Is Amazon.com already profitable for you?
deal-breaker: expansion adds variance to a working business. It does not rescue a thin one. If US net is unstable, the Canadian dollars come too slowly to fix it.
Four honest questions, the real cost of entry, and the federal law most US sellers don't know about. Thirty minutes to a yes or no.
The fee structure is identical to Amazon.com. The selling tools are identical. The catalog is identical. The country is not.
One. The selling plan is free. A Professional Amazon.com seller adds Canada at no extra plan cost through the North America Unified Account. Amazon charges the lower of USD $39.99 or the sum of per-marketplace fees. You already pay the $39.99. Canada is included.
Two. Bilingual labeling is federal law. The Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act requires prepackaged consumer products sold anywhere in Canada to show identity, net quantity, and key declarations in both English and French on the physical packaging. Country-wide, not a Quebec thing. Quebec layers stricter rules on top via the Charter of the French Language. Note: this is a packaging requirement, not a listing requirement — Amazon shows your listing in whatever language the shopper has selected, no translation needed on the listing side.
Three. Amazon.ca is roughly seven cents on the US dollar. Independent estimates put Canada's Amazon GMV at $10–15B USD versus the US at $190–220B. Plan against that, not the ten-percent figure you'll hear at conferences. A US seller doing $1M a year is realistically modeling $50–80K from Canada in year one, not $100K.
The decision is small. The friction is real.— what this sheet actually tells you
Answer honestly. These are the four that actually move the decision.
If you want to validate Canadian demand before committing to bilingual packaging and a GST number, use Remote Fulfillment with FBA for the first 90 days. Amazon ships your US inventory to Canadian buyers, the buyer is the importer of record, and you spend zero on Canadian infrastructure. Details on the next page.
Amazon Warehousing and Distribution does not extend to Canada at the time of writing. You have two viable paths and one fallback.
Turn on Remote Fulfillment for every eligible SKU on day one. Watch the data for 90 days. The 5–10 SKUs that pull weight on Canadian traffic become your first FBA-CA inbound shipment. Everything else stays on Remote Fulfillment. You never split inventory on a SKU until it earns the right.
The biggest costs are not the obvious ones. The Pro plan is free if you have one for the US. The two real line items are bilingual packaging and the GST/HST setup. Everything else scales with your volume.
| Year 1 line item | Realistic range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Extra Professional plan fee | $0 | NAUA — already covered by US plan |
| CRA Business Number + RM import account + RT GST account | $0 self / $300–$800 with accountant | one-time |
| CARM Client Portal registration | $0 | mandatory since Oct 2024 |
| Bilingual packaging redesign or sticker run | $200–$2,000 per SKU | depends on category and packaging style |
| Inbound freight + customs into Canada | variable | quoted by your freight partner |
| 5% GST recovery on imports | positive cash flow | only if you register for GST/HST |
| Numbers are illustrative templates. Pull live quotes from your packaging vendor, accountant, and freight forwarder before modeling. | ||
If you register for GST/HST, the 5% federal GST you pay at the border on every inbound shipment becomes recoverable through your quarterly or annual return as an input tax credit. The same applies to GST paid on Canadian freight, prep, warehousing, and Amazon fees. On a seller pushing CAD $200K of inventory into Canada annually, that is roughly CAD $10K recovered. The cost of registering is a fraction of that.
Go back to page 02. Count your yeses across the four questions. The score tells you not just whether to expand, but how.
Importing into Canada and registering for GST/HST is mostly paperwork, but it is paperwork written in Canadian tax-speak. jonescosman.com handles non-resident GST/HST registration, importer accounts, and CRA filings for Amazon sellers.