For Canadian Uber and Lyft Drivers
Ride-share driving is a taxi business in the CRA's eyes, and the $30,000 small-supplier threshold never applied to it. NorthOS reads your Uber and Lyft statements, keeps the kilometre records behind T2125 Line 9281, and sorts every driving cost to its CRA line.
What NorthOS tracks for you
The rule in plain English
A self-employed ride-share driver in Canada must register for GST/HST from the first fare, regardless of how much they earn. The CRA classifies commercial ride-sharing as a taxi business, and the $30,000 small-supplier threshold that covers most self-employed Canadians does not apply to it. The rule took effect on July 1, 2017, when the definition of a taxi business was widened to include transporting passengers for fares by motor vehicle within a municipality where the ride is arranged through an electronic platform, such as a mobile app. The vehicle must seat no more than the driver and eight passengers. Food delivery is different: Uber Eats, DoorDash, SkipTheDishes and Instacart carry parcels rather than passengers, so delivery-only work keeps the $30,000 threshold.
Sources: CRA Info Sheet GI-196, GST/HST and Commercial Ride-sharing Services, and guide RC4022, pages 12 and 13.
The internet is full of advice about staying under $30,000. That advice does not apply to a ride-share driver, who registers from the first fare. GST you never charged is still GST you owe, and it comes out of earnings you have already spent.
The car is a driver's largest deduction, and the CRA wants business kilometres, total kilometres, and the odometer at the start and end of the year behind it. Without those numbers there is no business-use fraction, and the whole Line 9281 claim has nothing to stand on.
Weekly summaries, monthly tax summaries, fuel receipts, a car wash here and there. Retyping a year of it in April is how drivers lose deductions. NorthOS reads the statement and files the receipt as each one arrives.
What lands in the bank is fares minus the platform's cut. The CRA wants gross fares on Line 8000 and the service fee claimed as its own expense. Reporting the payout instead understates the revenue figure the platform also reports about you.
The cents-per-kilometre figure is what an employer pays an employee. A self-employed driver claims actual receipted costs times the business-use fraction. A driver who logs kilometres but bins the fuel receipts has kept the numerator and thrown away the amount it multiplies.
Ride-share pays out fast, which makes it easy to spend the GST/HST and income tax along with it. NorthOS estimates what is owed as you log income and shows what is actually yours.
NorthOS reads three driver documents: the Uber monthly tax summary for rides, the Lyft weekly summary, and the Lyft quarterly earnings summary. Send the PDF to your NorthOS receipts email address, or drop it in your connected Google Drive receipts folder.
Fares, bonuses and tips, recorded with the GST/HST shown on the statement kept separate from the revenue.
The cut Uber or Lyft took, booked as its own deduction, with the GST/HST inside it carried as an input tax credit.
The distance printed on the statement, logged as a mileage entry that feeds the Chart A business-use fraction.
Nothing posts without your approval. Every imported row lands in your review queue first. The figures have to reconcile to the totals printed on the statement, and when they do not, NorthOS refuses the import and says so rather than booking a guess. Importing the same period twice is caught and blocked. One difference worth knowing: the Uber monthly summary and the Lyft quarterly summary both state gross fares, while the Lyft weekly summary states only what Lyft paid out after its cut, so NorthOS flags a weekly import and points you to the quarterly summary in the Lyft Tax Centre.
Log business kilometres per trip and record your year-start and year-end odometer. NorthOS builds the business-use fraction the CRA Chart A calculation needs, applies it to your real vehicle costs, and exports a mileage logbook as a CSV or a PDF you can hand to a reviewer.
Every NorthOS account gets its own receipts email address. Forward an Uber or Lyft statement and it is read as income. Forward a fuel or repair receipt and North AI reads it and files it to the right T2125 line. A connected Google Drive folder works the same way.
NorthOS records the GST/HST on each fare separately from the revenue, tracks the input tax credits on what you buy, and builds the GST34 remittance summary. Filing becomes a download rather than a night of arithmetic.
A workbook with a T2125 summary by CRA line number, the detailed ledger behind every figure, your capital cost allowance schedule, and the GST34 worksheet for whichever method you file under. Hand it to an accountant or type it into your return.
Connect the account your payouts land in and the card you buy fuel with, and NorthOS brings the transactions in and sorts them to the right T2125 line. The connection is read-only, and nothing reaches your books until you approve it.
The NorthOS app is on the App Store and Google Play. Snap a fuel receipt at the pump, log a trip, or check what you owe while you wait for the next ping. Two things stay on the web: connecting a bank, and importing a CSV.
The cost of earning a fare is deductible, but only if it is tracked and lands on the right line of your T2125. Here is where a driver's money actually goes.
