Important: Tax rules change fast. This post is general information, not advice for your specific situation. Verify anything that matters with your CPA or directly with the Canada Revenue Agency before you act on it.
Bill C-15 got Royal Assent on March 26, 2026. Officially, it’s the Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 1, and it turns most of the Carney government’s November 2025 budget into law.
Every tax firm in Canada is putting out a summary. I’ve read about a dozen of them. They all cover the same measures in the same order: capital gains exemption, SR&ED, transfer pricing, trust rules, and so on. Useful if you’re a generic Canadian business. Useless if you sell on Amazon, run a Shopify store, or ship into Canada from the US.
So here’s the version I’d actually send to my clients.
Last updated: April 2026
The Short Version TL:DR
If you only read one section, read this.
- The Digital Services Tax (DST) is dead, retroactive to June 2024. Amazon is automatically refunding DST fees it charged sellers — between April 15 and May 15, 2026. I’ll show you exactly where to look in Seller Central to confirm the credit.
- GST/HST rules for Amazon and Shopify sellers did not change. The marketplace rules from 2021 still apply, the $30,000 registration threshold is still the threshold, and Amazon still collects and remits for you on marketplace sales. If you’re seeing blog posts telling you the GST rules changed, they’re wrong.
- The Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption jumped to $1.25M. If you’re Canadian, incorporated, and planning to sell your store at some point, this is real money.
- SR&ED got a serious upgrade. The expenditure limit doubled. Cloud compute and AI are eligible. If you’re building apps or tools, this matters.
- Non-resident sellers: the 2026 story isn’t really C-15. It’s CARM and the Last Sale Rule. I get asked about this weekly and Bill C-15 doesn’t touch it.
What Bill C-15 Actually Is
Bill C-15 implements the tax and spending measures from the November 4, 2025 federal budget (“Canada Strong”). It’s a big piece of legislation — it amends the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act (GST/HST), the Underused Housing Tax Act, and the Luxury Tax Act, among others. Part 2 of the bill fully repeals the Digital Services Tax Act.
If you want to go to the source: LEGISinfo has the full text and status. The Department of Finance announcement has the plain-language summary.
The DST Repeal: Why It Matters to You
Quick background. The Digital Services Tax was a 3% tax on large digital platforms — Amazon, Google, Meta, Etsy, and others — with global revenue over €750M and Canadian digital revenue over $20M CAD. Most sellers didn’t owe it directly. But Amazon and a few other platforms passed the cost down by adding a DST surcharge to seller fees.
The Carney government repealed DST under US trade pressure. Bill C-15 makes the repeal retroactive to June 20, 2024, which is the date the DST first came into force. Anyone who paid DST to the government gets full refunds plus interest.
Here’s what that means for you as a seller.
Amazon Is Refunding DST Fees. Here’s How to Check.
Amazon told sellers directly that it’s refunding the DST fees it charged, and it’s doing it automatically. You don’t have to file anything or contact support.
The timeline Amazon gave:
- Amazon stopped charging DST fees on August 15, 2025, when the government announced it planned to repeal
- The repeal became law on March 26, 2026
- Amazon is refunding DST fees (and the tax on those fees) charged between September 1, 2024 and August 15, 2025
- Refunds land in Seller Central between April 15 and May 15, 2026
You don’t need to do anything to get the refund. But I’d check it anyway. In my experience, automatic credits get missed when they don’t match what sellers expect.
How to See the Refund in Seller Central
- Open the Payments dashboard
- Click Transaction View
- Under Transaction type, pick Other
- Set the date range from April 15, 2026 to May 15, 2026 and click Update
- Download the file and open it in Excel
- Filter the Product details column for “Digital services fee adjustment” and “Taxes on digital services fee adjustment”
- The credit amount shows up in the Total column
How to Check What You Originally Paid
If you want to confirm the refund is the right amount, here’s where the original DST totals live:
- Go to Reports → Selling Economics and Fees
- Open the Reports tab, pick SKU Economics report from the drop-down
- Marketplace: pick your store. Data aggregation level: MSKU
- Date range: Custom date range, from September 1, 2024 to August 15, 2025
- Under Simplified Report Configuration Options, check Fee data and hit Generate report
- Open the CSV, find the Digital Services Fee (Selling on Amazon fees) column, and sum it
That number should be close to what you see credited in April and May (plus the tax on the fee, which is a separate line).
Other Platforms
Amazon is the only platform I’ve seen commit publicly to automatic DST refunds. For everyone else, pull your billing statements and look for a DST line item. A few to check:
- Shopify — billing statements and transaction history
- Google Ads and Meta Ads — look for “Canada DST” or “Digital Services Tax” on invoices from 2024-2025
- Etsy, eBay, Walmart Marketplace — check fee breakdowns
If you find charges and you haven’t seen refunds, it’s worth opening a support case. The tax is gone. Any pass-through they kept charging isn’t justified anymore.
