604media blog

With the introduction of HST in several Canadian provinces, some of our clients have asked us how this will impact their e-commerce stores. As the majority of our clients are using osCommerce, we have decided to write a short how to in order to help them prepare for the switch.

From the osCommerce admin, the first thing that needs to be done is to create some new tax zones. Since we are from BC, we will write this how to from the viewpoint of a BC based company (but don’t worry, if you live in another province, we will explain at the bottom of the post).

We created the following tax zones:

BC HST Zone

• British Columbia

Canada GST Zone

• Alberta
• Manitoba
• Northwest Territories
• Nunavut
• Prince Edward Island
• Quebec
• Saskatchewan
• Yukon Territory

NB / NF / ON HST Zone

• New Brunswick
• Newfoundland
• Ontario

NS HST Zone

• Nova Scotia

Once we created the Zones, we then created a tax class so that it could be added to our products. We called the tax class Taxable Goods.

Under the tax rates section, we then set the tax rates for each of our zones and associated them with the tax class.

1 – Taxable Goods – BC HST Zone – 12%
2 – Taxable Goods – NB / NF / ON HST Zone – 13 %
3 – Taxable Goods – Canada GST Zone – 5%
4 – Taxable Goods – NS HST Zone – 15%

If your company is NOT in BC, and requires you to charge PST in your province:

Create a new tax zone: Province PST Zone
Associate your province to the new zone.

eg.
Manitoba PST Zone

• Manitoba

In the tax rates section, set a new tax rate for your zone at the amount that PST is set at.

eg.
5 – Taxable Goods – Manitoba PST Zone – 7%

We hope this post was helpful to those of you with e-com stores. Remember, HST goes into effect July 1st, 2010 in BC!

Please contact us if you have questions or need assistance configuring your osCommerce website.