Gig Worker Taxes in Canada: Delivery, Rideshare and App-Based Work

App-based gig work (driving riders, delivering food or groceries, doing tasks booked through an app, freelancing on a marketplace) is self-employment for tax purposes. This page is the overview of how it is taxed across platforms; the platform guides below cover each app’s own statements and details. It is part of the self-employment taxes hub, and first year self-employed covers deadlines and instalments.

Gig workers are self-employed

The CRA’s gig economy page describes the gig economy as short-term contracts, freelance or other temporary work arranged through an online platform or app, and says gig workers “operate as independent contractors and freelancers”. Whether a particular arrangement is employment or self-employment depends on the working relationship; the contractor vs employee guide covers the CRA’s tests.

As a self-employed person nothing is withheld from your payouts. You report the income, pay income tax and CPP on the profit, and handle GST/HST yourself.

Reporting the income

Gig workers resident in Canada report all their self-employment income on Form T2125, Statement of Business or Professional Activities, filed with their return; gross income goes on line 13499 and net income on line 13500. Guide T4002 says Part 3A of the form covers all income, monetary and non-monetary, from sharing-economy activities such as ridesharing, gig-economy activities and peer-to-peer sales. The T2125 guide walks through the form.

Platforms report to the CRA. The Reporting Rules for Digital Platform Operators set out who a platform reports and what it sends:

• Sellers covered include those who take part in sale of goods, rental of real or immovable property (both residential and commercial), rideshare and delivery services, and personal services.
• The services covered, when provided for pay, are renting out real or immovable property, personal services, renting out a means of transport, and prescribed services.
• You are reported if you are registered on the platform for one of these activities, were active in the calendar year (provided the activity or were paid or credited for it), are not an excluded seller, and are resident in Canada (or a partner jurisdiction, for a platform resident in Canada) or rent out property located there.
• If you made fewer than 30 sales of goods in the year and were paid or credited $2,800 or less for them in total, you are an excluded seller and aren't reported.
• Also excluded: an entity seller with more than 2,000 rentals of a property listing in the year, a governmental entity, and an entity whose stock (or a related entity's) is regularly traded on an established securities market.
• The rules apply from the 2024 calendar year; platforms filed their first reports by January 31, 2025.
• 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.
• It also reports identifying information such as your name, primary address, tax identification number and date of birth.
• For rentals of real or immovable property, it also reports the address of each property listing.
• The platform gives you a copy of what it reported by January 31 of the following year.
• The CRA may charge a $500 penalty for each failure to give a platform your tax identification number.
• Your part under the rules ends once you give the platform the information it asks for, but your other tax obligations, such as reporting the income, still apply.

The platform’s year-end summary is a starting point for your own records, not a replacement for them.

More than one business. If you have two or more businesses, you complete a separate T2125 for each.

GST/HST: ride-sharing versus everything else

• Ride-sharing. A self-employed driver who provides commercial ride-sharing is treated as a taxi business for GST/HST: they must register and charge GST/HST on fares from their first ride, even below the $30,000 small-supplier threshold. Delivering food or groceries is not ride-sharing, so the usual small-supplier rule applies to it.
• Delivery, tasks and freelance work. 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.
• Both. The CRA’s gig economy page says that if your combined taxable sales from commercial ride-sharing and gig contracts are $30,000 or less over four calendar quarters, you have to register for, collect and remit GST/HST only on the ride-sharing services (you may choose to collect it on the gig contracts too); above that, you collect and remit it on both.

Once registered, you can claim input tax credits for GST/HST paid on business purchases, prorated in the same way as the expenses you deduct for income tax (for example, the business share of fuel). The GST/HST guide for freelancers covers registering, input tax credits and the quick method.

Expenses

As a rule you can deduct any reasonable current expense you incur to earn the income, and only the business part of a cost that is partly personal. For drivers and couriers the vehicle is a major cost:

When a vehicle is used for both business and personal driving, only the business share of its costs (such as fuel, insurance, licence, maintenance, loan interest, leasing and capital cost allowance) is deductible, worked out from a record of total and business kilometres; the expenses have to be reasonable and backed by receipts, business parking and supplementary business insurance are deductible in full, and passenger vehicles have limits on capital cost allowance, interest and leasing costs. The vehicle expenses guide covers the logbook and Chart A of the T2125.

Other common gig expenses, each limited to the business part:

• Phone. Guide T4002 lets you deduct the percentage of cellphone airtime you use to earn business income (line 9220).
• Supplies. Items used in the work, such as insulated delivery bags.
• Platform fees. The CRA lists costs from using a platform to sell services as an eligible expense.
• Capital items such as a vehicle or e-bike are deducted as capital cost allowance over several years; see the T2125 guide.

The self-employed tax deductions guide has the full list.

CPP and EI

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. For 2026 the CPP rate applies to net earnings between $3,500 and $74,600; the self-employed tax calculator works through the numbers. In Quebec, self-employed residents contribute to the QPP instead. EI is optional for the self-employed and covers only special benefits; first year self-employed explains it.

Worked example: a delivery driver in Ontario

Because nothing is withheld, the tax and CPP for the year are paid with the return. If you are self-employed, or the spouse or common-law partner of someone who is and you lived together at any time in the year, your return for a tax year is due by June 15 of the following year, unless your business expenditures are mainly the cost or capital cost of tax shelter investments (then it is due by April 30); any balance owing is still due by April 30, and paying by then avoids interest and penalties. From the second year on, the CRA may also expect quarterly instalments.

Records

The CRA says to keep your records for six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to (unless it lets you destroy them earlier), at your Canadian residence or place of business unless it allows another place; you are responsible for them even when a bookkeeper or accountant keeps them, and you must make them available to the CRA on request. For gig work that means the platform statements, your logbook of kilometres, fuel and repair receipts, and the phone bills used to work out the business share.

Platform guides

• Uber driver taxes
• DoorDash taxes
• Etsy seller taxes
• Airbnb host taxes

Related guides

• Self-employment taxes hub
• Side hustle taxes
• First year self-employed: what to register, file and pay
• How to complete Form T2125
• Contractor vs employee
• GST/HST on freelance income