If you have ever taken a close look at your airline tickets did you spot the Canadian Sales Taxes? What you may have noticed was a series of numbers and two letter codes that really don’t tell you anything unless you know what the codes mean. If you are traveling throughout Canada, recoverable taxes will often be found within those codes. If the taxes are not being recorded in your tax accounts to be recovered through your monthly filings than your flights in Canada are going to be more expensive than they have to be.
For example the two digit code XT per the airline industry means: Code used for combined taxes when there are more than three taxes. So if you were to see 37.20 XT in the summary, on the ticket you might see something like this: 27.20XG 6.00 XQ 4.00 ZP. If we add those three values together we get the sum of $37.20 which is the value that corresponds to the code XT. The code XG is used to distinguish Government Goods and Services Tax (GST), the code XQ means Quebec Sales Tax (QST) and the ZP means a flight segment tax. Had HST been present you would have seen a number followed by the term RC, RC means Harmonized Tax (HST).
We have found a few sources for the various codes that may appear on your airline tickets and have the links below:
So if you fly for business make sure you check out your airline tickets to ensure that you are recording the Canadian Sales Taxes that you might find embedded in the air lingo.
