The table fee is the easy one

November 2026 · 15 min read

Every list of card dealer write-offs says the same things, and none of them are wrong. Table fee, gas, meals, sleeves. That list is short, public, and identical for everybody, which is a clue that it is not the hard part. The hard part is that the largest number on a card dealer’s return is not a deduction at all — and it is the one number that cannot be rebuilt in April from a shoebox.

Written for a self-employed dealer in Canada who sells at shows: a sole proprietor, no corporation, cards bought to be sold again. Every rule below is quoted from the Canada Revenue Agency’s own pages, with a link, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

1. The list everybody has

The CRA’s general rule is two sentences long and does most of the work: “as a rule, you can deduct any reasonable current expense you incur to earn income,” and “You cannot claim expenses you incur to buy capital property.” Everything in the table below is an application of those two lines to a weekend behind a table.

Source: CRA, Guide T4002, Chapter 3 — Expenses.

That is the whole famous list. It fits on a napkin, and if it were the difficult part of a dealer’s return nobody would dread the spring. Sections 2 to 5 are the four entries on it that have a rule most people have never read. Section 6 is the part that is not on the list at all.

2. The logbook the CRA actually asks for

“You can deduct only the part of the expenses you paid to earn income,” and the part is worked out from kilometres. The CRA’s own worked example: 27,000 business kilometres ÷ 30,000 total × $7,000 = $6,300. Which means the deduction is really two measurements, and the one people skip is the denominator.

What a logbook has to contain is specific and short:

• For each trip: “the date, destination, purpose, and number of kilometres you drive.”
• “the odometer reading of each vehicle at the start and end of the fiscal period.” This is the denominator, and it is two readings a year.
• A separate record per vehicle, if you use more than one.

There is a shortcut, and it is generous: keep one full year as a base year, and after that a three-month sample can be used to extrapolate the whole year, as long as your business use stays “within the same range (within 10%)” of the base year. A dealer whose show schedule is roughly the same every year is exactly who that was written for.

Parking sits outside all of this. “You can deduct the full amount of parking fees related to your business activities” — and parking is not in the list of motor vehicle expenses at all, which is what makes it full rather than proportional. Venue parking on a show weekend is its own line.

Source: CRA, Guide T4002, Chapter 3 — Motor vehicle expenses.

3. Meals, at half

“The maximum amount you can claim for food, beverages, and entertainment expenses is 50% of the lesser of” the amount you actually spent and “an amount that is reasonable in the circumstances.”

Read that slowly, because there are two limits in it and most summaries only mention one. The lesser of actual and reasonable is chosen first, and then it is halved. So an extravagant dinner is not half-deductible; it is half of whatever the reasonable version of that dinner would have cost. The same 50% applies “to the cost of your meals when you travel or go to a convention, conference, or similar event.”

The CRA lists exceptions to the 50% rule and almost none of them are a card dealer: a business that sells food for compensation, costs you bill through to a client and show on the bill, amounts included in an employee’s income, a staff party (“The limit is six such events per year”), a registered charity’s fundraiser, a temporary work camp. A dealer buying a hall hot dog is in the plain case.

A $14 lunch at the venue is a $7 deduction, which is small enough that people stop writing it down. That is the wrong conclusion to draw. The point of recording it is not the $7 of tax — it is that a weekend’s food is a real cost of that weekend, and a show whose profit you calculate without it is a show you will book again for the wrong reason.

4. “Convention” is a word with a rule attached

There is a specific line in the tax rules for convention expenses, and it is capped: “You can deduct the cost of attending up to two conventions a year.” The convention also has to relate to your business and be “held by a business or professional organization within the geographical area where the organization normally conducts its business” — a limit that “may not apply if an organization from another country sponsors the convention.”

There is a second rule folded into it that is easy to miss. If the organizer feeds you, “subtract $50 from the total convention fee for each day the organizer provides food, beverages, or entertainment.” That $50 a day then moves across to your meal expenses — where, naturally, “The 50% limit applies to the daily $50 amount.”

Now the part that matters to a dealer who does fourteen shows a year. A card show where you rent a table is not obviously a convention in this sense. You are not a delegate attending an event; you are a vendor, and the table is the floor space your business sold from for two days. Those are two different lines on a return with two very different limits — one capped at two a year, one not capped at all.

