GST/HST Credit

How the credit works

Sales tax takes a bigger bite out of a small budget than a large one, so the federal government refunds part of it. The GST/HST credit offsets some of the GST and HST you pay at the till, through quarterly deposits in early July, October, January, and April.

Each benefit year runs from July to June and is calculated from the tax return you filed the previous spring: your payments starting July 2026 come from your 2025 return. The amount depends on your adjusted family net income and your family size. Roughly speaking, it is worth several hundred dollars per adult per year plus an amount per child, with the exact figures indexed each July; canada.ca publishes the current table. If your total credit works out to less than $50 per quarter, the CRA pays the whole year as one lump sum in July.

There is nothing to apply for. Filing your return is the application, whether or not you owe tax. The one exception is newcomers to Canada, who apply for their first year with form RC151 before they have a return on file.

Who gets it

You qualify if you are 19 or older (or younger with a spouse or child), a resident of Canada for tax purposes, and your family income is below the cut-off for your family size. The credit pays its full amount to lower incomes, then shrinks gradually once adjusted family net income passes a threshold, disappearing entirely somewhere in the middle-income range depending on how many children you have. Couples receive one combined payment, deposited to whichever spouse's return the CRA processes it under.

Why filing matters, even with zero income

This credit is the clearest example of a rule that surprises many people: Canada's benefit system runs on the tax return, not on need. Someone with zero income owes no tax, but without a return the CRA has no income figure to assess, so it pays nothing.

One filed return can unlock the GST/HST credit, the CCB for parents, the GIS for lower-income seniors, the Canada Workers Benefit, and a stack of provincial credits, all at once. For a person with little or no taxable income, the return that takes twenty minutes and shows $0 of tax owing can be worth thousands of dollars a year in benefits. Students, seniors, and anyone between jobs should file every single year.

Québec's sibling: the solidarity credit

Québec pays its own provincial counterpart, the solidarity credit (crédit d'impôt pour solidarité), administered by Revenu Québec. You claim it through Schedule D of the provincial TP-1 return, and it bundles three components: an amount for the QST, an amount for housing, and an amount for residents of northern villages. Depending on the total, Revenu Québec pays it monthly, quarterly, or once a year. Québec residents can receive both the federal GST/HST credit and the solidarity credit, which is one more reason to file both returns even with no income.