The HST Input Tax Credit Checklist Every Canadian Bookkeeper Should Run Before Filing

You already know the rule: no valid supplier registration number on a receipt above CRA's $30 threshold, no input tax credit. What costs bookkeepers time isn't knowing the rule — it's catching every receipt that breaks it before the return goes out, not after CRA asks for backup.

Run this checklist against a client file before you file. It takes about ten minutes on a small file and it's the same logic a lot of "automatic" tools skip past.

1Registration number present and legible

Every receipt claiming ITC over $30 must show the supplier's GST/HST number. A blurry or cropped number is the same as no number — don't guess it from the vendor name. Common miss: gas station and restaurant receipts where the number is printed in tiny type at the bottom and gets cut off in a phone photo.

2HST rate matches the province and the date

Rates changed over time and differ by province — the rate that applies is the one in effect when the receipt was issued, not today's rate. Quebec is its own case: GST and QST are often printed combined on one line. Split them before you book — booking the combined figure as HST overstates the credit.

3Meals and entertainment capped at 50%

This is the single most common overclaim on small-business files. The full amount gets typed into the expense column and the 50% limitation gets missed at year-end, not at entry. Flag it at the receipt, not at the tax return — it's faster to catch once than to re-audit a whole year in April.

4Zero-rated and exempt items aren't taxed on the paper — don't tax them in the ledger

Basic groceries, most medical and educational services, and a handful of other categories are zero-rated or exempt. If the receipt shows no tax line, there is no tax to claim — full stop, even if your software defaults to the standard rate.

5Personal purchases routed to owner draw, not expensed

Mixed personal/business cards produce receipts that don't belong in the business ledger at all. Route them to owner draw or shareholder loan, not to an expense category — an expensed personal purchase is one of the easier things for CRA to catch and the hardest to defend.

6Every booked figure traces back to a number actually printed on the paper

If a number in your ledger doesn't match a number on the document, you can't defend it in a review. This sounds obvious until you're two hundred receipts into a file at 11pm.

7Multi-receipt pages and duplicates

A photo with two receipts side by side needs to be split into two ledger entries, each with its own tax treatment — not booked as one lump sum. Duplicate uploads (a receipt photographed twice, or emailed and also uploaded) inflate the expense total. Catch them before export, not after the client asks why the numbers moved.

Why we wrote this

We build Meridian Books, a tool that reads a year of Canadian receipts, books them against exactly these rules, and — unlike most of the category — tells you plainly when it couldn't read something instead of guessing. If you've run this checklist by hand on a client file before, you already know the parts that take the longest: numbers 1, 2, and 7. That's where we spend the engineering effort.

See how it handles a real file →

General information for Canadian bookkeepers, current as of the date published. Not tax advice — CRA rules change and every file is different.