5. The room your stock lives in

Most dealers’ inventory lives at home, so this one applies to nearly everybody. You can claim business-use-of-home expenses if you meet one of two conditions: the space is your principal place of business, or “you use the space only to earn your business income, and you use it on a regular and ongoing basis to meet your clients, customers, or patients.”

What is claimable: “part of your maintenance costs such as heating, home insurance, electricity, and cleaning materials,” plus “part of your property taxes, mortgage interest and capital cost allowance.” If you rent, “you can deduct the part of the rent and any expenses you incur that relate to the workspace.”

The portion is yours to work out, on “a reasonable basis, such as the area of the workspace divided by the total area of your home.” If the room does double duty, the CRA’s method is hours: count the hours a day you use it for business, divide by 24, and apply that to the area share. And “If you run the business for only part of the week or year, reduce your claim accordingly.”

Then the ceiling, which is the thing to actually remember: the claim “cannot be more than your net income from the business before you deduct these expenses. In other words, you cannot use these expenses to increase or create a business loss.” What you cannot use this year is not lost — it carries forward, under the same conditions and the same rules.

Source: CRA — Business-use-of-home expenses.

6. The biggest number is not a deduction

Add up every expense in section 1 for a working dealer’s year. Table fees, gas, hotels, sleeves, half the lunches. Now compare it to what you paid for the cards you sold. For almost every dealer the second number is several times the first, and it does not appear anywhere on the expense list — because it is not an expense. It is cost of goods sold, and it is subtracted from your revenue before profit exists at all.

To work it out, the CRA asks for exactly three things:

• “the value of your inventory at the start of your fiscal period”
• “the value of your inventory at the end of your fiscal period”
• “the cost of your purchases (net of discounts) for the fiscal period”

For a dealer, those are not three numbers. They are three piles of cards, and all three are the same question asked on different dates: what did each one cost?

The two ways to value it, and why one is a trap for cards

The CRA gives a choice of two methods: “value your entire inventory at its fair market value,” or “value individual items in your inventory at either their FMV or their cost, whichever is less.” Cost, it adds, “also includes any expenses you incur to bring the item to the business location.”

Both roads need cost. The second names it outright. The first looks like an escape from having to know what you paid — and for trading cards specifically it is the worse road, not the easier one. Valuing an entire inventory at fair market value means putting a defensible market price on every card in your cases on the last day of every year, in a market that moves weekly. It also means your closing inventory, and therefore your taxable income, moves with the market whether or not you sold anything.

There is one more line that cuts in the same direction: “Businesses that are adventures or concerns in the nature of trade must value their inventory at cost.” The CRA points to its own interpretation bulletin, IT-459, for what that phrase covers. Whether buying to flip puts you inside it is a question for an accountant — but notice which way an answer can go. It can take the FMV option away. It cannot hand you one that skips cost.

Three smaller rules come with it, and they are the ones that make this a habit rather than an April task. Your opening inventory has to equal last year’s closing inventory. The method has to stay the same from year to year. And unless you run a perpetual inventory system, you do “an actual stock count at the end of each fiscal period.”

Source: CRA, Guide T4002 — Chapter 2, cost of goods sold and Chapter 1, reporting methods.

7. What rides on the card, what rides on the show

Once cost matters, so does the question of which cost belongs where. The CRA gives the test for one side of it: a card’s cost includes what you paid plus “any expenses you incur to bring the item to the business location.”

The split matters more than it sounds. Spread a $250 table fee across the cards you happened to sell that Saturday and every card’s margin starts depending on how busy the Saturday was — which tells you nothing about the card, and quietly makes your best cards look worst on your slowest days. Keep them apart and both numbers mean something: the card tells you whether to buy that card again, the show tells you whether to book that show again.

Grading is the one that gets mis-filed most often, because it feels like an expense and is in fact part of a card’s cost: a $50 card you spent $20 to grade is a $70 card. And consigned stock sits outside all of this — cards that are not yours are not your inventory, and the payout is not your margin.

Both have their own guide: the money that is at PSA and selling other people’s cards.

8. Six years, and the receipt in your camera roll

“Generally, you must keep all required records and supporting documents for a period of six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to.” For an individual the tax year “is the calendar year” — so the receipt for a table fee paid at a show this month is wanted until the end of 2032.

