brand and a repeat-customer list rather than rent traffic.
A marketplace. You list on Amazon, Etsy, eBay, or a niche marketplace, and the marketplace brings the traffic and handles checkout. You pay the marketplace's fees and you follow its rules, and you do not own the customer relationship in the same way. This is the fastest way to test whether a product sells at all, and many Canadian sellers start here and add their own store once a product proves itself.
The tax difference between the two matters more than the fee difference. If you sell on your own store and you are registered for GST/HST, you charge and collect the tax yourself. If you sell through a marketplace and you are not registered, the marketplace operator is required to charge and collect the GST/HST on your sales of qualifying goods, as section 4 explains. Either way, the tax gets collected — the question is only who is responsible for it, so do not assume that selling on a marketplace means tax is someone else's problem.
Customers expect to pay by credit or debit card at checkout, and most Canadian online stores use a payment processor such as Stripe, Square, or PayPal, or the payment system built into their store platform. When you choose one, check three things before you commit: which cards and payment methods it accepts in Canada, how long payouts take to reach your business bank account, and what happens to a payout when a customer files a chargeback.
Two practical points. First, the processor is not your tax collector: the tax your store charges at checkout flows through to you, and you are the one who remits it to the CRA on your GST/HST return — the processor does not remit it for you. Second, keep your payment records by province of delivery. Your store platform should record the customer's shipping address on every order, because that address decides which tax rate applies in section 4, and you will need it if the CRA ever asks how you arrived at the tax on a return.
This is the section that costs new sellers the most money when they get it wrong, so work through it in order.
When you must register. You have to register for a GST/HST account if both situations apply: you are not a small supplier, and you make taxable sales, leases, or other supplies in Canada, according to Canada Revenue Agency, When to register for and start charging the GST/HST. A small supplier is a person whose revenue from worldwide taxable supplies was $30,000 or less in a single calendar quarter and over the last four consecutive calendar quarters, on the same page. The calculation counts worldwide taxable supplies, including zero-rated supplies, and excludes the sale of goodwill, financial services, and capital property, on the same page.
How the deadline works depends on how you cross $30,000. If you exceed $30,000 in a single calendar quarter, you stop being a small supplier on the day of the supply that put you over, you must start charging GST/HST on that supply, and you have 29 days from your effective date of registration to register, on the same page. If you exceed $30,000 only across four consecutive calendar quarters, you stop being a small supplier at the end of the month following the quarter in which you exceeded it, your effective date is no later than the day of your first supply after that, and you again have 29 days to register, on the same page. You may also register voluntarily while you are still a small supplier — the usual reason is to claim input tax credits on the GST/HST you pay on inventory, software, and shipping supplies — but once you are registered, you must charge GST/HST on all your taxable sales, and you must stay registered for at least a year before you can close the account unless you stop the business, on the same page. You generally cannot register if you provide only exempt supplies, on the same page.
What rate to charge. The rate follows the place of supply — where the sale is treated as made — not where your business sits. Other taxable supplies are charged at 5% GST if the supply is made in a non-participating province, 13% HST in Ontario, 14% HST in Nova Scotia on or after April 1, 2025, and 15% HST in any other participating province, according to Canada Revenue Agency, GST/HST and place-of-supply rules. For goods, the place of supply is the province where the goods are delivered or made available to the buyer, or the province they are mailed or sent by courier to, on the same page. The CRA's own example: a store in British Columbia delivers a mattress to a customer in Ontario, the place of supply is Ontario, and the store charges 13% HST, on the same page. A zero-rated supply, such as basic groceries, is taxed at 0% GST/HST regardless of the place of supply in Canada, on the same page. In provinces without HST — British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec — a separate provincial sales tax may also apply on top of the 5% GST, under that province's own rules and registration; check the province's tax authority for the rate and whether you must register there.
