GST/HST for tiffin and meal-prep businesses in Canada
Basic groceries are zero-rated. Hot meals delivered to a door are usually not. Here is the distinction that decides whether you owe tax on every tiffin you sell.
· 4 MIN READ
Nearly every tiffin owner we speak to has heard that food is not taxed in Canada. It is a reasonable thing to believe — you do not pay GST on rice or lentils at the supermarket. It is also the single most expensive misunderstanding in this business, because the exemption that covers a bag of rice usually does not cover the meal you cook from it.
When you have to register
You are a small supplier, and do not have to register or charge GST/HST, while your total worldwide taxable revenue stays at or under $30,000 across four consecutive calendar quarters.
Cross it and several things happen at once:
- You stop being a small supplier immediately before the sale that put you over.
- You must charge GST/HST on that sale too — not from the following month.
- You have 29 days from your effective registration date to register.
For a kitchen selling $15 meals, $30,000 is about 2,000 meals — roughly 77 meals a day for a single month, or a steady 25 a day across a year. Most tiffin services that survive their first year cross it. The CRA sets this out in when to register for and start charging the GST/HST.
Why your meals are probably taxable
Basic groceries are zero-rated. Most food and beverages sold for human consumption — including ingredients you would mix or cook with — are taxed at 0%. That is the rule people remember.
But prepared food is treated differently. The CRA's Basic Groceries memorandum carves out categories that stay taxable, and food prepared for immediate consumption sits squarely in the taxable side. Sandwiches and similar products, for instance, are taxable unless frozen — where frozen means held at or below 0°C. Merely refrigerated is considered suitable for immediate consumption, and therefore taxable.
A hot, cooked, ready-to-eat meal delivered to someone's door for dinner is about as clearly "prepared for immediate consumption" as food gets. Assume your tiffins are taxable unless an accountant tells you otherwise.
The CRA also notes that where a product's status is genuinely in doubt, it will look at how the product is displayed, labelled, packaged, invoiced and advertised. How you describe what you sell is part of the determination — a detail worth knowing before you write your menu page.
Which rate applies
The rate follows the place of supply — for delivered food, where it goes, not where you cook it. A kitchen in Ontario delivering into Ontario charges 13% HST. A kitchen in BC charges 5% GST plus PST where PST applies. If you deliver across a provincial boundary, the destination province's rate is the one that matters.
This is a real complication for kitchens near a border, and another reason to keep delivery zones tight.
The upside nobody mentions: input tax credits
Registering is not purely a cost. Once registered you can claim input tax credits on the GST/HST you pay on business purchases — containers, equipment, commissary rent, fuel, software, packaging. For a kitchen buying thousands of dollars of packaging a year, that is real money back.
Some kitchens under the threshold register voluntarily for exactly this reason. Whether it is worth it depends on your input costs versus the admin, which is a conversation for your accountant.
What to track from day one
Filing is painful in direct proportion to how little you recorded during the year. The minimum:
- Revenue, continuously — so you see the $30,000 line coming rather than discovering you crossed it in February.
- Tax collected, separately from revenue. The tax you collect is not your money; it is money you are holding for the CRA. Kitchens that keep it in one pot spend it.
- GST/HST paid on purchases, with receipts, so you can claim input tax credits.
- The province each delivery went to, if you deliver across a boundary.
- Payment method, because reconciling cash and e-transfer against what you declared is where audits get uncomfortable.
Tiffinware's collections and payment mix report breaks revenue down by card, e-transfer and cash, and reports GST collected over any date range, alongside refunds. The profit and loss report carries expenses by category, which is where the input-tax-credit side of the ledger lives. Neither replaces an accountant — they just mean your accountant is reading a report instead of a shoebox.
The short version
- Under $30,000 across four consecutive quarters, you are a small supplier and can skip all of this.
- Over it, register within 29 days and charge tax starting with the sale that crossed the line.
- Your meals are almost certainly taxable, whatever you have heard about groceries.
- The rate follows the delivery address.
- Track tax collected separately from revenue, and keep the receipts for what you paid.
None of this is difficult. It is only expensive when it is discovered late.