Need to Know: GST/HST Holiday Tax Break for Canadian Organizers

Eligible Products:

• Children's clothing, footwear, diapers, car seats, and toys
• Jigsaw puzzles (for all ages)
• Video game consoles, controllers, and physical video games
• Physical books and printed newspapers
• Christmas and decorative trees
• Food, beverages, and related services 

Food and Beverage specifications:

What You Need to Do to Prepare for the GST/HST Holiday

Plan Ahead: Before December 14, 2024

• Review your product catalog and identify which items are eligible for the GST/HST holiday.
• Note: Tickets and events are not eligible. This only applies to products sold via the marketplace feature for qualifying items.

Create New Versions of Eligible Products:

• For products that will qualify for the tax holiday, create new products with the updated tax settings (instructions below).
  • Why? If your original products have already made sales, they are price locked. This means no changes can be made to their price, fees, or tax settings. Creating new versions ensures you can apply the updated tax settings without affecting existing sales.
• Tip: Start this process well in advance, especially if you have many products, to ensure you're ready to flip settings on December 14th.

Prepare for Visibility Changes:

• Use the product visibility settings to smoothly transition between taxed and tax-free versions of your products:
  • On December 14, 2024, set your original taxed products to Hidden and make the new tax-free versions Public.
  • On February 15, 2025, reverse this process by setting the tax-free products to Hidden and making the original taxed products Public again.
• Tip: Plan ahead to ensure these updates are made promptly on the key dates, allowing you to fully leverage the two-month tax holiday.
  
  

Creating a New Product & Adjusting Tax Settings

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Create a New Product

• Go to the Marketplace section in your dashboard.
  
  
  
  
• Click Add New Product in the top right hand corner, and complete all required fields, such as:
  • Name, description, and images
    
    
    
    
    
  • Category: Select a category that best fits your product to help with organization.
    
    
    
    
    
• Create any necessary product variants and set their inventory, purchase limit and price.  Note: Tax settings will be adjusted later in the next step, after the product is saved.
  
  
  
  
  
• We recommend keeping the tax-free products hidden/not visible until Dec 14th.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Click Save & Finish to ensure the product is successfully created in the system.
  
  

2. Override Tax Settings (if using organizer-wide tax settings):

• Click "Edit" under your newly created product.
  
  

• Go to Financial Settings in the product editor.
• Click the edit icon next to your Custom Tax to make changes.
  
  

• In the GST (or HST) section, select "Override" to apply a custom tax rate.
  
  

• The tax override will default to 0%. Save these settings.
  
  

• Confirm the tax change on the page.
  
  

• Click "Save & Finish" to finalize the tax override.
  
  

• If you prefer, you can also adjust financial settings for individual product variants. Use the method that best fits your workflow.
  
  

Managing Product Visibility

• Before December 14, 2024: Ensure the new tax-free products are not visible until the tax holiday begins.
• On December 14, 2024: Set the original taxed products to not visible and make the tax-free versions Public.
• On February 15, 2025: Reverse the process by hiding the tax-free products and making the original taxed products public again.