Marketplace sales. If you are a vendor registered under the normal GST/HST regime, you are required to charge and collect the GST/HST on your supplies of qualifying goods, including supplies facilitated by a distribution platform operator through its platform, according to Canada Revenue Agency, GST/HST for digital-economy businesses. If you are not registered, the distribution platform operator is required to charge and collect the GST/HST on the supply of qualifying goods it facilitates through its platform, on the final sale price charged to the purchaser, on the same page. A qualifying good is generally a good delivered or made available to the purchaser in Canada — for example, goods in a fulfillment warehouse in Canada or shipped from a place in Canada — and does not include a good sent by mail or courier to a Canadian address from an address outside Canada, on the same page. The rate for qualifying goods follows the normal place-of-supply rules: the goods are supplied in a particular province if they are delivered or made available to the purchaser in that province, on the same page.
Selling digital products. If you sell downloads, courses, software, or other digital products, the same registration threshold applies, and the place-of-supply rules for digital supplies turn on the customer's address rather than a shipping destination. The CRA's digital-economy pages set out the simplified registration regime for non-resident sellers; as a Canadian resident seller you use the normal regime. Keep the customer's billing address on file for every digital sale, because that is what determines the rate.
The moment you advertise to Canadians, the Competition Act applies to you — including online. It is against the law for businesses to advertise or market goods and services to Canadians in a way that is false or misleading, and the Act applies to anyone inside or outside Canada who promotes a product through printed or electronic advertisements, written or oral presentations, illustrations, or audio-visual promotions, according to Competition Bureau, Misleading representations and deceptive marketing practices. A representation is material if the general impression it conveys leads someone to take a particular course of action, like buying, and a representation covers any marketing material, including online and in-store advertisements, direct mail, social media messages, promotional emails, and endorsements, on the same page.
Three rules matter most for a new online store:
Beyond the Competition Act, provincial consumer protection laws add their own rules for online sales, including requirements for what an internet sales contract must disclose and cancellation rights for distance sales. Those rules vary by province, and the province where your customer lives is usually the one whose rules apply — check the consumer protection page for each province you sell into before you finalize your terms of sale.
Shipping. Set your shipping policy before your first sale: which carrier you use, what delivery costs, how long delivery takes, and who pays for return shipping. State the delivery time honestly — an advertised delivery date you cannot meet is a misleading representation under the rules in section 5. If you ship across the border, remember that goods shipped from outside Canada to a Canadian address are dealt with at the border, and the customer or courier usually pays the GST/HST on import; that is different from goods shipped from inside Canada, which follow the place-of-supply rules in section 4.
Returns. Write a returns policy that says, in plain language, whether returns are accepted, within how many days, in what condition, who pays return shipping, and how refunds are issued. Put it on the product page and at checkout, not buried in a terms page. A clear returns policy is also a practical defence: most payment chargebacks for online orders start with a customer who could not find or understand the returns process.
Privacy. Your store collects names, addresses, email addresses, and payment details — all personal information. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) sets the ground rules for how private-sector organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information in the course of for-profit, commercial activities across Canada, according to Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, PIPEDA requirements in brief. Businesses subject to the Act must follow its 10 fair information principles — accountability, identifying purposes, consent, limiting collection, limiting use, disclosure, and retention, accuracy, safeguards, openness, individual access, and challenging compliance — on the same page. In practice that means: publish a privacy policy that says what you collect and why, collect only what you need to fulfil the order, get consent before using customer data for marketing, protect the data you hold, and let customers see and correct their information. Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec have their own private-sector privacy laws deemed substantially similar to PIPEDA, and organizations subject to one of those laws are generally exempt from PIPEDA for information handled within that province — but all businesses that handle personal information crossing provincial or national borders are subject to PIPEDA regardless of their home province, on the same page. If you use analytics, advertising pixels, or a third-party email service, your privacy policy must say so.
How to Start an Online Store in Canada, How to Register for GST/HST in Canada, How to Charge GST/HST in Canada, How to Start Selling on Etsy in Canada, and How to Start Accepting Online Payments in Canada.
