The CRA doesn't care that your receipt faded in the truck

You paid the HST. You just can't prove it. So you don't get it back. That's the quiet way small businesses lose real money in Canada, and most owners don't find out until it's too late to fix.

The rule nobody explains until you're on the wrong side of it

When your business buys something, you pay HST on top. If you're registered, you get that tax back as an input tax credit. Over a year, it adds up: the fuel, the tools, the supplies, the subcontractor invoices.

But you can only claim that tax back if you can produce the receipt. Not the credit card statement. The actual receipt, with the vendor, the date, the tax, and the supplier's registration number on it.

And the CRA can ask for it years after you file.

What it actually costs

A contractor buys $2,000 in materials and pays $260 in HST. Claims it back. Done.

Two years later, a review letter shows up. The CRA wants the receipt. But it faded to blank in the truck console eighteen months ago.

That $260 gets denied and repaid, with interest.

Now stop thinking about one receipt. Think about a year. Fuel every week. Tools. Materials. Every missing receipt is a small ITC you quietly lose. It stops being $260. It's thousands — money you were legally entitled to keep, gone because the paper wasn't there when they asked.

The clock started the day you filed

CRA can audit up to six years back from the end of the tax year a record relates to. That receipt from three years ago? Still fair game. A faded thermal print in a truck console, a photo buried in a camera roll, or a PDF nobody can find — all of them become your problem the moment a review letter arrives. By then, the window to fix it is closed.

Six years is a long time to rely on a shoebox.

The trap hiding in your bookkeeping software

Most accounting software auto-extracts the tax on every expense. It assumes the 13% is baked in and claims it for you. That feels efficient — until you realize it's claiming ITCs on purchases where you don't have a compliant receipt behind them.

What the CRA actually requires (2026)

The bar rises with the size of the purchase. These thresholds reflect proposed changes to the Input Tax Credit Information (GST/HST) Regulations:

Miss a single required field, and the CRA has grounds to deny the credit.

The fix is boring, which is why it works

You don't need to become a tax expert. You need the receipt to exist, in full, the moment you get it — so it's there years later when someone asks.

Nabbit captures every receipt when you're handed it. Vendor, date, tax, registration details — all intact, stored, searchable, and ready for QuickBooks. No shoebox. No month-end scramble.

When the CRA asks, the proof is there.