What Did NOT Change (Don’t Let the Headlines Confuse You)
Clients have been asking me about this since the budget came out. So let’s be direct about it.
GST/HST Marketplace Rules Are Exactly the Same
The rules that took effect July 1, 2021 are still in place. Nothing in Bill C-15 touches them. That means:
- Amazon, Etsy, and eBay still collect and remit GST/HST on third-party seller sales to Canadian buyers
- Non-residents with inventory in Canada (including Amazon FBA) still need to register once taxable supplies cross $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters
- The $30,000 registration threshold is unchanged
- Direct sales off the marketplace (your own Shopify store, for example) still require you to collect and remit yourself
If a forum post or blog tells you “Amazon Canada sellers need to re-register” or “the GST threshold changed” it didn’t. Those rules are exactly where they were last year.
The $20 CAD De Minimis Is Still $20
The US pushed hard to get Canada to raise its de minimis threshold on imports. Canada didn’t. For courier shipments from the US and Mexico, the thresholds are still:
- $20 CAD — general threshold for duties and taxes
- $40 CAD — sales tax threshold under CUSMA
- $150 CAD — duty threshold under CUSMA
So if you’ve built your landed cost model around the $20 threshold, nothing to rebuild.
What Actually Did Change (For Canadian Ecommerce Businesses)
Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption: $1.25M
If you’re a Canadian resident and your ecommerce business is incorporated, this one matters a lot if you plan to sell at some point.
The Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption on Qualified Small Business Corporation (QSBC) shares went up from $1,016,836 to $1,250,000 for dispositions on or after June 25, 2024. That’s an extra $233,164 of gains you can shelter from tax.
At an effective long-term capital gains rate in the 25% range, that’s roughly $58,000 of tax savings. Per spouse, if you’ve set it up that way. Worth an actual conversation with your accountant if you’re thinking about an exit in the next few years.
Indexation resumes in 2026, so the number creeps up each year from here.
SR&ED Expenditure Limit Doubled to $6M
If you spend on custom development: proprietary Shopify apps, fulfillment integrations, AI tools, machine learning for product recommendations: SR&ED is worth a fresh look.
What changed:
- Annual expenditure limit went from $3M to $6M
- Taxable capital phase-out range: $15M to $75M (was $10M to $50M)
- Capital expenditures are eligible again
- Cloud computing and AI experimentation are eligible
- 35% refundable credit rate for CCPCs is unchanged
- Target processing time is dropping from 180 days to 90 days as of April 1, 2026
The refundable credit ceiling went from about $1.05M a year to $2.1M a year. If you’re spending real money on development and haven’t looked at SR&ED in a while, now’s a good time.
Immediate Expensing on Fulfillment Equipment
If you run your own warehouse — racking, conveyors, packaging machines, material handling — Bill C-15 brings back immediate expensing for manufacturing and processing property.
- 100% first-year deduction for eligible M&P buildings acquired on or after November 4, 2025
- Accelerated Investment Incentive reinstated for property acquired after 2024 and available for use before 2030
- Phased out between 2030 and 2033
Computer equipment (Class 50) acquired on or after April 16, 2024 and available for use before January 1, 2027 also qualifies for full write-off in the year you buy it.
Transfer Pricing: Tighter and Faster
If your ecommerce operation runs through related entities in more than one country a US LLC selling into a Canadian subsidiary, a Canadian corporation licensing IP to a US affiliate, anything along those lines then transfer pricing just got stricter:
- New economic substance test
- CRA documentation request deadline cut from 3 months to 30 days
- Updated penalties
- Applies to tax years after November 4, 2025
Thirty days isn’t enough time to build transfer pricing documentation from scratch. If you’ve got cross-border related-party arrangements and your documentation is stale, fix it now.
For Non-Resident Sellers: The Real 2026 Story
Most of our non-resident clients are asking about Bill C-15. My answer is usually: C-15 doesn’t change much for you, but 2026 is a big compliance year for other reasons.
CARM
CARM (CBSA Assessment and Revenue Management) became the system of record for commercial imports into Canada in late 2024. If you’re a non-resident importer, you’re now dealing with:
- Direct CBSA registration (you can’t fully outsource this to a broker anymore)
- Security bond requirements before goods are released
- Joint and several liability with your customs broker
If you haven’t completed your CARM setup, that’s a bigger problem than anything in C-15.
The Last Sale Rule
CBSA changed how duty is calculated on multi-party import chains. If you drop-ship or use wholesalers, the value for duty is now the price in the last sale before the goods entered Canada — not the first. For a lot of non-resident ecommerce models, this means higher duty than you used to pay.
