BC PST when your business sells goods

Plenty of owners have GST worked out and then meet PST and start guessing. If you sell goods, that guessing is expensive: PST is 7% you collect from your customer and 7% you pay on your own purchases, and only one of those two comes back to you.

This guide is for a business that sells goods in British Columbia. It covers when you have to register, what to charge, the two exemptions a goods business actually uses, and how filing works. It does not re-explain what the two taxes are.

How GST and PST differ in BC →

PST is a cost, and GST is not

The whole of the difference, for a goods business, is what happens to the tax you pay out. GST you paid on business purchases comes off what you remit, so it passes through you. PST does not. There is no input credit, so every dollar of PST on your own equipment, shelving, packaging and supplies stays on your income statement as an expense.

Worked through: sell $1,000 of taxable goods to a BC customer and the invoice carries $50 GST and $70 PST, so the customer pays $1120. Both are money you are holding for a government. Now buy a $1,000 taxable machine for your own use: the $70 of PST on it is gone, and the $50 of GST is not.

Do you have to register?

Sell or lease taxable goods in BC in the ordinary course of business and you generally register to collect PST. The trap is the number people bring with them from GST: there is no $30,000 threshold here. That figure is a GST rule and it has nothing to say about PST.

One exception runs the other way. A small seller stays outside the system on two conditions held together: under $10,000 of BC sales across twelve months, and no established commercial premises to sell from. Note the "and". A storefront, a warehouse or an office generally breaks the second condition on its own, whatever the first one says.

The exemption has a price, and for a business holding stock it is usually the wrong end of the trade. A small seller also gives up the resale exemption below, so you pay PST on your own inventory with no way to recover it and no way to pass it on as tax.

How to register for PST in BC →

Selling into BC from outside the province

This is the one that catches online sellers, and it is the part of PST least like the rest. Being outside British Columbia does not put you outside the tax. A seller elsewhere in Canada who sells taxable goods to BC customers and passes $10,000 of BC revenue across twelve months must register here and charge PST, the same as a shop on Main Street.

Software and telecommunication services sold into BC work the same way and on the same figure. "We are not in the province, so it does not apply to us" is the single most common wrong answer in this whole area, and it is wrong in the direction that accrues.

If you sell across Canada, this cuts the other way too. What you charge follows where the customer is, and the provinces do not agree with each other. BC customers get BC treatment; the rest follow their own province.

What you charge, and how the invoice reads

PST is 7% of the selling price on taxable goods, and it belongs on its own line. Do not merge it with GST into one tax line, and do not fold it into the unit price. A customer who is themselves registered may need to see it separately, and so will you when you come to file.

• $2,000 of taxable goods to a BC customer
• GST at 5% — $100
• PST at 7% — $140
• The customer pays $2240

Some categories run on their own rates and their own rules. Alcohol, motor vehicles and accommodation are the three a small business meets most, and none of them follows the line above. Check a category you have not sold before, once, instead of assuming it.

The two exemptions a goods business actually uses

Most of the exemption list is about what is being sold — food for human consumption, prescription drugs, children’s clothing and footwear, books and newspapers, bicycles. Those matter if you sell them. Two others matter because of why you are buying.

• Goods bought for resale. Stock you buy to sell on carries no PST, and you give your supplier your PST number to claim it. This is the exemption a small seller gives up, and it is why staying unregistered is usually the expensive choice for anyone holding inventory.
• Production machinery and equipment. Narrow, conditional, and worth checking against: it turns on qualifying use in manufacturing and a defined set of other activities, not on being a machine.

The categories are drawn tightly and have been redrawn before, so treat that list as the shape of it. Getting it wrong costs in both directions. Charge PST you should not have and you owe your customer a refund; miss PST you should have charged and you pay it yourself, because the customer is long gone.

Registering and filing through eTaxBC

Both happen in eTaxBC, the province’s online system. Registration takes about twenty minutes with your federal business number to hand, and the province asks for up to 21 business days to process it. You can register up to six months before your first taxable sale, which is the sensible way round: a first taxable invoice with no number to carry is a problem you cannot fix afterwards.

You do not pick your reporting period. The province assigns one and tells you, and a new registrant is often put on monthly. It will not necessarily line up with the GST period the CRA assigned you, and building one calendar around the other is how a return goes missing.

What the 1 October change costs you

From 1 October 2026 the province charges PST on a set of professional services, including accounting and bookkeeping, security, non-residential real estate work, and architectural, engineering and geoscience services. If you sell goods, this is not a change to what you charge. It is a change to what you pay.

Those invoices arrive with 7% on them from that date, and there is no input credit to take it back off. For a goods business it is a straight cost increase on a specific set of suppliers, and it belongs in next year’s numbers now.

What changes on 1 October, and who has to register →

The three mistakes that cost the most

• Selling into BC without registering, especially from another province. The obligation runs from when you should have registered, not from when you noticed.
• Treating PST as recoverable. It is not, and a year of purchases costed as though it were leaves a hole nobody budgeted for.
• Charging the wrong rate, or charging nothing where you should have charged. Either way the province looks to you for it, with interest.

If you should have registered and did not

Common, and fixable, and it gets worse only by waiting. You owe the PST you should have collected plus interest, and if you never charged it, that comes out of your own margin.

The province runs a voluntary disclosure process, and coming forward through it generally puts you in a better position than being found. Get the position understood before you do either, because the two paths are not equally reversible.

If the books are behind as well →

Questions people ask about PST in BC

Get it right at the start

PST is not difficult. Its logic is simply not GST’s: a different registration test, no input credit, its own filing rhythm, and a rule about selling into the province that has nothing to do with where you are. Setting up registration, collection and filing correctly costs far less than reconstructing them later.

Orbis Accounting keeps the books and files both returns for small businesses across Metro Vancouver, in English and Mandarin, with particular depth in PST for businesses that sell goods. Tell us what you sell and where, and the answer comes back in writing with the quote.

What we file, and what that includes →