DoorDash Tax Guide Canada: What Dashers Owe and How to File

DoorDash’s Canadian Dasher page describes Dashers as independent contractors who decide when, where and how much they deliver. For tax purposes that makes delivery income self-employment income, with your own expenses to claim, CPP contributions to pay and, past a certain level of sales, GST/HST to collect. This guide covers each step. It is part of the self-employed taxes hub; for how DoorDash pay works and what you need to start, see how to make money with DoorDash.

Delivery income is self-employment income

The CRA’s gig economy guidance names food delivery apps such as Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes among gig platforms and says gig workers resident in Canada must report and pay tax on all their self-employment income. In practice that means:

• Income: you report your delivery income and expenses on Form T2125, Statement of Business or Professional Activities, and carry the result to lines 13499 and 13500 of your return.
• CPP: the CRA says self-employed people pay both the employer and employee parts of their CPP contributions, on Schedule 8; the self-employed tax calculator explains which part is deducted and which earns a credit.

What DoorDash reports to the CRA

Under the Reporting Rules for Digital Platform Operators in Part XX of the Income Tax Act, platforms that let sellers sell goods or provide services such as rentals, rideshare and delivery report each reportable seller's identity and earnings to the CRA every year, starting with the 2024 calendar year, and give the seller a copy by January 31 of the following year. A seller with fewer than 30 sales of goods totalling $2,800 or less in the year isn't reported. Being reported, or not, doesn't change the seller's own tax obligations. Rideshare and delivery services are among the activities the CRA lists as covered (reporting rules for digital platforms). For each reportable seller, the platform reports the total paid or credited to you and any fees, commissions or taxes the platform withheld or charged, broken down by calendar quarter. The CRA may charge a $500 penalty for each failure to give a platform your tax identification number.

The platform’s report doesn’t replace your own records. Your income is everything you earned in the year, whether or not a copy arrives, and the earnings history in the Dasher app is the starting point for your own tally.

Deductible expenses

You can deduct reasonable business expenses you incur to earn the delivery income. For couriers who drive, the CRA’s rule for a vehicle used both for deliveries and personally is:

The business share comes from your logbook: business kilometres divided by total kilometres for the year. Vehicle expenses for the self-employed covers what the logbook needs to show and the limits on passenger vehicles.

Capital cost allowance (CCA) on a car you own is claimed separately, at the same business share. Cars go in Class 10 (30%), or Class 10.1 for a passenger vehicle that costs more than the year’s ceiling, and zero-emission passenger vehicles in Class 54 (30%); the vehicle expenses guide explains which class applies and the cost ceilings.

Other costs follow the same principle: the business share of your phone plan, and the full cost of things you use only for deliveries, such as insulated bags. The CRA lists costs from using a platform to sell services among the expenses gig workers can claim. A home workspace is deductible only if it meets the CRA’s business-use-of-home conditions, which the home office deduction guide explains.

GST/HST for DoorDash couriers

Food delivery is not commercial ride-sharing, so the general small-supplier rule applies:

You have to register for the GST/HST once you make taxable sales in Canada and are no longer a small supplier: that happens when your taxable sales go over $30,000 in a single calendar quarter (register from that sale) or over the last 4 consecutive calendar quarters (by the end of the month after that quarter); below that you can register voluntarily. The total isn’t limited to DoorDash: what counts toward it is set out in the GST/HST guide for freelancers.

If you also drive passengers, ride-sharing has its own rule: you must register for those fares from the start. The CRA says that when your combined taxable sales from ride-sharing and other work total less than $30,000 over four calendar quarters, you have to charge GST/HST only on the ride-sharing fares (you can choose to extend it to the rest); above that, you charge it on both. The Uber driver tax guide covers ride-sharing, and GST/HST on freelance income covers registering, filing and input tax credits.

CPP and income tax on your profit

You contribute to the CPP if you are over 18, work in Canada outside Quebec and earn more than $3,500 a year; contributions stop when you turn 70, and from 65 someone already receiving a CPP or QPP retirement pension can choose to stop. Self-employed people pay both the employee and the employer share of CPP contributions on their net business income (11.90% above the basic exemption up to the first earnings ceiling, plus 8% CPP2 between the first and second ceilings), worked out on Schedule 8 and paid with the income tax return. A non-refundable tax credit is claimed on half of the base contributions, and the other half, the first additional contributions and all CPP2 contributions are deducted from income. Current rates are on CPP contribution rates.

For your own figures, the self-employed tax calculator runs the same calculation for any income and province.

Paying and filing

Because you are paid as a contractor rather than through a payroll, the income tax and CPP on your profit are paid with your return. If you owe enough at filing time, the CRA can ask you to pay by instalments during the following year; first-time self-employed taxes explains the threshold, the instalment dates and the self-employed filing deadline.

Related guides

• Self-employed taxes hub
• Gig worker taxes in Canada
• Self-employed tax deductions in Canada
• Vehicle expenses for the self-employed
• Uber driver tax guide
• How to make money with DoorDash in Canada