NWorks – Court of Quebec indicates that a recipient of supply could be invoiced for sales tax after the supplier was asssessed therefor

A supplier (NWorks) charged GST, but failed to charge QST, on a number of supplies of services to the recipient thereof. When it was assessed by the ARQ for this failure, it promptly issued a revised invoice to the recipient for the previous transactions that showed the QST owing, which the recipient refused to pay.

Sirois JCQ strongly sided with the jurisprudence (including Occo) that indicated that the documentary requirements of the Quebec equivalent of ETA s. 223 (i.e., QSTA s. 425) could be satisfied by issuing a revised invoice (in good form) for the tax well after the time of making the supply so that, under the Quebec equivalent of ETA s. 224, NWorks could recover the QST from the recipient. She also stated that two decisions to the contrary “added the non-existent words ‘at the time of invoicing’ to the text of QSTA section 425.”

Neal Armstrong. Summary of NWorks Management Corp. (Globotech Communications) v. Lincourt, 2018 QCCQ 1021 under ETA s. 223.