Tariff Relief Programs
If you’ve been caught in the cross-border tariff environment, Budget 2025 put $6.5B on the table to help:
- $5B Strategic Response Fund
- Expanded Trade Impact Program
- Expansions to Duty Drawback and Duty Relief
The Department of Finance tariff response page has the current list of programs. Worth checking if you import from the US.
Your Action Checklist
- Amazon sellers: check Seller Central between April 15 and May 15, 2026 for your DST refund credit. Use the steps above to verify.
- Other platforms: review fee statements from 2024-2025 for any DST surcharge. If you see one and no refund has landed, open a support case.
- Don’t change your GST/HST approach. Marketplace rules and the $30K threshold are unchanged.
- Canadian incorporated sellers: ask your CPA whether your shares qualify as QSBC — especially if an exit is anywhere in your plans.
- If you spend on development or AI: revisit SR&ED under the new $6M ceiling.
- If you’re buying fulfillment equipment: check whether immediate expensing applies to your purchase timing.
- Cross-border related entities: update your transfer pricing documentation. You won’t have 30 days to build it from nothing.
- Non-resident importers: confirm your CARM registration and figure out your Last Sale Rule exposure.
- Foreign-owned Canadian rental property: no more Underused Housing Tax filings for 2025 onward. (2022-2024 obligations still stand.)
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Bill C-15 and when did it pass?
Bill C-15 is the Budget 2025 Implementation Act, No. 1. It received Royal Assent on March 26, 2026 and is now law as S.C. 2026, c. 3. It implements most of the tax measures from the November 4, 2025 federal budget.
Does Bill C-15 change GST/HST rules for Amazon or Shopify sellers?
No. The marketplace facilitator rules from July 2021 still apply. Amazon, Etsy, and eBay continue to collect and remit GST/HST on marketplace sales. The $30,000 registration threshold hasn’t moved.
Will Amazon actually refund the DST fees it charged sellers?
Yes. Amazon is processing automatic refunds for DST fees (and the tax on those fees) charged between September 1, 2024 and August 15, 2025. The credits land in Seller Central between April 15 and May 15, 2026. You don’t have to open a case or request anything.
How do I check my Amazon DST refund in Seller Central?
Go to Payments dashboard → Transaction View. Set Transaction type to “Other” and the date range to April 15 to May 15, 2026. Download the file, filter the Product details column for “Digital services fee adjustment” and “Taxes on digital services fee adjustment,” and the refund amount is in the Total column.
How do I check how much DST Amazon originally charged me?
Go to Reports → Selling Economics and Fees → SKU Economics report. Run it for September 1, 2024 to August 15, 2025 with Fee data selected. In the CSV, look for the “Digital Services Fee (Selling on Amazon fees)” column and sum the total.
Is the $30,000 GST/HST registration threshold changing?
No. The $30,000 threshold over four consecutive calendar quarters is unchanged. It still applies to resident and non-resident sellers with inventory stored in Canada.
Can ecommerce businesses claim SR&ED for Shopify app or AI development?
Yes, and the program got better. The annual expenditure limit doubled from $3M to $6M. Cloud compute and AI experimentation are now eligible. For a CCPC, the refundable credit rate is still 35%, so the maximum refundable credit is roughly $2.1M per year.
How does the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption help me if I sell my ecommerce business?
If your shares qualify as QSBC, you can now shelter $1.25M of capital gains from tax on sale, up from just over $1M. At typical effective long-term capital gains rates, that extra exemption is worth about $58,000 in tax savings per person.
Did Bill C-15 change the $20 CAD de minimis import threshold?
No. The thresholds for courier shipments from the US and Mexico are still $20 CAD general, $40 CAD for sales tax under CUSMA, and $150 CAD for duty.
What should non-resident sellers actually focus on in 2026?
CARM registration, Last Sale Rule exposure on multi-party import chains, and whether you qualify for any of the $6.5B tariff relief programs in Budget 2025. Bill C-15 itself doesn’t change much for a typical non-resident seller.
Need Help Working Through Any of This?
We work with Amazon, Shopify, and cross-border ecommerce clients every week. If you want someone to actually look at your Seller Central statements, your SR&ED exposure, or your transfer pricing file — not just send you a generic summary — that’s what we do.
Get in touch and we’ll look at your specific situation.
Disclaimer: This article is general information, not financial, tax, or legal advice. Tax laws, rates, thresholds, and program rules change often and may have changed since this was published. Verify current rules with the Canada Revenue Agency, CBSA, or a qualified tax professional before acting on anything here. Jones and Cosman CPA is not responsible for errors, omissions, or decisions made in reliance on this article.
Sources: LEGISinfo Bill C-15 | Department of Finance | CRA Digital Economy