When the Ontario government repealed the Retail Sales Tax (RST) in favour of the new Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), it transferred audit and collection activities to the Canada Revenue Agency. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean Ontario restaurants can forget about the old RST!
Ontario is still responsible for auditing the old RST for periods up to June 30, 2010. Under the Statute of Limitations, Ontario has up to four years to audit the RST. Actually, they can go back more than four years, if they can show fraud or misrepresentation or if they obtain a waiver from the taxpayer.
Many of these Ontario auditors will be transferring to the CRA in 2012. So, they are racing to complete audits of most Ontario RST vendors. This is especially true for Ontario restaurants, which have always been a target of the Ministry of Revenue.