This topic may be a bit niche for most on this forum, so my apologies in advance. For anyone outside of Canada, feel free to jump in with any insight you may have for similar situations in your area.
I've recently set up a sole proprietorship to manage all of my self-employed/IC income. This includes mystery shopping, but it is not my sole source of IC income. For example, I'm a Software Engineering student, and the sole proprietorship also collects any income I make from hobby development i.e. selling apps on the app store.
My understanding is that up to $30,000 in income, an entity can forgo charging and remitting GST/HST/PST (sales tax). By no means will I hit that figure this year, likely not in 2019 either, but I'm curious about the implications to mystery shopping of being required to charge GST/HST/PST to MSCs on mystery shopping services..
To my recollection, the only MSC that explicitly asked whether I'm required to charge sales tax is Premier Service, in the form of a question on my shopper profile. I also see how it's would be simple enough for me to charge the tax in cases where I'm submitting an invoice to the MSC (like Cirrus). The difficulty arises in cases where the MSC is paying me automatically without an invoice step. I'd be legally required to charge anywhere from 5%-15% (depending on the province/territory of the shop) on top of fees and bonuses, which I'm not sure many MSCs, especially American MSCs with Canadian shops, are prepared for/anticipating/have processes in place to handle. I worry that this could cause some MSCs to simply no longer want to give me shops.
I realize this is niche since it applies to Canadian law and shoppers who make a lot mystery shopping, but what do you folks think? Has anyone been required to charge a sales tax to MSCs before?