Photographs of paper are allowed, with conditions that are worth reading before you throw anything out. The CRA accepts records kept in paper, in paper later converted to electronic, or electronic from the start. But: “Generally, you must keep originals of your paper documents. However, you can produce electronic images of these documents, known as imaging.” The image has to be an accurate reproduction, give the same information as the paper, and not have significant details “obscured because of limitations in resolution, tonality or hue.”

If the imaging meets the national standard the CRA cites, “the images become the permanent records” and the paper can go. And if it does not: “If your business cannot meet the CGSB standards when imaging, it has to keep the original documents.”

Source: CRA — how long to keep records and acceptable formats and imaging.

9. The other question: whether you have to charge tax

Everything above is about what comes off the top. Whether you have to add tax on the way in is a different question with its own rules, and it is the one that catches a dealer who grows quickly.

On GST/HST, you stop being a small supplier when you “exceed the $30,000 threshold over four consecutive calendar quarters” — and separately, when you exceed it in a single calendar quarter. The second case is abrupt: “You have to start charging GST/HST on the supply that made you exceed $30,000.” Not the next sale. That one. Registration is due no later than the day of that supply, and you “will have to register within 29 days of your effective date of registration.”

You can also register before you have to. Voluntary registration lets you “claim input tax credits (ITC) to recover the GST/HST paid or payable on your purchases and operating expenses” — against the obligation to charge it, file returns, and “Stay registered for at least one year before you can cancel your registration.” For a dealer buying inventory and supplies with tax on them, that trade is worth an actual calculation rather than a shrug.

In British Columbia there is a provincial sales tax on top, with its own registration. You must register to collect PST if you are located in B.C. and, in the ordinary course of business, “Sell taxable goods in B.C.” B.C. lists “small sellers” among the businesses that do not need to register, and sends you to a bulletin of its own for the test.

The reason this belongs in a guide about deductions: a weekend where you clear a few thousand across a table does not feel like approaching a tax threshold. Four of those in one quarter is most of the way to one, and the rule attaches to the single sale that crosses it.

Sources: CRA — when to register for GST/HST, registering voluntarily; Province of B.C. — register to collect PST.

10. Where the software comes in

Everything in sections 1 to 9 works with a notebook, and most of it has worked with a notebook for forty years. The only thing software can genuinely help with is the one in section 6 — the number that has to be captured at the moment it exists, because there is no way to go back for it.

Clody is a ledger for card dealers. What it does, relevant to the above:

An expense is recorded against the show it happened at, with a category. The preset list is the list from section 1, because it was written from the same weekends: booth fee, food, parking, airfare, hotel, transportation, consignor payout, platform fee, plus whatever you want to name yourself. Expenses that belong to no show go in the same place without one.

Each show has a report — what sold, what that stock cost, what the show cost, gross margin, and net profit. Net profit there is margin on what you actually sold, less the show’s expenses. Not revenue minus purchases, which is a cash-flow number wearing a profit label and the reason a good weekend with a big buy in it can look like a loss.

It counts the sales that have no cost on them. That count is section 6 as a number on a screen. It is on there because it is cheap to fix this week and impossible to fix in April — the card is still in front of you, and the person who knows what you paid is still you.

Cost rides on the card. A weighted average as you restock the same card, grading folded into the unit cost so a graded card is worth what it actually cost you, and a show in another currency converted once at the rate you set when you created the show.

You can ask it for a span. “What did I spend on booth fees this year” comes back as a period summary, broken out by currency, with expenses and the count of sales with no cost recorded in the same answer. Expenses can be recorded by talking to the assistant as well as by typing them in.

What it does not do

Stated plainly, because the gaps are exactly where a tax-time surprise comes from:

• It does not calculate tax, file anything, or know your tax year. It is a ledger, not tax software, and it has no opinion about which line your table fee goes on.
• There is no mileage log. Section 2 is a notebook in the glovebox or an app made for that job.
• It does not store a photo of a receipt. It stores the amount, the category and the date. Keep the paper.
• There is no data export. Clody reads a spreadsheet in; it does not produce one. Getting a year out for an accountant today means reading the reports or asking the assistant for the span.
• No market prices. A price in Clody is one you typed.

11. The eight questions, answered short

Sections 1 to 10 are the argument. These are the same answers at the length you would give them across a table — for anyone who arrived at one of these questions rather than at the top of the page. Every one of them is a rule quoted above, with its source linked in the section it came from.

