PST for professional services: paused, twelve days out

On 18 September 2026, at the Union of BC Municipalities convention in Vancouver, the province paused the expansion of PST to professional services that was to take effect on 1 October. It named international trade disruption and tariffs as the reason, said it intends to hold the change through a temporary regulation, and gave no new start date.

Nothing in the five categories becomes taxable on 1 October. If you registered, changed your invoice template or quoted work "plus PST" on the strength of the original date, the guide below is the one to read: it covers what to do with each of those.

The pause, and what to do with the preparation you made →

What was to become taxable

• Accounting services, including bookkeeping and assurance work
• Non-residential real estate services: commercial trading, 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%

Taxable accounting and the other listed services would have attracted 7% PST; architecture, engineering and geoscience used 30% of the purchase price as the tax base, which works out at 2.1% of the full price before other taxes.

Who it would have caught

Firms that have never dealt with PST. The taxable-services list has always been short and specific, so a business outside it had nothing to register for and no return to file. On 1 October a large part of the province's professional sector would have moved inside it.

What a pause is, and is not

The measure came out of Budget 2026 in February and has not been repealed. A temporary regulation deferring it leaves the provision in place to be brought in later, and the announcement set no date for that. In August 2026 an all-party legislature committee recommended repealing the expansion outright after budget consultations, which is a recommendation and not a decision.

How to register for PST in BC →

Where this leaves us

Our own fees were on the list, so this is our change as well as our clients’. With the pause, our invoices carry GST only and no PST line. If we told you earlier in the year to expect one from October, this is the correction.

How GST and PST differ in BC →

What changed Rewritten on 19 September 2026: the province paused the expansion, so the registration and invoicing steps this note set out for 1 October no longer apply. What was to become taxable is kept below, because the pause is a delay rather than a repeal.