Report GST/HST to Tax Authorities

This topic describes the reports in Business Central that you can use to submit information about GST/HST amounts for sales and purchases to tax authorities in your region. Depending on the specific country/region, the reports may include specific information, or there might be additional reports that you must submit. Check the articles for your country/region in the Local Functionality section.

You can use the following built-in reports:

• The EC Sales List report

  The European Community (EC) Sales List report lists the value added tax (VAT) amounts that you have collected for sales to VAT-registered customers in the European Union (EU) countries/regioins.

• The GST/HST Return report

  The VAT Return report includes VAT for sales and purchases to customers and from vendors in all countries/regions that use VAT.

In both cases (as in other GST/HST-related reports), GST/HST is calculated based on the GST/HST posting setup and the GST/HST posting groups that you have set up. Business Central shows GST/HST entries always based on their GST/HST Date as a primary reporting date.

Note

All GST/HST related reports now run using the GST/HST Date to filter relevant records. Even if you set up GST/HST Date Usage as Do not use GST/HST Date functionallity Business Central will hide all instances of the GST/HST Date across the application. However, the GST/HST Date is still used in all reportings and is auto-populated with the Posting Date.

If you want to view a complete history of GST/HST entries, every posting that involves GST/HST creates an entry on the GST/HST Entries page. These entries are used to calculate your GST/HST settlement amount, such as your payment and refund, for a specific period. To view GST/HST entries, choose the icon, enter GST/HST Entries, and then choose the related link.

Note

Each Business Central environment is meant to handle regulatory reporting in one single country/region. For example, the Dutch version of Business Central handles VAT reporting in The Netherlands but not in other countries/regions. Similarly, the United States version of Business Central handles 1099 reporting in the United States and does not support claiming VAT reporting in other countries/regions, unless brought by an extension delivered by our partner ecosystem or a customer-specific code modification.

About the EC Sales List report

In the European Union (EU) and in the UK, all companies that sell goods and services to VAT-registered customers, including customers in other European Union (EU) countries/regions, must submit an electronic version of the European Community (EC) Sales List report to their customs and tax authorities. The EC Sales List report works only for countries/regions in the EU.

The report includes one line for each type of transaction with the customer, and displays the total amount for each type of transactions. There are three types of transactions that the report can include:

• B2B Goods
• B2B Services
• B2B Triangulated Goods

B2B goods and services specify whether you sold a good or a service, and are controlled by the EU Service setting in the GST/HST posting setup. B2B Triangulated Goods indicate whether you engaged in trade with a 3rd party, and are controlled by the EU 3-Party Trade setting on sales documents, such as sales orders, invoices, credit memos, and so on.

After the tax authority reviews your report, they will send an email to the contact person for your company. In Business Central, the contact person is specified on the Company Information page. Before you submit the report, make sure that a contact person is chosen.

Submit an EC sales list report

To submit an EC sales list report, go to the EC Sales List Reports page, and then choose the New action. In the EC Sales List Report page, specify the period and other required fields. Then choose the Suggest Lines action. Business Central checks your VAT entries to calculate the suggested lines for the report. Once you're ready to submit, you must first release the report, and then submit the report.

About the GST/HST Return report

Use this report to submit GST/HST for sales and purchase documents, such as purchase and sales orders, invoices, and credit memos. The information in the report is in the same format as on the declaration form from the customs and tax authorities.

For the GST/HST return, you can specify the entries to include:

• Submit open transactions only, or open and closed. For example, this is useful when you prepare your final annual GST/HST return.
• Submit only entries from the specified periods, or also include entries from previous periods. This is useful for updating a GST/HST return that you have already submitted, for example, if a vendor sends you a late invoice.

To connect to your tax authority's web service

Business Central provides service connections to tax authority websites. For example, if you are in the UK, you can enable the GovTalk service connection to submit the EC Sales List and VAT Return reports electronically. If you want to submit the report manually, for example by entering your data on the tax authority's website, this is not required.

To report GST/HST to a tax authority electronically, you need to connect Business Central to the tax authority's web service. This requires that you set up an account with your tax authority. When you have an account, you can enable a service connection that we provide in Business Central.

1. Choose the icon, enter Service Connections, and then choose appropriate link.

2. Fill in the required fields. Hover over a field to read a short description.

   Note

   It is a good idea to test your connection. To do this, choose the Test Mode check box, then prepare and submit your GST/HST report as described in the To prepare and submit a GST/HST report section. While in Test Mode, the service tests whether the tax authority can receive your report, and the status of the report will indicate whether the test submission was successful. It is important to remember that this is not an actual submission. To submit the report for real, you must clear the Test Mode check box, and then repeat the submission process.

To set up GST/HST reports in Business Central

1. Choose the icon, enter GST/HST Report Setup, and then choose the related link.

2. To let users change and resubmit this report, choose the Allow Modification field.

3. If the tax authorities require that you submit GST/HST reports that also include the net amount that was used to calculate GST/HST, choose the Report GST/HST Base field.

4. Choose the number series to use for each report. Hover over a field to read a short description.

5. In supported countries/regions, to set up VAT return periods, fill in the Report Version and Period Reminder Calculation fields in the Return Period section.

   In countries/regions where VAT return periods are required by the tax authorities, such as the UK, you must fill in additional fields as well. Hover over a field to read a short description. However, in the British version, this section has the name Making Tax Digital.

