New Brunswick HST Guide

New Brunswick uses the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) at 15%, combining the 5% federal GST and a 10% provincial component into a single VAT. Businesses file one return with the CRA and can claim full Input Tax Credits on the entire 15%. This is the simplest compliance model among Canadian provinces.

From the shipyards of Saint John to the forestry mills feeding Miramichi and the tech startups clustering in Fredericton and Moncton, every invoice a New Brunswick business issues carries a single number: 15% HST. There's no separate provincial sales tax return to track, no second registration to manage, and no reconciling two different sets of exemption rules — just one Harmonized Sales Tax, administered entirely by the Canada Revenue Agency.

New Brunswick's HST rate of 15% is the highest combined sales tax rate in Canada, tied with Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island. It's built from a 5% federal component and a 10% provincial component, blended into one tax that moved from 13% to 15% back on July 1, 2016. For consumers that means a noticeably bigger number at the till; for registered businesses it means one CRA account, one filing calendar, and full recovery of every dollar of HST paid on legitimate business inputs.

This guide walks through registration, filing, input tax credit recovery with real dollar figures, the point-of-sale rebates that soften the blow for everyday household purchases, and the industry-specific quirks that matter to fisheries operators in the Bay of Fundy, forestry companies in the Miramichi region, and the growing IT sector around Moncton's Dieppe corridor.

CRA standard frequencies. File HST return via CRA My Business Account.

CRA assigns GST/HST filing frequency based on your annual taxable sales. Enter your estimated annual taxable sales below to see your required filing frequency.

Because New Brunswick is a harmonized province, there is no separate provincial sales tax registration to worry about — you register once with the Canada Revenue Agency for a single GST/HST account, and that account automatically covers the full 15% HST on every taxable sale you make. There's no equivalent of a provincial vendor permit sitting alongside it; the CRA is the only tax authority you deal with.

The trigger for mandatory registration is the federal small-supplier threshold: once your worldwide taxable supplies exceed $30,000 CAD over any four consecutive calendar quarters (or in a single quarter), you must register for a GST/HST account and start charging HST. Below that threshold, registration is optional — many small operators, sole proprietors, and side-business owners in Moncton or Fredericton choose to stay unregistered until they're close to the line, since voluntary registration also means you take on the obligation to file returns.

Registering is done through CRA My Business Account, by phone, or through a tax representative, and results in a Business Number (BN) with an RT program account extension attached to it. Once registered, that same BN and RT account is what you use to charge 15% HST, claim input tax credits, and file your returns — one number, one account, one relationship with one tax authority.

• Track rolling four-quarter taxable revenue against the $30,000 threshold
• Register once with the CRA for a single GST/HST (RT) account — no separate provincial step
• Voluntary registration is available below $30,000 if you want to start claiming ITCs early
• Your Business Number and RT account cover all 15% HST obligations province-wide

Once registered, the CRA assigns a filing frequency — typically monthly, quarterly, or annually — based on your annual taxable revenue, though businesses can request a more frequent filing period than their default if it suits their cash flow. Every return covers the same single 15% HST regardless of frequency; there's no separate provincial filing to reconcile against it.

Returns and payments are filed through CRA My Business Account, NETFILE, or a participating financial institution's online banking portal. The net amount owing — HST collected on sales minus input tax credits claimed on business purchases — is remitted directly to the CRA. Because the whole 15% flows through one account, your bookkeeping only has to track one tax rate on the sales side and one tax rate on the purchase side, rather than juggling federal and provincial components separately.

Missing a deadline triggers the same penalty and interest regime that applies across every harmonized province: late-filing penalties calculated on the amount owing, plus daily compounding interest from the due date. Because it's one combined tax, there's no risk of getting the provincial portion right but stumbling on a separate provincial deadline — the CRA calendar is the only calendar that matters.

This is the core advantage of operating in a harmonized province. A registered New Brunswick business can claim an input tax credit for the entire 15% HST paid on inputs used in commercial activity — both the 5% federal portion and the 10% provincial portion — with no split calculations, no provincial ITC restrictions, and no separate provincial rebate application.

