Originally Posted by
emcampbe
Also, particularly for Canada, one ‘trick’ I learned to use several years ago was to book separate one-way tickets vs. round trips. This started being cheaper when tickets typically became half the price of a RT for one-way. It’s not always the case on every route, but is definitely more typical than not for within North America now. For domestic flights, this typically gives you two one-way tickets that are the same price as the round trip. For Canada, this results in a lower overall fare. My understanding is it’s mostly to do with taxes - I am under the impression that Canadian HST applies to the total price of a US-Canada round trip, but only to the ex-Canada direction if a one-way. I’m not sure if there are other reasons as well, but I’ve noticed this has saved me about $25-$30/person per trip.
No, it has to do with currency exchange rates. Flights are generally the same price in US and Canadian Dollars in each direction on one-ways. But if you book as a roundtrip ex-US, fares in both directions will be charged entirely in US Dollars. If you book one-way's in each direction, only the ex-US fare will be charged in US Dollars while the return one-way fare will be charged in Canadian Dollars and you benefit from the exchange rate on the return fare. Taxes are fairly close in both cases. There's actually a smallish GST tax (5% -- fare code XG) that applies to ex-CA fares that is not applied to roundtrip ex-US fares, but the exchange rate currently more than overcomes this.