Quebec QST Invoicing: What a Compliant Invoice Must Show

The 60-second version

• QST is not HST. It is a separate 9.975% tax under Quebec's own statute, with its own registration number, its own return, and its own rules [1].
• The two taxes are not compounded. QST applies to the value of the consideration for the supply, which does not include the GST [1].
• The documentary thresholds changed. Quebec's prescribed-information rules now step at $100 and $500, not the $30 and $150 that almost every published guide still quotes [3]. The federal rules moved the same way [5].
• Your QST registration number must appear on any invoice of $100 or more, or your customer cannot claim the input tax refund [3]. Your paperwork defect costs them money, not you.
• If you show GST and QST as one combined amount, you must state that the total includes the QST. Almost nobody does [3].

QST is a separate tax, not a provincial slice of a federal one

Ontario, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia have harmonized: one HST, one registration, one return, one administration. Quebec has not. It runs its own sales tax under its own Act.

Section 16 of the Act respecting the Quebec sales tax reads:

Every recipient of a taxable supply made in Quebec shall pay to the Minister of Revenue a tax in respect of the supply calculated at the rate of 9.975% on the value of the consideration for the supply. However, the rate of the tax in respect of a taxable supply that is a zero-rated supply is 0% [1].

Notice what the tax attaches to: the value of the consideration for the supply. The GST is not part of the consideration your customer agreed to pay you for the goods or services. The two taxes therefore sit side by side on the same base rather than stacking, which is why a $1,000 Quebec invoice carries $50 of GST and $99.75 of QST for a total of $1,149.75 - and not the slightly higher number you would get by charging QST on the GST-inclusive amount.

The practical consequences on the document itself:

• Two tax lines, separately labelled, each showing its own amount.
• Two registration numbers - your federal GST/HST number and your Quebec QST number are different numbers issued by different administrations.
• Two returns. QST is not reported on your GST/HST return. Treating Quebec as a single 14.975% province is the fastest way to a filing that will not reconcile.

Quebec also runs a separate small-supplier test. Under section 294, a person is a small supplier where the relevant four-quarter total does not exceed $30,000, or $50,000 for a public service body [2]. The figure matches the federal threshold, but it is a distinct test under a distinct Act - you can be required to register for one and not the other.

The numbers that changed, and why your guide is wrong

This is the part worth reading carefully, because the published guidance almost universally has not caught up.

Section 201 of the Act says a registrant may not claim an input tax refund unless, before filing, they obtained sufficient evidence in such form containing such information as will enable the amount of the refund to be determined, including any such information as may be prescribed [2]. The prescribed information lives in the Regulation, at sections 201R3 through 201R5 - and those three sections were amended by Order in Council 1696-2024 [3].

The tiers as they now read:

• Under $100 (201R3): supplier's name or business name; the invoice date, or the date tax became payable if no invoice was issued; the total amount paid or payable; and the tax paid or payable or the tax rate for each supply. A description of each supply is required where the document would not otherwise let the refund be determined with certainty.
• $100 or more but under $500 (201R4): everything above, plus the supplier's QST registration number.
• $500 or more (201R5): everything above, plus the recipient's name or business name (or that of their mandatary or authorized representative), the terms of payment, and a description of each supply sufficient to identify it.

Those step points used to be $30 and $150. Search almost any Canadian accounting resource today and you will still find $30 and $150. The federal Input Tax Credit Information Regulations moved to the same $100 and $500 figures [5], so both systems now step at the same places - which is convenient, and also means the stale guidance is stale in both directions at once.

If you carry a rule in your head that says "under $150 we do not need the registration number," retire it.

Why a missing registration number is your customer's problem

Read the tiers again with an eye to who bears the loss.

The prescribed information is a condition on the recipient's input tax refund claim, not on your obligation to collect. You collect the tax as agent of the Crown and remit it either way [6]. But if your $400 invoice omits your QST registration number, your business customer's ITR claim on that invoice does not meet 201R4, and a Revenu Quebec auditor can deny it.

So the sequence is: you make a formatting error, your customer loses roughly $40, and they find out about it a year later during an audit. That is a relationship problem as much as a compliance one, and it is entirely avoidable - the registration numbers are static fields that should be printed on every invoice your system emits, at every amount, without anyone deciding.

The same logic runs at $500, where the recipient's name and the terms of payment become mandatory. "Terms of payment" is not decorative. Net 30, due on receipt, 50% deposit - put it on the document.

The combined-total rule nobody follows

Paragraph 6 of section 201R3 handles the case where a document shows GST and QST as a single blended figure. Where an amount constituted by both the tax paid or payable and the goods and services tax paid or payable is shown on the supporting documentation, the prescribed information is the total of the two in respect of each taxable supply, and a statement to the effect that that total includes the tax paid or payable - that is, a statement that the combined figure includes the QST [3].

In other words: you may show one blended tax number, but only if you say so on the face of the document. A receipt that prints "Taxes: $149.75" with no further explanation does not satisfy the paragraph.

Our recommendation is to skip the option entirely. Show GST and QST on separate lines with separate labels and separate amounts. It is unambiguous, it survives an audit without argument, and it makes your customer's bookkeeping possible instead of merely legal.

When does a Quebec invoice apply at all?

QST attaches to a taxable supply made in Quebec [1]. That is a place-of-supply question, and it is answered the same way the federal question is - by where goods are delivered, or for most services by the customer address you obtained in the ordinary course of business, not by where your business sits. We covered those rules in detail in which province's GST/HST rate goes on your invoice.

Layered on top is the registration question, which is separate again. A business outside Quebec supplying into Quebec may or may not be required to register for QST depending on its circumstances, and Quebec operates a specified registration regime for certain suppliers with no physical or significant presence there. If you are outside Quebec and starting to sell into it in volume, that determination is worth a conversation with an accountant before your first invoice, not after your first assessment.

What you should not do is assume the answer is "no" because you have no office in Quebec, or assume it is "yes" because you once shipped something to Montreal.

A Quebec invoice that will not cause trouble

For a taxable supply of $500 or more made in Quebec, the document should carry:

• Your business name, and your GST/HST registration number
• Your QST registration number
• The invoice date
• The customer's name or business name
• A description of each supply sufficient to identify it
• The amount payable for each supply and the total before tax
• GST at 5%, on its own line
• QST at 9.975%, on its own line, computed on the same pre-tax base
• The terms of payment

Below $500 you may drop the customer name, the terms of payment and the standalone description; below $100 you may also drop the registration numbers. We would not recommend dropping any of it. There is no benefit to printing a thinner invoice, the thresholds have already moved once, and the amount that puts you over a step is not always obvious at the moment the document is generated - 201R3 and 201R4 speak of the total shown on the supporting documentation in respect of one or more supplies.

Build the full version once and issue it every time.

One caution about dates

The Quebec amendments came through O.C. 1696-2024, and the corresponding federal change came through the 2024 amendment to the Input Tax Credit Information Regulations. Both are recent enough that a good deal of software, and a great deal of published advice, predates them.

If a figure in this article matters to a decision you are making, follow the source links and read the current consolidated text yourself. That is true of any tax writing, and especially true of numbers that have just moved after two decades of sitting still.