Are card show table fees tax deductible in Canada?
The CRA's general rule is that you can deduct any reasonable current expense you incur to earn income, and the floor space your business sells from for a weekend is an ordinary cost of doing that. The question worth asking an accountant is which line it belongs on: the tax rules have a separate, capped line for convention expenses — up to two conventions a year — and a vendor renting a table is not obviously a delegate attending a convention. The two lines have very different limits, so if you do a dozen shows a year the distinction is worth real money.

Can I write off mileage driving to a card show in Canada?
You can deduct the part of your vehicle expenses you paid to earn income, worked out as business kilometres divided by total kilometres. The CRA's own example is 27,000 ÷ 30,000 × $7,000 = $6,300. The logbook has to record, for each trip, the date, destination, purpose and number of kilometres, plus the odometer reading at the start and end of the fiscal period. After one full base year, a three-month sample can be used to extrapolate, provided business use stays within 10% of the base year. Parking fees are separate: they are deductible in full and are not part of the vehicle calculation.

Are meals at a card show deductible?
At 50%, and the CRA applies it to the lesser of what you actually spent and an amount that is reasonable in the circumstances — the smaller figure is chosen first and then halved. The same limit applies to meals while travelling or attending a convention. The listed exceptions to the 50% rule rarely cover a dealer; a hall lunch is the plain case, so a $14 lunch is a $7 deduction.

Is a card show a convention for Canadian tax purposes?
The convention rule lets you deduct the cost of attending up to two conventions a year, and the convention must relate to your business and be held by a business or professional organization within the geographical area where it normally operates. A dealer who rents a table is selling at the event rather than attending it, which is why the table fee and a convention fee are plausibly different lines with different limits. It is a genuine question for an accountant rather than something to assume in either direction.

Do I have to track the cost of every card I buy?
In substance, yes. Cost of goods sold is usually the largest figure on a dealer's return and the CRA needs three inputs for it: opening inventory, closing inventory, and purchases net of discounts. Of the two permitted valuation methods, one values items at the lower of cost and fair market value, which requires cost outright; the other values the entire inventory at fair market value, which for trading cards means appraising every card annually in a market that moves weekly. The CRA also states that businesses that are adventures or concerns in the nature of trade must value their inventory at cost. Unlike a receipt, a card's cost cannot be requested again later — it only exists if it was written down at the purchase.

Can a card dealer claim a home office in Canada?
You can claim business-use-of-home expenses if the space is your principal place of business, or if you use it only to earn business income and on a regular and ongoing basis to meet clients. That covers a share of heating, home insurance, electricity, cleaning materials, property taxes and mortgage interest — or of the rent, if you rent — worked out on a reasonable basis such as the area of the workspace divided by the total area of the home. The claim cannot be more than your net income from the business before deducting it, so it cannot create or increase a loss, and whatever you cannot use carries forward. Claiming capital cost allowance on the business part of a home also brings the capital gain and recapture rules into play when you later sell it.

How long do I have to keep card show receipts in Canada?
Generally six years from the end of the last tax year the records relate to, and for an individual the tax year is the calendar year. Photographs of paper are allowed, but the CRA generally expects you to keep the paper originals unless the imaging meets the CGSB standard it cites, in which case the images become the permanent records. Anything that was electronic to begin with — a payout statement or a platform fee report — must be kept in an electronic readable format even if you have printed it out.

Do I need to charge GST on Pokémon card sales in Canada?
You stop being a small supplier once you exceed the $30,000 threshold over four consecutive calendar quarters, or in a single calendar quarter. In the single-quarter case the CRA requires you to start charging GST/HST on the very supply that took you over $30,000, with registration due no later than the day of that supply and the account opened within 29 days of your effective date of registration. You may also register voluntarily while still under the threshold, which allows input tax credits on purchases and operating expenses but commits you to charging, filing, and staying registered for at least a year. Provincial sales tax is separate: in British Columbia you must register to collect PST if you sell taxable goods in B.C. in the ordinary course of business, with a separate small seller exemption set out in Bulletin PST 003.

Next: when a card’s cost gets entered, which is section 6 turned into a habit you can keep at a table, and how to track card show sales, which is what to write down while there is a line of people in front of you.