Line references follow the CRA T4002 guide. See our own T2125 line-by-line breakdown for every line.
The big one. Chart A on the T2125 totals your fuel and oil, insurance, licence and registration, maintenance and repairs, loan interest, leasing, and electricity for a zero-emission vehicle, then multiplies that total by business kilometres divided by total kilometres. Business parking and supplementary business insurance are added at full value.
Read the full guideThe vehicle itself is not deducted all at once. It is claimed over time as capital cost allowance, at your business-use percentage. A passenger vehicle bought in 2025 for more than $38,000 before tax sits in Class 10.1, where the capital cost is capped at $38,000 plus GST/HST or PST.
The cut the platform takes is a real business expense, and the GST/HST inside it is an input tax credit if you are on the Standard Method. Netting the fee out of your income instead is the common shortcut, and it costs you the credit and understates your gross revenue.
Read the full guideThe business share of the phone the driver app runs on, plus the data plan behind it. Keep the monthly statements that support the percentage you claim.
A municipal vehicle-for-hire licence, a provincial or city driver permit, police record checks, and the medical certificate some municipalities require. These recur and are easy to forget by April.
Water and mints for passengers, phone mounts and chargers, cleaning supplies, and floor mats. Small individually, and they add up over a year of driving.
One trap worth naming: fuel, insurance, repairs, licence and registration, and loan interest do not each get their own line. They are all inputs to the Chart A calculation that resolves to Line 9281. Claiming them twice is the error a reviewer spots fastest.
A ride-share driver is registered effective the day of the first fare, and the CRA asks for the application before the thirtieth day after that day. How you remit afterwards is a real choice, and it is worth money. The Standard Method claims back the actual GST/HST you pay on fuel, repairs, cleaning and the car itself as input tax credits. The Quick Method remits a flat percentage of revenue instead, which is 3.6 percent for a driver whose base and rides are both in a 5 percent GST province, and 8.8 percent for an Ontario driver on Ontario rides, plus a 1 percent credit on the first $30,000 of eligible supplies each year.
The catch matters more for drivers than for most trades. Under the Quick Method the CRA allows input tax credits only on a narrow set of purchases, and vehicles are on that list while fuel, repairs and cleaning are not. A driver burning a tank a day may keep more on the Standard Method. NorthOS supports both and never elects one for you, because the election belongs to the filer.
New to this? Start with how to register for GST/HST, then read the CRA's Quick Method guide (RC4058).
If you carry passengers for fares booked through an app, the same CRA rules reach you. A few of the drivers NorthOS is built for:
Three steps to books that keep up with your shifts.
Pick Physical Service in onboarding, which names ride-share and driving directly, then set your industry to Taxi and rideshare driving in Settings so NorthOS applies the driving rules. Add your year-start odometer while you are there. About 3 minutes.
Forward your Uber or Lyft statement to your NorthOS receipts address and it is read as income, fees and kilometres. Snap fuel and repair receipts from the phone, connect the bank account your payouts land in, and approve what comes in from your review queue.
Download your T2125 workbook with the Line 9281 vehicle calculation, your GST34 summary, and a CRA-format mileage logbook. Everything traces back to a statement or a receipt.
Every kilometre you drive with a passenger is worth money on T2125 Line 9281, but only if it sits in a log the CRA will accept: date, destination, purpose, kilometres, and the odometer at each end of the year. Grab the template and start today, whatever you use to keep books.
Get the free mileage log templatePlenty of drivers run both. Delivery work on Uber Eats, DoorDash, SkipTheDishes or Instacart keeps the $30,000 small-supplier threshold, because it moves parcels rather than passengers. Ride-share work does not. Once you are registered for the ride-share side, that registration and its consequences follow you, so the mixed case is worth understanding before you file rather than after.
Read the delivery vs ride-share GST rulesWorks alongside your accountant, not instead of one.
Why ride-share registers from trip one and delivery keeps the $30,000 threshold.
How Line 9281, the business-use fraction, and your logbook fit together.
The 5 percent GST version of the rules, with the Alberta specifics.
What goes in each GST34 box, and when the return is due.
Every expense line on the form every Canadian sole proprietor files.
The broader guide for Canadian service businesses that drive to the work.
For Ontario ride-share drivers
This page is for informational purposes only and is not tax advice. Figures and rules are drawn from CRA Info Sheet GI-196 and guides RC4022, RC4058 and T4002 for the 2025 tax year. Rules change and individual circumstances differ, so confirm your own position with the CRA or a qualified accountant.
Clean, CRA-ready records for self-employed Canadian ride-share drivers.
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