Work through a simple example. A Moncton manufacturing shop sells $10,000 of taxable goods in a filing period and collects $1,500 of HST from customers (using the $100 base to $115.00 total math: $100 × 15% = $15.00 tax). In the same period, it spends $6,000 on materials, equipment rental, and services, paying $900 of HST on those purchases. On its HST return, it reports $1,500 collected, claims $900 in input tax credits, and remits the $600 difference. If that same business had instead spent $10,000 on inputs and paid $1,500 in HST, its net remittance would be zero — the tax collected and the tax recoverable cancel out completely, leaving HST as a pure pass-through rather than a cost of doing business.

That full recoverability is precisely what makes HST fundamentally different from a retail sales tax model: it isn't a cost that erodes margins at every stage of production, it's a flow-through collected from the final consumer. Businesses just need clean documentation — valid supplier invoices showing the HST charged, their own BN, and the purchase amount — to support every ITC claim on audit.

Even though HST is charged at the full 15% at checkout in most cases, New Brunswick provides a point-of-sale rebate on the 10% provincial component for a specific list of everyday household items. On these items, the cash register still shows HST charged and rebated in the same transaction, so the customer effectively pays only the 5% federal portion at the till.

It's also worth distinguishing zero-rated supplies from exempt supplies, since they're treated very differently for ITC purposes. Zero-rated supplies (like basic groceries and prescription drugs, taxed at 0% under the federal GST/HST framework) still let the seller claim input tax credits on related costs. Exempt supplies (like most financial services and long-term residential rent) don't attract HST at all, but sellers of exempt supplies generally cannot claim ITCs on inputs used to make those supplies — a meaningful difference for anyone in real estate, lending, or insurance-adjacent business lines.

• Books qualify for the point-of-sale rebate of the 10% provincial share
• Children's clothing qualifies for the point-of-sale rebate of the 10% provincial share
• Children's footwear qualifies for the point-of-sale rebate of the 10% provincial share
• Diapers qualify for the point-of-sale rebate of the 10% provincial share

Non-resident businesses selling digital products or services to consumers in New Brunswick — software subscriptions, streaming content, downloadable apps, online courses — fall under the same federal digital economy framework that applies across Canada. Once sales to Canadian consumers exceed the $30,000 CAD threshold, registration for a simplified GST/HST account is required, and HST must be charged at the destination rate, which for New Brunswick customers is the full 15%.

Digital platform operators — marketplaces that facilitate sales between third-party vendors and consumers — are deemed vendors under this framework in many circumstances, meaning the platform itself, not the individual seller, is responsible for collecting and remitting the HST on qualifying transactions. This is fully enforced going into 2026, and the CRA has signalled continued audit focus on digital platforms and non-resident vendors to confirm registration and remittance compliance.

For a New Brunswick-based business selling digitally to customers elsewhere in Canada, the same destination-based logic runs in reverse: charge HST at the rate that applies in your customer's province, not your own, once you're registered and shipping or supplying across provincial lines.

The most frequent error among growing New Brunswick businesses is applying the home-province 15% rate to every sale regardless of where the customer is located. HST and GST/PST are place-of-supply taxes: what you charge depends on the destination province of the customer, not where your business is registered or headquartered. A Saint John supplier shipping goods to a customer in Alberta charges 5% GST, not 15% HST; the same supplier shipping to a customer in Ontario charges 13% HST, not New Brunswick's 15%.

A second common mistake is treating zero-rated and exempt supplies as interchangeable when they aren't — claiming ITCs against exempt-supply inputs is a frequent audit adjustment. A third is forgetting that the point-of-sale rebate items still need to be reported correctly on the HST return, even though the customer-facing math nets down to 5%.

Finally, businesses that cross the $30,000 threshold mid-year sometimes delay registering, not realizing that HST is owed retroactively from the point the threshold was crossed — waiting for the next fiscal year to register doesn't reset the obligation.

These official resources provide authoritative information on sales tax rules, registration, and compliance in New Brunswick.