Crowcery
Every price on a Walmart Canada receipt ends with a single capital letter: D, J, A, Z, Y, G, H or, west of Ontario, E and C. They are tax class codes, and two of them mean the opposite of what most people guess. Here is the decode, verified by recomputing the printed tax totals on real receipts: the HST provinces first, then BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where the same letters shift meaning.
J means the item was taxed at the full rate; D means it was not taxed. The rest of the alphabet:
| Letter | What it means |
|---|---|
| D | Zero-rated basic groceries: produce, bread, dairy, meat, staples. No tax. The most common letter on a grocery run. |
| J | Fully taxable at your province's rate (HST here). Snacks, candy, batteries, adult clothing, eco fees. |
| A | Also fully taxable. A second class (housewares, seasonal, chocolate on the receipts we checked) that Walmart taxes into the same HST line as J. |
| Z and Y | Children's clothing, taxed at only the 5% federal portion. See below. |
| G | GST only, 5%. |
| H | The trap: at Walmart, H is not the HST marker. On receipts we checked it appears on bottle deposits and assorted snack items whose amounts do not feed the printed HST total. |
A mock-up assembled from real receipt lines (Nova Scotia, 14% HST; identifying details altered). Watch how the letters, not the item types, drive the two tax lines:
Walmart does not print one tax line per letter. It prints one line per rate, and every letter charged at that rate sums into it:
The HST 14% line covers J and A together: $2.28 + $14.97 (J) plus $4.99 + $3.74 (A) is $25.98, and 14% of that is the printed $3.64.
The GST 5% line covers the 5% letters, here Z and Y: $5.00 + $1.00 = $6.00, and 5% of that is the printed $0.30. So if you try to check the math with only one letter's items, the numbers will not add up; group the letters by rate first.
And the H items ($0.75 fruit snacks, $0.10 deposit) appear in neither tax line.
In Nova Scotia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island, children's clothing gets a point-of-sale rebate of the provincial part of the HST: the store charges only the 5% federal portion at the till. That is what Z and Y mark. A kids' t-shirt (Z) is taxed at 5% while an adult pair of pants on the same receipt is J at the full rate. New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador have no such rebate, so do not expect Z/Y pricing to work the same there.
On Loblaws-family receipts H famously means "HST was charged" (see the Superstore tax codes guide). Walmart uses the same letter for something else entirely: on the Atlantic Canada receipts we audited, H sits on bottle deposits and various snack items, and those amounts do not feed the printed HST total. If you carry the Loblaws rule into a Walmart receipt, your math breaks. On a Walmart receipt in an HST province, the taxed letters are J and A (full rate) and Z, Y and G (5%). West of Ontario, H is simply untaxed (next section).
The same letters, but without HST the taxed ones shift: J is GST only and E is GST plus PST, while D and H stay untaxed. Instead of one HST line, a western Walmart receipt prints a GST 5.0000 % line and, in BC, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, a PST line at the provincial rate (Alberta has no PST, so only the GST line). Each letter feeds a different combination of them:
| Letter | West of Ontario |
|---|---|
| D | Untaxed. Basic groceries, as everywhere. |
| H | Untaxed as well on the receipts we checked (snack and instant-noodle items in BC). Same trap as in the east: H is not a tax marker. |
| J | GST only. In Alberta, which has no provincial sales tax, J is the everyday taxable letter (every taxed item on the five Alberta receipts). In a PST province it can only mean GST without PST; we have seen that once, on children's clothing in Saskatchewan, and not at all on the BC or Manitoba receipts. |
| E | GST plus PST. Batteries, laundry detergent, toys, sunglasses: the fully taxable class. E does not appear on Atlantic receipts at all. |
| A | The plastic-bag charge (5 cents, GST only, on the Alberta receipts). It joins the GST line like J. |
| C | Seen once, in Saskatchewan: a hot rotisserie chicken, and both the GST and the PST line included it, so GST plus PST on that item. One receipt, so treat it as a first sighting rather than a rule. |
| Province | GST | PST | GST + PST on an E item |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alberta | 5% | none | No E seen on the Alberta receipts; taxed items are J at 5% |
| British Columbia | 5% | 7% | 12% |
| Saskatchewan | 5% | 6% | 11% |
| Manitoba | 5% | 7% (called RST) | 12% |
A British Columbia example. A mock-up from a Richmond, BC receipt (identifying details altered). Only the two E items feed either tax line:
The E items are $11.47 + $7.77 = $19.24. GST at 5% is $0.96 and PST at 7% is $1.35, exactly the two printed lines. The H items ($5.98 twice) and the D items ($4.65, $8.20) feed neither. If you had read H as "taxed", your GST would come out at $1.56 and nothing would reconcile.
An Alberta example. A Calgary receipt: no provincial sales tax, so J carries the whole story, and the till re-totals when a bag is added after the first total:
5% of $81.94 is $4.10; with the 5-cent bag (A) the base is $81.99 and 5% still rounds to $4.10, so the second total is exactly 5 cents higher. The bag joins the GST line, it is not tax-free.
Saskatchewan and Manitoba follow the BC pattern with their own PST rate. On a 2013 Regina receipt, children's clothing was J ($89.00, GST only) and one other item was E ($5.00): the GST line was 5% of both ($4.70) and the PST line was PST of the E item alone (at the 5% rate of the day, $0.25). On a 2020 Manitoba receipt, GST $2.14 and PST $3.00 were 5% and 7% of the E items ($42.88) with $56.76 of D untaxed.
Group the items by letter, sum each group, apply your province's rate to the taxable groups, and compare against the printed tax lines. If a group is off by exactly one item, look for a letter you misread; the letters are printed tight against the price. The rest of the receipt's format (the ST#/OP#/TE#/TR# header, repeated lines for quantity, month-first dates) is covered in the Walmart receipt anatomy guide.
Available in Canada; English-language receipts; not offered in Quebec. Or try the read-only demo first, no signup needed.
Which groceries are taxed in Canada, and why
How to read a Walmart Canada receipt
Costco receipt tax codes (H, G)
Superstore & Loblaws tax codes (H, MRJ, HMRJ)
Grocery receipt discounts and promo math
Receipt tax code letters, every chain (GP, MRJ, C, T and more)