The PST expansion is paused: what that changes, and what it does not

On Friday 18 September 2026 the province paused the expansion of PST to professional services that was to take effect on 1 October. The five kinds of service it would have caught stay exempt, and there is nothing new for them to charge on 1 October.

The announcement was made at the Union of BC Municipalities convention in Vancouver, with international trade disruption and tariffs given as the reason. The province put the figure left with people, businesses and local governments at about $260 million in 2026-27.

What the expansion would have done

Budget 2026, in February, added five categories of professional service to the PST list with effect from 1 October 2026. It is worth knowing what they were, because the pause is the reason none of it applies and not evidence that it never would.

• Accounting services, including bookkeeping and assurance work.
• Non-residential real estate services: commercial trading and commissions, rental property management, strata management.
• Security services, including private investigation.
• Architectural services, charged on 30% of the price.
• Engineering and geoscience services, charged on the same 30%.

That 30% was the part people most often got wrong: 7% of a 30% base is 2.1% of the full price before other taxes, and it was never the base for accounting services.

The dated record: what was announced, and what moved →

What the pause does not touch

PST has not stopped applying to services. The list that existed before Budget 2026 is unchanged, and it already included services that surprise people:

• Legal services.
• Software, and telecommunication services.
• Work performed on goods: repairs, maintenance, restoration.
• Accommodation.
• Goods sold or leased in BC, which was never part of this at all.

So if you are registered because of one of those, nothing here changes your registration, your returns or your invoices. The pause removes an addition to the list. It does not shorten the list that was already there.

How GST and PST differ in BC →

PST when your business sells goods →

If you already got ready for 1 October

Firms in the five categories have had six months to prepare, and most did four things:

• Registered for PST through eTaxBC, often months ahead.
• Set up a tax code and a PST liability account in QuickBooks, Xero or Sage.
• Quoted or contracted new work as a fee "plus PST".
• Issued invoices in advance carrying PST on work to be delivered after 1 October.

The last one is the only one that needs doing something about now. PST you have charged and not remitted is not your money and it is no longer tax: credit it, refund it or reissue the invoice, and tell the client why. Holding it is the worst of the three options, and remitting it as though it were tax is not much better.

A registration obtained in anticipation is not a problem in itself, but it is not free either. A registration carries a reporting period, and a period in which you collected nothing still needs a nil return by the last day of the following month. So decide deliberately whether to keep the number dormant or close it, rather than leaving it to be discovered at year end.

Before you close anything, check the province’s own notice. What has been announced is a news release and an intention to make a regulation; Notice 2026-001 and the sector pages were written for the change going ahead and will be updated at their own pace, so for a short while the government’s pages and the government’s announcement can disagree. That is a reason to read the notice, not a reason to guess.

In your accounting software, switch the tax code off rather than deleting it. Deleting it loses the mapping you worked out; switching it off costs nothing and takes one click to reverse.

Staying ready without paying for it twice

The cheap version of readiness is to keep what you already worked out and stop doing anything further:

• Keep the mapping of your own services to the categories, which is the part that took judgement.
• Keep the invoice template with a PST line on it, switched off.
• Keep a note of what you told clients about October, so a restart is one message rather than the whole exercise again.
• Watch for the regulation and for an updated Notice 2026-001, not for the next headline. A pause with no end date will end the way it started, in a document.

Questions people ask

Where this leaves our own invoices

Our fees were on the list, so this is our own change too. With the pause, our invoices carry GST only and no PST line. If we told you earlier in the year to expect PST on bookkeeping from October, that is the part to ignore, and we will say so again if the pause lifts.

Check the category, not the calendar

The question worth answering is still the one this change put in front of every service business: which of the province’s categories does what you sell actually fall into? That answer is what decides whether you register, and it does not expire with a start date that moved.

Orbis Accounting Ltd. keeps the books and files GST and PST for small businesses across Metro Vancouver, in English and Mandarin. Tell us what you sell and whether you registered for the October change, and we confirm in writing what you should be charging now.

What we file, and what that includes →