Canadian located servers hosting a non-resident business’ website for trading will not trigger a permanent establishment. A web site is not tangible property and does not have a physical presence in Canada. However, if you own the server, it is tangible property – a physical location in Canada – and forms a permanent establishment.
Electronic services liable to Canadian GST include: downloads of music, games, software, app’s or subscriptions to websites. Application hosting and data warehousing. Telecoms services.
A number of Canadian provinces do levy local sales tax on non-resident providers of digital services.
