Association DNA Showcases Canadian Tax Enhancements

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
- Benjamin Franklin, 1789

When you run a Canadian association you are almost certainly to have an automatic partner: the taxman. Whether you like it or not, you are obliged to correctly collect and remit taxes in accordance with rules that span hundreds of pages and can be very difficult to understand.

This particularly affects national associations that often need to charge multiple tax rates depending on what is being sold, where it is sold and where the purchaser lives. National memberships can be set to the province of the association's head office, while products sold can have tax rates based on the warehouse location and other items, like chapter dues, can be based on the province of the purchaser.

To address this challenging yet extremely important requirement, we have always had a robust tax module in our Association DNA, our association management system.

Designed to integrate with the most popular, mainstream accounting packages, Association DNA has always had the ability to define taxes based on different scenarios and rules. Each accounting item can have either a fixed tax (e.g. every purchaser pays Ontario tax) or a variable tax based on the purchaser's province.

The capabilities of our software recently got a big boost with an even deeper refinement: Associations running national conferences can now set a custom tax rate for each province.

This new enhancement was designed to address tax rules that specifically apply to Quebec, where provincial residents need to pay the QST plus GST when purchasing event tickets, while purchasers from all other provinces can have a custom rate (typically GST only).

This new feature is yet another demonstration of our commitment to building the best AMS system in our class so that our association clients are empowered to do more.