Crowcery
Both chains print one of two codes after each price: GP means the item was taxed, N means it was not. The surprise is in the first letter. The G in GP does not stand for GST, and the proof is printed on the receipts themselves.
How confident are we here? This page rests on 21 Shoppers Drug Mart receipts, 20 of them from Nova Scotia and one from Saskatchewan, plus 7 Giant Tiger receipts, six of which come from a single store in Bedford, Nova Scotia. That is a thin and lopsided sample. The Nova Scotia detail is well grounded and the arithmetic below reconciles to the cent, but the Saskatchewan section rests on one receipt, and neither chain publishes what its codes stand for. Treat this as a careful reading of real receipts, not an official key, and send us anything that contradicts it at support@crowcery.com.
GP marks an item as a taxable purchase. It is generally read as "general purchase", and that reading fits the evidence: it says the item is a general taxable purchase, not which tax was charged on it.
That distinction sounds pedantic until you compare two receipts from different provinces. The same GP flag draws HST in Nova Scotia and GST plus PST in Saskatchewan. The code marks the item; the province decides which taxes land on it.
So if you have been reading the G as "GST", it will mislead you in exactly the provinces where there is no separate GST line to find.
N means no tax was charged, which at these two chains covers basic groceries exactly as it does at a supermarket. Bread, eggs, milk, fresh produce, most cookies and snacks that count as basic groceries. Why some groceries are taxed and others are not is a rule set of its own.
At Shoppers there is a second form: prescriptions print N followed by an
X. Prescriptions are not taxed, and the receipt shows only the prescription number,
never the name of the medication.
Each item line carries the name, then the unit price, then the tax flag, then the line total, and sometimes a trailing letter:
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| The first number | Unit price, what one of them costs. |
| GP or N | The tax flag. This is the one that decides whether you paid tax. |
| The second number | Line total, unit price times quantity. |
| Trailing S | A sale marker: the item was on promotion. It has nothing to do with tax, and an item can be N ... S just as easily as GP ... S. |
2 X prefix | Quantity. The line total is already multiplied out. |
Discount lines print underneath the item they modify, as Manager Coupon 25.0% (was
$9.99) or Store Coupon 50.0%. The price on the item line is what you actually
paid, so the discount is already applied when you check the tax.
Two GP items on this one, and everything else is basic groceries:
Add the GP lines only: $7.58 plus $26.19 is $33.77. Nova Scotia's HST rate is 14%, and 33.77 × 0.14 = 4.7278, which prints as $4.73. That is the tax line, to the cent. The $28.58 of N items contributed nothing.
This is the receipt that settles what the G means:
The GP base is $6.99 plus $2.00, or $8.99. Then 8.99 × 5% = 0.4495, printing as $0.45, and 8.99 × 6% = 0.5394, printing as $0.54. Both taxes are calculated on the same GP base.
One flag, two separate taxes. If GP meant GST, the PST line would have nothing to stand on.
Giant Tiger puts more on the line, and the tax flag sits at the end of the text rather than after the price:
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| Leading digits | The product number. |
| Middle text | The item name, truncated to fit. Decoding the abbreviations. |
| Single digit before the flag | A department number (9 for grocery, 5 for apparel, and so on). It is not part of the tax code, and it is the piece people most often misread as one. |
| GP or N | The tax flag, same meaning as at Shoppers. |
| Sub-lines | (was $3.28) is informational only; the price charged is on the item line. A Buy 3 for $10.00 line carries a real adjustment and reduces what you pay. |
Four GP items, three of them in a Buy 3 promotion:
The three apparel items are $4.00 each but the promotion takes off $0.66, $0.67 and $0.67, so they cost $3.34, $3.33 and $3.33. With the $2.47 tissue that is a GP base of $12.47, and 12.47 × 0.14 = 1.7458, printing as $1.75.
Worth noticing: the discount comes off before the tax. You are taxed on what you actually paid, not on the shelf price.
The number in the header, printed as GST #801404484 or GTS
#717854491, is the store's federal business registration number. Every registered
business has one and it appears on the receipt regardless of which taxes that province charges.
It tells you nothing about what you paid on this trip. The tax lines above the total are the
only place that is answered.
Some provinces, including Nova Scotia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island, take the provincial portion off certain categories at the till, so you pay only the 5% federal part on a child's coat or a book. Other chains print a distinct code on those lines.
We do not know what Shoppers or Giant Tiger print in that case, because no receipt in our collection has one of those items on it. Rather than guess at a letter, we are saying so. If you have a Shoppers or Giant Tiger receipt from Nova Scotia, Ontario or PEI with children's clothing, diapers or a book on it, that is exactly the receipt we are missing: support@crowcery.com.
Available in Canada; English-language receipts; not offered in Quebec. Or try the read-only demo first, no signup needed.
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