The carrier funds the tax, but you charge and remit it
Your contract to restore the property is with the insured, not the insurance company. That single fact settles most of the HST questions: the invoice carries 13% HST on the full approved scope, you collect and remit it on your normal cycle, and the carrier funding the settlement changes nothing about who the recipient of your supply is. For a homeowner, who cannot recover HST, the settlement is built tax-included and the return simply reports what the file already shows.
The mechanics shift when the insured is a business. A commercial policyholder that is an HST registrant recovers the tax through its own input tax credits, so carriers routinely settle those losses net of HST and leave the insured to fund the tax and claim it back. The invoice has to be built for that split from day one: full tax charged to the insured, the settlement applied against the net, the HST collected from the party who can actually recover it. Set it up backwards and you spend months chasing a carrier for money it was never going to pay.
Every piece of a claim file has its own HST answer
| Piece of the file | HST treatment |
|---|---|
| Repair invoice to the insured | 13% on the full approved scope, whoever funds it |
| Homeowner deductible | Not a separate charge; the first slice of the tax-included price |
| Non-covered upgrades | Invoiced directly to the owner at 13%, outside the settlement |
| Program administrator's file fee | A cost of the work; keep the paperwork behind any credit you claim |
| Deductible written off as uncollectible | The bad-debt rules let you recover the HST you remitted on it |
The last row is the one firms leave on the table. When a deductible, or any short-paid balance, is genuinely uncollectible, the Excise Tax Act lets a registrant take back the tax portion of a receivable that has been written off in the books. The conditions are real: an arm's-length customer, an actual write-off recorded in your records, and a claim made on a return within the allowed window. We treat the adjustment as a routine part of the HST file rather than found money, because in a business that collects deductibles from strangers on the worst week of their lives, some write-offs are simply part of the model.
Year-end has to cut off cleanly across open claim files
At year-end a restoration company holds files at every stage at once: mitigation performed but unbilled, invoices sitting in line-item review, rebuilds half-framed, settlements approved but unpaid. The T2 position depends on drawing the line the same way every year: unbilled work valued in work in process, billed files sitting in receivables, and rebuild contracts that straddle the year reported under a method applied consistently rather than chosen to suit the result. A defensible per-claim WIP schedule is what makes that cut-off stand up when the CRA asks how the numbers were built.
Two construction rules follow the rebuild side of the business. Where reconstruction contracts carry Construction Act holdbacks, the held-back slice is not legally receivable until release, and its income and HST timing wait with it. And if construction activities make up more than half your revenue, payments to subcontractors, the abatement crew, the electrician, the drywaller on the rebuild, belong on T5018 slips filed within six months of your chosen reporting period. The CRA matches those slips against what your subs declared, so the slips come straight from the payables ledger, complete and on time.
The calendar, and the letters that follow it
The corporate return is due six months after year-end, with the balance for most small CCPCs due at three; HST runs on its own cycle sized to your revenue; T4s close off February, carrying every on-call premium the year paid out. We run the calendar so a spring melt or a burst-pipe cold snap never collides with a filing deadline.
CRA contact in this industry usually starts with an HST review, because refund claims and input-tax-credit swings draw attention in a company that buys equipment in bursts and writes off deductibles. Books reconciled claim by claim answer most letters in a page. When one needs more than a page, CRA Audit & Review Support takes the file, and the records built through End-to-End Accounting are the evidence, not a reconstruction. Restoration firms across Mississauga and the GTA start the same way: a free 15-minute discovery call and a quote in writing.
Source: CRA — GST/HST for businesses.
