Crowcery
Almost every Canadian grocery and drugstore receipt prints a short code after each price: GP, MRJ, HMRJ, J, H, C, T. They all answer the same question, whether sales tax was charged on that line, but every chain uses its own alphabet. This page is the lookup table; the per-chain guides go deeper.
| You see | Where | It means |
|---|---|---|
| GP / N | Shoppers Drug Mart, Giant Tiger | GP: tax was charged. N: not taxed. Details |
| H, HMRJ, HQ / MRJ, RQ | Superstore, Loblaws, No Frills, Zehrs, Valu-mart, Atlantic Superstore | An H in the cluster: tax was charged. No H: not taxed. The other letters are internal flags. Details |
| J, A, Z, Y, G, E, C / D | Walmart Canada | J and A: taxed. Z and Y: children's clothing, 5% only. G: GST. E: GST and PST (west). C: one Saskatchewan sighting, GST and PST. D: not taxed. Details |
| H, G, GP / nothing | Costco | H: HST charged. G: GST charged. GP: GST and PST (west). No letter: not taxed. Y / N: seen on two Ontario receipts from the costco.ca online view (Y taxed, N not). Details |
| 1C / C | Sobeys, FreshCo | 1C: tax was charged. C alone: not taxed. Details |
| BC, GR, R / C | Safeway (BC, Saskatchewan) | BC: GST and PST. GR: GST only (environment fees). R: deposit. C alone: not taxed. Details |
| T / N | Dollar Tree | T: taxed. N: not taxed. Details |
| H, FP / nothing | Dollarama | H: HST charged. FP: GST and PST, seen on one British Columbia receipt. No letter: not taxed (Nova Scotia and Ontario; not yet seen in BC). Details |
| H / nothing | Metro, Food Basics | H: taxed. No letter: not taxed. Details |
| HC | Not a code we have seen printed | What you are probably looking at |
How we know: these meanings come from checking the tax math on real receipts, chain by chain, province by province. Where a chain does not publish what a letter stands for, the page says so rather than guessing.
How confident are we here? This section is built from about 20 Shoppers Drug Mart receipts, all from Nova Scotia except one from Saskatchewan, and 7 Giant Tiger receipts, six of them from a single store in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Codes and layouts can differ by province, and we have not seen enough receipts from elsewhere to promise they do not. Treat the Nova Scotia detail as well grounded and anything beyond it as a best guess. Giant Tiger especially is close to a single-store sample: what we describe is what those receipts showed, and it may not generalise.
GP means the item was taxed. It is the code Shoppers Drug Mart (and Giant Tiger, which prints the same two codes on the receipts we have seen) puts on taxable purchases; it is generally read as "general purchase". The other code on those receipts is N: not taxed, which covers basic groceries and, at Shoppers, prescriptions (printed as N X).
Two things that confuse people on a Shoppers receipt:
| What you see | What it is |
|---|---|
PUREX LIQ LAUN 6.99 GP 6.99 S |
The middle code (GP) is the tax flag. The trailing S is a sale marker
(the item was on promotion); it has nothing to do with tax. An item can be N ... S. |
OREO THINS 2.50 N 2.50 S |
Not taxed (basic grocery), on sale. |
Check it yourself: add up the GP lines only and multiply by your province's rate (13% HST in
Ontario, 14% in Nova Scotia, 15% in the other Atlantic provinces; 5% GST plus your PST in the
west). That is the tax line at the bottom, to the cent. On a Saskatoon Shoppers receipt with
two GP items totalling $8.99, the footer reads 5.0% GST 0.45 and
6.0% PST 0.54: both are exactly that $8.99 base.
MRJ means no tax was charged; HMRJ means tax was charged. These clusters are the Loblaws family's codes (Real Canadian Superstore, Loblaws, No Frills, Zehrs, Valu-mart, Atlantic Superstore). Only one letter in the cluster affects what you pay:
One honest gap: we have receipts from Atlantic Superstore, Real Canadian Superstore, No Frills, Loblaws and Zehrs, but none from a Valu-mart. Valu-mart is listed because the banners share one point-of-sale system and one receipt format, not because we have checked one.
| Cluster | Taxed? |
|---|---|
| HMRJ, HQ, HMR, H (any cluster containing an H) | Yes, HST (Ontario and the Atlantic provinces). |
| MRJ, RQ, Q, MR, KR (no H) | No. Most basic groceries. |
| GMRJ, GPMRJ, GPRQ (western provinces) | G: GST charged. P: PST charged too. Western Loblaws receipts print G and P instead of H because the taxes are separate there. |
The letters M, R, J, Q and K are Loblaws-internal product classification flags. The chain does not publish what they stand for, they do not change the price, and the tax math on hundreds of receipts confirms they are not tax markers: a $3.29 bread flagged MRJ is never in the HST base, a $2.50 lemonade flagged HMRJ always is. Full walkthrough with a worked receipt: Superstore and Loblaws tax codes.
J means the item was taxed at the full rate: HST in the HST provinces, GST (with the provincial tax on a separate E code) in the west. Walmart Canada prints a single letter after the price:
| Letter | Meaning |
|---|---|
| D | Zero-rated basic groceries. Not taxed. The most common letter on a grocery run. |
| J | Taxed at the full rate (HST; GST in the west). |
| A | Also taxed at the full rate (batteries, chocolate, miscellaneous, the plastic bag). |
| Z, Y | Children's clothing: 5% only, because the provincial part of the HST is rebated at the till in Nova Scotia, Ontario and PEI. |
| G | GST charged. |
| E | Western provinces: GST and PST both charged (laundry detergent, bottled water, non-grocery items). Province by province, with a reconciled BC receipt: the western section of the Walmart guide. |
| C | Seen once, on a 2026 Saskatchewan receipt: a hot rotisserie chicken, included in both the GST and the PST line. One sighting, not a rule. |
| H | Not HST. Bottle deposits and a few snack lines carry it and are not in the tax base. |
One tax line can cover several letters: an Ontario receipt's HST 13% is 13% of the
J lines plus the A lines together. Worked examples, including the children's-clothing case:
Walmart Canada receipt tax codes.