6. If your company is part of a GST/HST group, then specify your role. For more information, see The GST/HST Group Management Extension

To set up GST/HST return periods

Optionally, if your business is not located in the UK, use the GST/HST Returns Periods page to set up scheduled GST/HST returns. if your business is located in the UK, see Making Tax Digital in the United Kingdom.

1. Choose the icon, enter GST/HST Return Periods, and then choose the related link.
2. On the GST/HST Return Periods page, fill in the fields to set up the first period. Hover over a field to read a short description..
3. Repeat step 2 for any additional periods that you want to add.

Now, when the time has come to submit a GST/HST report for a GST/HST return period, choose the period in the GST/HST Return Periods page, and then choose the Create VAR Return action. Then, in the GST/HST Return card, choose the Suggest Lines action as described in step 3 in the following procedure.

To prepare and submit a GST/HST report

1. Choose the icon, enter EC Sales List or GST/HST Return, and then choose the related link.

2. Choose New, and then fill in the required fields. Hover over a field to read a short description.

3. To generate the content of the report, choose the Suggest Lines action.

   Note

   For the EC Sales List report, you can review the transactions included in the report lines before you submit the report. To do that, choose the line, and then choose the Show GST/HST Entries action.

4. To validate and prepare the report for submission, choose the Release action.

   Note

   Business Central validates whether the report is set up correctly. If the validation fails, the errors display under Errors and Warnings so that you know what to fix. Typically, if the message is about a missing setting in Business Central, you can click the message to open the page that contains the information to correct.

5. To submit the report, choose the Submit action.

After you submit the report, Business Central monitors the service and keeps a record of your communications. The Status field indicates where the report is in the process. For example, when the authorities process your report, the status of the report changes to Succeeded. If the tax authority found mistakes in the report you submitted, the status of the report will be Failed. You can view the errors under Errors and Warnings, correct them, and then submit the report again. To view a list of all your EC Sales List reports, go to the EC Sales List Reports page.

GST/HST return statuses

GST/HST returns can have different statuses, as described in the following table.

Status	Description
Open	When you create a new GST/HST return. You can run the Suggest Lines action. If you need to correct values, you can run the Suggest Lines action again. You can't submit a GST/HST return that has this status.
Released	Status will be changed when you use the Release action. Business Central will show the Errors and Warnings FastTab. You can't make changes or use the Suggest Lines action. To make changes, you must reopen the GST/HST return.
Rejected	If your submission was not successful (for example, if authentication failed), the status will change to Rejected. You can't reopen a GST/HST Return that has this status.
Submitted	The GST/HST return is submitted using the Submit action, or it's marked as submitted by using the Mark as Submitted action.
Accepted	The GST/HST return has this status if the report is marked as accepted by using the Mark as Accepted action. If the GST/HST Return report is marked as Accepted, you can run the Calculate and Post GST/HST Settlement action.

Viewing communications with your tax authority

In some countries/regions, you exchange messages with the tax authority when you submit reports. You can view the first and the last message you sent or received by choosing the Download Submission Message and Download Response Message actions.

Submitting GST/HST reports manually

If you use another method to submit the report, for example by exporting the XML and uploading it to a tax authority website, afterward you can choose Mark as Submitted to close the reporting period. When you mark the report as released, it becomes non-editable. If you must change the report after you mark it as released, you must reopen it.

GST/HST settlement

Periodically, you must remit the net GST/HST to the tax authorities. If you need to settle GST/HST frequently, you can run the Calc. and Post GST/HST Settlement batch job to close the open GST/HST entries and transfer purchase and sales GST/HST amounts to the GST/HST settlement account.

When you transfer GST/HST amounts to the settlement account, the purchase GST/HST account is credited, and the sales GST/HST account is debited with the amounts calculated for the specified period. The net amount is credited or debited, if the purchase GST/HST amount is larger, to the GST/HST settlement account. You can post the settlement immediately or print a test report first.

Note

When you use the Calc. and Post GST/HST Settlement batch job, if you do not specify a GST/HST Bus. Posting Group and a GST/HST Prod. Posting group, entries with all business posting groups and product posting group codes are included.

Configuring your own GST/HST reports

You can use the EC Sales List report out-of-the-box. However, you can also create your own reports, if you have a development licence so that you can create codeunits. If you need assistance, contact a Microsoft Partner.

The following table describes the codeunits that you must create for your report.

Codeunit	What it must do
Suggest Lines	Fetch information from the GST/HST Entries table, and display it in lines on the GST/HST report.
Content	Control the format of the report. For example, whether it is XML or JSON. The format to use depends on the requirements of your tax authority's web service.
Submission	Control how, and when, you submit the report based on the requirements of your tax authority.
Response Handler	Handle the return from the tax authority. For example, it might send an email message to your company's contact person.
Cancel	Send a cancellation of a GST/HST report that was submitted earlier to your tax authority.

Note

When you create codeunits for the report, pay attention to the value in the GST/HST Report Version field. This field must reflect the version of the report that is, or was, required by the tax authority. For example, you might enter 2021 in the field to indicate that the report conforms to the requirements that were in place that year. To find the current version, contact your tax authority.

See also

Set Up Calculations and Posting Methods for GST/HST
Work with GST/HST on Sales and Purchases
Set Up Sales
Invoice Sales

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