Do the GST/HST return

Read the return the app has worked out

Every sale and purchase in the period has been adding to this page as it was recorded. Read the figures as a story: tax charged on sales, and tax paid on costs the society can claim back. The difference is what the period owes or is owed.

The page names its gaps before filing: a supplier’s number missing, a category with no tax code. A return filed over a gap carries the gap to the tax office. Two law notes ride here. A return is owed for every period.

Tax counts from when it was charged, not when it was paid. And the rebate of half, for the societies it fits, is claimed on this same return. The rebate’s funding test is judged on the fiscal year, from the grant givers as recorded.

A giver whose answer is not recorded stands named on the page. The card says what is missing. The same page carries the T1044 check. The year’s investment income and the assets at the last year end are worked from the books and stated beside its line.

The third trigger — required in an earlier year — stands as the society records it. A society that collects PST reads its provincial return on this same page, worked out the same way from the same records.

That return has its own walk — Do the PST return — on the province’s own schedule.

(Done on the Tax page.)

Send the return to the tax office

Filing happens at the tax office, not in this app — and for this return it is a real filing. Sign in to My Business Account and open GST/HST NETFILE. Choose the period.

Type the return’s figures in: the revenue, the tax collected, the credits and the net the Tax page worked out. Send it. NETFILE answers with a confirmation number. That number is the proof of filing, and the next step records it. This step is done in the world.

(Done on the by hand page.)

Record the filing in the books

On the Governance page, add a Filing record. Name the return and its period. Give the day and the confirmation number NETFILE gave, in the confirmation field. A filing that stands in an inbox is a filing the next treasurer cannot prove.

Recorded here, it stands beside the resolutions and the meeting records, where anyone entitled can read it. The Tax page lists it with the year’s filings.

(Done on the Governance page.)

Record paying the tax office, or the refund arriving

If the period owes, the society pays the tax office like any other bill — record the payment when it leaves. If the period is owed a refund, record it when it lands, as money in. Either way the payment belongs against the return, not against a cost category.

A PST settlement is recorded the same way, against its own return.

(Done on the Pay money / Receive money page.)

See the tax office balance stand clear

After the payment, the balance with the tax office should stand at what the society owes today. That is usually nothing — until the next period starts adding up. Read it here. A balance that will not clear means a wrong figure somewhere in the period.

(Done on the Tax page.)