Sales Tax Wizards

The tax wizards help you update your sales tax and tax code settings in response to specific changes in tax laws.

The following tax wizards are available on the Setup menu in the Home window:

HST Update

Note: On April 1, 2013, the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) was dropped in British Columbia and the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) was re-implemented. This wizard does not support this tax change. Use the BC PST Update wizard instead.

Use the HST Update wizard to set up the HST tax and tax code for Ontario and PEI. Since July 1, 2010, Ontario has combined its respective provincial sales taxes with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) to implement an HST in each of these provinces. On April 1, 2013, Prince Edward Island (PEI) followed Ontario and replaced their sales taxes with the HST as well. The wizard not only creates a new HST (13% for Ontario and 14% for PEI), it also links this new tax to the accounts that are used for GST.

If you only had one tax type set up for your company, you will see columns for both HST and the other tax in the orders, quotes, and invoices after you add the new HST tax.

BC PST Update

On April 1, 2013, the HST was dropped in British Columbia and the PST was re-implemented. The HST (currently at 12%) was replaced by the GST at 5%. Use this wizard to make sure you have the correct PST and GST taxes and tax codes set up.

If you have never charged PST, check with your accountant to see if you need to create a new account to track the PST charged on sales.

QST Update

On January 1, 2013, the QST in Quebec was calculated on the selling price not including GST. You can choose to use the wizard to either modify the existing QST tax and tax codes settings in your company file, or create a new QST tax and related tax codes.

When the wizard creates a new QST tax and tax codes, any existing QST tax and tax codes in your company file remain unchanged.

Follow-up Tasks

After completing any of these wizards, perform the following tasks to ensure that your company is collecting and paying the correct sales taxes:

Verify the changes made to the sales taxes and tax codes in your Company Settings.
Add more tax codes. You may require more tax codes than the ones created by the wizard.
If you created any new tax codes using the wizard, you need to update the default sales tax codes set up in the customer and vendor records. To update multiple customer and supplier records at the same time, on the Home window, on the Maintenance menu, select Assign Tax Codes.
Make sure any recurring transactions you have recorded in Sage 50 Accounting are using the correct sales taxes.
(BC PST Update only) If you've recorded your customers' BC PST registration numbers in their records, you need to replace them with your customers' new numbers so that the new numbers are printed on the sales invoices. Businesses need to apply for a new PST registration number as a result of the PST re-implementation.

What do you want to do?

Learn more about setting up taxes and tax codes

Change the account used to track a sales tax

Change a sales tax rate

Add or change a tax code

Add or remove a sales tax

Assign a sales tax code to multiple records