H means HST was charged on that line. Costco prints the flag at the end of the item name, and most grocery lines carry nothing at all (zero-rated):
| Flag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| (nothing) | Not taxed. |
| H | HST charged (Atlantic provinces, Ontario). |
| G | GST charged (Alberta, and GST-only items in the west). |
| GP | GST and PST both charged (seen on the one British Columbia Costco receipt in our collection). The flag is simply the list of taxes that applied. |
The footer is where Costco differs from other chains: a combined TAX line above
the total, usually followed by a per-tax breakdown such as P HST 14% and
G GST 5% below it (a short receipt, or a photo that stops at the total, may show
only the combined line). That leading P on the footer line is a footer label, not an item flag.
Details and the BOB count: Costco receipt tax codes.
Y and N come from Costco's website, not the warehouse printer. Across the
13 printed Costco receipts in our collection the only item flags are H, G, GP and no letter
at all. In September 2026 two Ontario receipts came through the app as screenshots of the
receipt view on costco.ca, and that view marks every line: Y on the taxed
items (the combined TAX line was 13% HST of the Y items on both, after their instant rebates)
and N on the untaxed ones, where an Ontario paper receipt would print H and
nothing. The online view also prints its rebates as <coupon> / <parent item
number> or <coupon> /WORD without the TPD word. Two receipts, one
province, so treat the letters as an observation about the website view in Ontario; we have
not seen the view from a GST-only or GST+PST province, and still no Y or N on a paper Costco
receipt.
On its own, C means the item was not taxed at Sobeys, FreshCo and Safeway, which all print the same receipt format. The tax marker is what comes before the C:
A gap worth naming: our reading here comes from Sobeys and Safeway receipts. We have no FreshCo receipt we have actually worked through, so FreshCo is listed because it is an Empire banner printing the same format, not because we have checked one.
| You see | Where | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1C | Sobeys, FreshCo (HST provinces) | Taxed. The 1 is the tax class; the receipt's tax line reads HST 1 14% (or 13%, 15%). |
| C | all of them | Not taxed. |
| BC | Safeway (BC, Saskatchewan) | Both taxes, GST and PST. The B is the flag; the C is the same column marker. |
| GR | Safeway | GST only: the environmental handling fee on drinks (+EHC). |
| R | Safeway | Bottle deposit, not taxed. |
A Regina Safeway receipt makes the split visible: the 5% GST line is 5% of the BC
items plus the GR fees, while the 6% PST line is 6% of the BC items alone.
| Chain | Taxed | Not taxed |
|---|---|---|
| Dollar Tree | T (printed right after the price, 1.75T) | N |
| Dollarama | H; in British Columbia FP (both GST and PST, with separate GST and PST footer lines; one receipt) | no letter (not yet seen in British Columbia) |
| Metro, Food Basics (Ontario) | H; prepared food such as a rotisserie chicken prints RF and its tax is split over two footer lines, 5% and 8% (the two halves of Ontario's 13% HST) | no letter |
| Lawtons Drugs | H | no letter |
What sits behind this table: 7 Dollar Tree receipts, all from one Bedford, Nova Scotia store; 8 Dollarama receipts from four Nova Scotia stores, plus one each from Ontario and British Columbia; 6 Lawtons receipts from two Nova Scotia stores; 4 Metro receipts (three Ontario, one Quebec) and 4 Food Basics receipts from Ontario. Nova Scotia is heavily over-represented, so treat anything province-specific in this table as unconfirmed elsewhere.
HC is not a code we have seen printed on any Canadian grocery or drugstore receipt, across every chain above. If your receipt is from a Loblaws-family store, you are most likely looking at HQ (taxed) or a squashed HMRJ; on a Sobeys or Safeway receipt, 1C or BC. In every one of those cases the H or the 1 or the B is what tells you tax was charged. If you have a receipt that really does print HC, we would like to see it.
Each chain's point-of-sale system invented its own flags, so H is "taxed" at Loblaws, Costco and Dollarama but "not HST" at Walmart, and C is "not taxed" at Sobeys but part of "both taxes" at Safeway. What does not vary is the law underneath: basic groceries (produce, meat, dairy, bread, eggs, staples) are zero-rated everywhere in Canada, and pop, candy, snacks, prepared food and household goods are taxed. The rate depends on the province: one HST line in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces, separate GST and PST lines in BC, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, GST only in Alberta and the territories. The flag tells you which lines were taxed; the tax line at the bottom tells you at what rate.
Available in Canada; English-language receipts; not offered in Quebec. Or try the read-only demo first, no signup needed.
Does your grocery receipt add up? How to check it
How long should you keep a grocery receipt?
Scene+ points on your Sobeys receipt, explained
PC Optimum points on your receipt, explained
How to read a Dollarama receipt
How to read a Sobeys receipt
Shoppers Drug Mart & Giant Tiger receipt codes (GP and N)
Which groceries are taxed in Canada, and why
Grocery receipt abbreviations decoded (PC, NN, KS, CHKN, BRST)
Superstore and Loblaws tax codes (H, MRJ, HMRJ)
Walmart Canada tax codes (D, J, A, Z, Y, G, H)
Costco tax codes (H, G)
Bottle deposits and eco fees by province
All receipt guides
The Scanning Code of Practice: wrong price at the till