Canada: the only one of these countries paying the regulatory operating fee
Etsy charges its regulatory operating fee in nine countries, and Canada is the only non-European one among them. At 0.50% of the item price plus postage, it is a line a Canadian seller pays and an American, German, Australian or Swedish one does not.
Processing is split by destination, which the calculator's single figure does not show. Etsy charges 3% plus CAD 0.25 on domestic orders or orders from the United States, and 4% plus CAD 0.25 on everything else. That wording matters: your largest export market is on the cheaper tier, so a shop selling mostly south of the border pays the domestic rate rather than the international one.
Whether Etsy collects your sales tax depends on a setting in your own account
This is the genuinely distinctive Canadian mechanic, and it has no equivalent in the other countries here.
- With a GST/HST number on file, you include the tax in your listing price and you remit it.
- With no number on file, Etsy charges GST/HST to the buyer at checkout and remits it itself.
Neither is wrong, but they produce different figures on the same sale, and the switch is your registration status rather than anything about the order. QST works the same way for Quebec buyers. British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are different again: Etsy collects PST or RST there regardless of whether you are registered.
The provinces also disagree about tax on Etsy's own fees
Canada sits outside the reverse-charge arrangement Etsy applies across most of the world, where supplying a tax number stops it charging tax on its fees. Here it charges according to your status and your province.
The provincial detail is worth knowing because it is not intuitive: British Columbia charges PST on all seller fees, while Manitoba and Saskatchewan charge PST on none. Two shops with identical sales, one in Vancouver and one in Winnipeg, pay different amounts to Etsy for the same service.
One caveat on every figure of this kind. Etsy publishes no percentage rate for tax on its own fees, anywhere, for any country. Its fee schedule says only that the rate "may vary" and that the charge depends on where you are located. Any rate you see quoted, here or elsewhere, comes from the tax authority rather than from Etsy, so check it against the CRA or Revenu Québec rather than against a marketplace help page.