An overview by Borden Ladner Gervais
On March 10, 2023, the British Columbia Supreme Court released its decision that provincial sales tax (PST) does not apply to certain cloud computing services under the Provincial Sales Tax Act. In Hootsuite Inc. v British Columbia, the court differentiated between “software” and “software programs”, stating that the cloud computing services comprised opaque software such that users cannot interact with it to create an output.
The court advised that purchasers should assess the fundamental nature of these transactions to determine whether they are exempt from PST. Tanner Shapka, Bobby B. Solhi and Beverly Gilbert of our Canadian firm, Borden Ladner Gervais, discuss the ruling and its implications in greater depth.
Read more here.
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