The taxpayer is a sole proprietorship who moved from Ontario to Nova Scotia in 2022.
On the 2022 tax return, I did the following:
On the T2125Part 1 - identification I updated the business address.
On the Info page under ResidencyProvince / Territory of residence on December 31, 2022, I entered the new province.
Beneath that, I entered the date of the move, as well.
The business had a loss so there was no income to allocate and no T2203 to file.
They recently received an email from:
Service Nova Scotia and Internal Services
Registries Division
The letter is informing them of their Nova Scotia business number which has the same 9 digits as their gst/hst number but instead of ending in RT0001 it ends in NS0001.
Does this impact anything on the tax return?
For this client on the T2125 under the business number I have historically entered their GST/HST # (9-digit business # with RT0001 and the end).
For the 2023 return perhaps I will now enter the Nova Scotia Business Number on the T2125 under the business number?
Has anyone dealt with a similar situation and proceeded in a similar manner?
I think you’ll find the NS indicates the Workers Compensation Board account number. If you are registered for WCB, your monthly payment is to the Receiver General, and the 9-digit business number followed by NS0001 indicates the payment is to go to the NS WCB. So, it has no bearing on your tax filing.
So there are a few things here: 1) each business account has multiple sub accounts for a variety of purposes such as GST/HST, Income Tax, Payroll remittances, etc. For payments and instalments to be applied properly those sub accounts need to be reflected on their respective filing correctly. For business income tax it should end by RC0001. While payroll remittances’ sub accounts end by RP0001.
I don’t know about NS but here in Quebec we have different set of Identification numbers as a separate income tax/sales tax filing must be made to Revenu du Quebec. So just like Quebec that NS number should only work for the provincial tax filing?
The NS0001 account is probably similar to the SK0001 here in Saskatchewan - the account is created when you a register a new business with the provincial business registry system. The provincial system connects to CRA, and creates a new business number (if the business didn’t already have one), then locally (in the provincial registry) assigns an “SK” and mails out a letter to the business.
In Saskatchewan, the account is not used for anything, but the business number can be linked to the business’s PST account, which probably helps CRA and the provincial sales tax department share information. In the last year, the Saskatchewan government has been talking about setting up its own income tax system, separate from CRA - similar to Alberta and Quebec. This hasn’t happened yet, but if it does, I suspect the SK0001 account will be used for that purpose.
In any case, on a T2125, it is always the RT account that is listed. Tax Cycle won’t even let you change those characters. The 9-digit business number should not change.
If you haven’t done so already, consider claiming moving expenses for possible use against business income in the new location in the following year(s). It can be done, and failing to do it would, in my view, be a disservice to the client.
This doesn’t impact anything. Keep using the RT account number on the T2125. The NS number is just what Service NS gives out to new businesses. Your client’s business isn’t new but it’s new to NS so they issued your client a business number that is the same as the CRA BN. When you register a business or incorporate in NS, you automatically get a CRA BN whether you need one (in the case of a sole-prop making less than $30k and not paying any employees) or not.
