The rate on the checkout follows the student
For coaching, consulting and online programs, the place-of-supply rules generally set the GST/HST rate by the buyer's address obtained in the ordinary course of business, which for a coach means the billing address at checkout. A Mississauga coach with students in four provinces is legitimately charging four different amounts of tax on the same $2,000 program:
| Student's checkout address | Rate on the program |
|---|---|
| Ontario | 13% HST |
| New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, PEI | 15% HST |
| Nova Scotia | 14% HST (since April 1, 2025) |
| Rest of Canada and the territories | 5% GST |
| Outside Canada | Often 0%, zero-rated where conditions are met |
The fix is structural, not heroic. Your checkout, whether Kajabi, ThriveCart, SamCart or a Stripe payment link, has to capture a billing address on every order and apply the rate from it. We set that mapping once and verify it at each filing, because a year of charging 13% to Calgary buyers is a year of overcharging your own audience, and the reverse is a year of remitting tax you never collected. The same table serves the whole offer ladder: one-on-one clients, masterminds and corporate workshops follow the buyer's address the same way, so the mapping is built once and reused everywhere you sell.
Foreign students: zero-rated is not exempt from paperwork
Sales to students who are non-residents of Canada are generally zero-rated: you charge 0% and still claim input tax credits on your own costs, which makes an international audience genuinely tax-efficient. The conditions are specific enough to deserve professional attention before you switch tax off for an entire country list, and the CRA can ask you to prove non-residence, so the address evidence gets kept with the return, not reconstructed for a review. The rules also turn on where the buyer actually is, so a non-resident student attending your in-person Toronto intensive is a different case than the same student joining over Zoom from home.
One nuance catches nearly every course seller: zero-rated sales are still taxable supplies, so they count toward your registration threshold. A mostly international student base does not keep you out of the HST system; it usually puts you in it with refunds owing to you.
The launch that ends the small-supplier era
The $30,000 small-supplier test runs at two speeds. Drift over it across four consecutive calendar quarters and you get a short grace period to register. Cross it inside a single calendar quarter, which is exactly what a first real launch does, and there is no grace: small-supplier status ends immediately, the sale that pushed you over the line is already taxable, and registration is due within 29 days.
Missed it? The CRA can register you back to the crossing date, and on Ontario sales the HST you never collected comes out of your own pocket at 13/113 of what you charged. When a coach arrives with this already behind them, we locate the actual crossing point in the sales data, register from the right date, quantify the exposure and file deliberately instead of waiting for a letter to set the terms.
T1 or T2, filed on launch-aware numbers
Sole-proprietor coaches report program profit on the T2125 with a personal return due June 15, balance owing April 30. Incorporated coaches file a T2 within six months of year-end. Either way, the return leans on how the books treated launch money: amounts collected for cohorts not yet delivered do not have to land as income at the deposit date, and that recognition work has to exist in the records before the filing can use it. Corporate Tax Filing and Personal Tax Filing are both quoted in writing after a free discovery call, with no hourly surprises.
A strong launch year also puts you on the CRA's instalment list for the year after. We flag it at filing time; the planning around it belongs to our coach tax planning work.
Slips for the launch team
The Canadian contractors behind a launch, the editor, the funnel builder, the appointment setters, the affiliates paid a commission, generally belong on T4A slips for fees for services, due the last day of February. A VA abroad paid for work performed entirely outside Canada takes no T4A and no withholding; what matters is residence and where the work happens, not the job title. Because contractor payments are coded all year in the books, February at our end is a filing run, not a reconstruction.
Source: CRA — When to register for and start charging the GST/HST.
