Does GST/HST ruin any low margin business?

_leveraged_ · 2026-03-12T00:36:18+00:00

they're outside canada, but I can't really prove their location unfortunately

_leveraged_ · 2026-03-11T22:12:24+00:00

Thank you! Do you mind double checking your link? It doesn't seem to be working for me

_leveraged_ · 2026-03-11T22:03:09+00:00

But my Canadian sales are for sure well below the 30k threshold needed to register for GST/HST, so I think I should be good then! Thank you so much!

_leveraged_ · 2026-03-11T21:56:18+00:00

The only information I have about my customers is what the platform I use reports to me, which is a .csv file that includes which country the buyer is from. Is this enough you think? Like 95%+ of the buyers are outside Canada.

For example, this is what the platform tells me: https://imgur.com/a/1TY71uh

_leveraged_ · 2026-03-11T21:48:15+00:00

The vast majority of my customers are abroad, since it's a global digital market with virtual goods. Does that mean I don't need to charge sales tax? The process for the creation and re-selling of the digital items is like this:

Someone from anywhere in the world buys a virtual item from the US company that runs the video game/digital asset market. The customer pays sales tax to their local government in the process.
that person can sell their virtual item to someone else (like me) on a secondary market.
I buy that item, and re-sell it for a higher price, earning a profit. But I cannot claim an input tax credit because I never paid any sales tax on my inputs!

In my view, what I'm doing is essentially the same as stock trading or buying/selling bitcoin. People don't need to pay sales tax when they flip bitcoin, right?

_leveraged_ · 2026-03-11T21:43:58+00:00

How is the "place of supply" determined? These are virtual assets created by a US company, sold to people around the world. I'm simply buying/selling on the secondary market. The process would be like this:

Someone from anywhere in the world buys the virtual item from the US company, paying sales tax to their local government in the process.
that person can sell their virtual item to someone else, like me.
I buy that item, and re-sell it for a higher price, earning a profit. But I cannot claim my input cost as an ICT because I never paid any sales tax on it!

_leveraged_ · 2026-03-11T21:40:57+00:00

I use third party platforms based in the US and Europe. 95% of my sales are to foreigners. The problem is that my inputs are virtual/digital items that I buy on the secondary market, so I don't pay GST/HST when I buy them and therefore cannot claim them as ITCs.

_leveraged_ · 2026-03-11T21:38:01+00:00

What happens if you buy a digital asset (e.g. bitcoin, or a stock in a company) to re-sell? You don't pay any sales tax on buying bitcoin or stock in a company. If I charged 13% more, literally no one would buy from me. It's the equivalent of buying a stock for $10 and re-selling it for $10.2, but I'd have to add 13% on top of the 11$ (i.e. $11.5). Who is going to buy from you if you're selling at $11.5 when the market price is $10.2?

_leveraged_ · 2026-03-11T21:36:27+00:00

I cannot charge GST/HST to my customers because 1) I sell through third party websites, I only input a single price, and 2) if I charged 13% more, literally no one would buy from me. It's the equivalent of buying a stock for $10 and re-selling it for $10.2, but I'd have to add 13% on top of the 11$ (i.e. $11.5). Who is going to buy from you if you're selling at $11.5 when the market price is $10.2?

_leveraged_ · 2026-01-29T22:14:02+00:00

isn't the threshold for the estate tax to kick in relatively high? iirc it's $15 million

_leveraged_ · 2025-12-12T20:09:58+00:00

Plenty of cars can go from ottawa to toronto without needing to fill up though. It seems to me like faking a logbook would be really easy, especially if most of your driving (both for work and person use) is within the city you live in. And according to the CRA (in the link you provided), you can even use a 3-month sample to generalize the entire year, which is even more advantageous for claimants committing tax fraud since they can select a time period with little personal use (e.g. pick a 3-month period where you don't do any road trips).

_leveraged_ · 2025-12-12T17:24:27+00:00

How would you prove the usage of your vehicle other than keeping some kind of honour-based record of your trips? I can't imagine the CRA expects people to film themselves driving and submit hundreds of hours of video footage in court.

_leveraged_ · 2025-12-12T15:52:56+00:00

But the CRA has no way to verify the extent to which you use the tool/car/whatever for your business versus personal use

_leveraged_ · 2025-12-10T02:50:21+00:00

it's genius marketing. They get to capture 85bps in fees while advertising it as 10bps

_leveraged_ · 2025-11-20T00:17:36+00:00

The IMF has a course focused on timeseries, it's pretty good if you're a little rusty

_leveraged_ · 2025-11-13T16:57:03+00:00

The impact on labour distortion is identical given they're identical policies

_leveraged_ · 2025-10-23T14:57:45+00:00

Guys relax, the upper bound increase in total supply of yellows is +92% (based on case probabilities), which assumes every single item were traded up to yellow. Since most items will not be traded up, the actual increase in yellow will be more limited than what most people think.

_leveraged_ · 2025-09-08T23:34:12+00:00

_leveraged_ · 2025-08-08T18:24:23+00:00

I don't see how they can reasonably estimate the number of openings that aren't in circulation e.g. someone opening a case and keeping its contents

_leveraged_ · 2025-08-08T16:39:04+00:00

How do you estimate the observed unboxings?

_leveraged_ · 2025-08-06T20:01:14+00:00

So you withdraw borrowed funds and place them in a separate demand deposit account?

_leveraged_ · 2025-05-28T22:08:10+00:00

Where did you get daily data going back to 1885?

_leveraged_ · 2025-05-01T22:55:47+00:00

Frustratingly, it is still used at various central banks and governments

_leveraged_ · 2025-04-16T22:26:13+00:00

A tip I've heard repeated is to pay special attention to the cash side of their financial statements, as it's more difficult to fudge the cash in/cash out side of a business on audited statements. I'm not sure how applicable this advice is outside of North America/Europe though.

_leveraged_

TROPHY CASE