Escape Trailer – Federal Court of Appeal finds that the intent of ETA is to only zero-rate goods where they are shipped to a destination outside Canada

When a B.C.-based company (the “applicant”) sold an RV to a U.S. customer, it could have avoided the requirement to charge HST on the sale price by delivering the RV to the customer in the U.S. (so that under ETA s. 142 the place of supply would have been outside Canada) or by shipping the RV to the customer in the U.S. on a common carrier (thereby engaging zero-rating). Instead, it delivered the RV to the customer in a parking lot just north of the border, with the customer then driving the RV across the border as the importer of record. In confirming that CRA had not acted unreasonably in declining to recommend a remission order under s. 23(2) of the Financial Administration Act, Locke JA noted that CRA had “implicitly acknowledged the general intent noted in Montecristo … that GST/HST should be limited to consumption within Canada,” but had reasonably considered that “Goods purchased by non-resident consumers are only intended to be zero-rated if they are shipped to a destination outside Canada, or they are sent by mail or courier to an address outside Canada,” and further stated:

The Assistant Commissioner concluded reasonably that the predicament in which Escape Trailer found itself … was caused not by any unintended results of the legislation, but rather by its failure to comply with any of the detailed conditions for zero-rating.

Neal Armstrong. Summary of Escape Trailer Industries Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2020 FCA 54 under ETA Sched. VI, Pt. V, s. 12.