You have to register for a GST/HST account if you are not a small supplier and you make taxable sales in Canada, according to [Canada Revenue Agency, When to register for and start charging the GST/HST](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/when-register-charge.html). A small supplier is a person whose revenue from worldwide taxable supplies was $30,000 or less in a single calendar quarter and over the last four consecutive calendar quarters, on the same page. If you exceed $30,000 in a single calendar quarter, you stop being a small supplier on the day of the supply that put you over, and you must start charging GST/HST on that supply and register within 29 days of your effective date, on the same page. If you exceed $30,000 only across four consecutive quarters, you stop being a small supplier at the end of the month following that quarter, on the same page. You may also register voluntarily while you are still a small supplier, on the same page.
The rate follows the place of supply, not where your business is located. Other taxable supplies are charged at 5% GST if the supply is made in a non-participating province, 13% HST in Ontario, 14% HST in Nova Scotia on or after April 1, 2025, and 15% HST in any other participating province, according to [Canada Revenue Agency, GST/HST and place-of-supply rules](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/charge-collect-place-supply.html). For goods, the place of supply is the province where the goods are delivered or made available to the buyer, or the province they are mailed or shipped to, on the same page. The Canada Revenue Agency gives the example of a store in British Columbia delivering a mattress to a customer in Ontario: the place of supply is Ontario and the store charges 13% HST, on the same page. A zero-rated supply, such as basic groceries, is taxed at 0% GST/HST regardless of the place of supply in Canada, on the same page.
It depends on whether you are registered. If you are a vendor registered under the normal GST/HST regime, you are required to charge and collect the GST/HST on your supplies of qualifying goods, including supplies facilitated by a distribution platform operator through its platform, according to [Canada Revenue Agency, GST/HST for digital-economy businesses](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/digital-economy-gsthst/charge-collect/sales-good.html). If you are not registered, the distribution platform operator is required to charge and collect the GST/HST on the supply of qualifying goods it facilitates through its platform, on the final sale price charged to the purchaser, on the same page. A qualifying good is generally a good delivered or made available to the purchaser in Canada, such as goods in a fulfillment warehouse in Canada or shipped from a place in Canada, and does not include a good sent by mail or courier to a Canadian address from an address outside Canada, on the same page.
No — not if the added fees are mandatory and fixed. Drip pricing involves offering a product or service at a price that is unattainable because consumers must also pay additional charges or fees to buy it, and offering a price that a consumer cannot actually attain because of mandatory fixed additional charges or fees is a false or misleading representation, according to [Competition Bureau, Misleading representations and deceptive marketing practices](https://competition-bureau.canada.ca/en/deceptive-marketing-practices/types-deceptive-marketing-practices/misleading-representations-and-deceptive-marketing-practices). It is against the law to make materially false or misleading representations to promote a product, service, or business interest, and a representation is material if the general impression it conveys leads someone to take a particular course of action, like buying, on the same page. Show the full price the customer will actually pay before they commit, with only government-imposed taxes shown separately.
The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) sets the ground rules for how private-sector organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information in the course of for-profit, commercial activities across Canada, according to [Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, PIPEDA requirements in brief](https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/privacy-laws-in-canada/the-personal-information-protection-and-electronic-documents-act-pipeda/pipeda_brief/?wbdisable=false). Businesses subject to the Act must follow its 10 fair information principles, set out in Schedule 1 of PIPEDA: accountability, identifying purposes, consent, limiting collection, limiting use, disclosure, and retention, accuracy, safeguards, openness, individual access, and challenging compliance, on the same page. Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec have their own private-sector privacy laws deemed substantially similar to PIPEDA, and organizations subject to one of those laws are generally exempt from PIPEDA for personal information collected, used, or disclosed within that province — but all businesses that handle personal information crossing provincial or national borders are subject to PIPEDA regardless of their home province, on the same page.
There is no single federal online-seller licence, but you still need the ordinary business registrations: a business name registration with your province or territory if you operate under a name other than your own, a business number with the Canada Revenue Agency, and any municipal licence your city requires — some municipalities require a home-based business licence even for online-only sellers. You must register for a GST/HST account once you are not a small supplier and you make taxable sales in Canada, according to [Canada Revenue Agency, When to register for and start charging the GST/HST](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/when-register-charge.html). Check your municipality's business licence rules before you launch, because they vary by city and are not covered by any federal registration.