What Are the GST and PST Rates in British Columbia?

Most of Canada charges sales tax as a single blended number. BC doesn’t. Every taxable purchase here carries two entirely separate taxes stacked on top of each other, a federal one and a provincial one, run by two different governments, filed on two different schedules, with two different sets of rules about what’s actually taxable. Ontario, Nova Scotia, and most of Atlantic Canada folded their provincial sales tax into the federal GST years ago to create a single Harmonized Sales Tax. BC tried that too, briefly, and voted to reverse it. What’s left is the system still in place today: the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) at 5%, plus BC’s own Provincial Sales Tax (PST) at 7%, for a combined 12% on most taxable goods and services.

That’s the baseline most people already sort of know. What’s changed recently, and what a lot of existing explainers online haven’t caught up to yet, is how much wider the PST base is about to get. Starting October 1, 2026, PST applies to a set of professional services that have never been taxed in BC before, accounting, architecture, engineering, geoscience, security, and non-residential real estate services among them. If you’re a business owner in one of those fields, or a client of one, that date matters more than the general rate does.

Two Taxes, Not One, and Why That Actually Matters

The distinction between GST and PST isn’t just administrative trivia. It changes who collects each tax, how businesses recover it, and what counts as taxable in the first place. GST is federal, applies almost everywhere in Canada in some form, and businesses that pay it on their own inputs can generally claim it back through input tax credits. PST is provincial, applies only within BC, is administered through the province’s own eTaxBC system rather than the Canada Revenue Agency, and comes with no equivalent credit system for most businesses. If your business pays PST on something it buys to run its operations, that PST is usually just a cost, not something you get back later.

This is also why BC’s list of PST exemptions looks nothing like a simple abbreviated tax rate. GST applies broadly, with a short list of zero-rated categories like basic groceries. PST works the opposite way. It applies to a defined, enumerated list of goods and services, and historically that list has leaned heavily toward physical goods rather than services, which is exactly the imbalance the October 2026 change is starting to correct.

What’s Actually Exempt From PST

A handful of everyday purchases stay untaxed at the PST level even though GST still generally applies. Basic groceries and most food for human consumption are exempt from PST, and zero-rated for GST as well, which is why a grocery bill in BC doesn’t carry either tax on the food itself. Prescription medications and a range of household medical aids are exempt too. Books, newspapers, and magazines carry no PST. Children’s clothing and footwear are exempt, based on garment size rather than the age of whoever’s wearing it, so an adult-sized item bought for a tall twelve-year-old still gets taxed while a smaller size bought for an adult doesn’t.

One exemption tends to surprise people who assume it’s a rounding error rather than a deliberate policy choice. Bicycles, including adult road bikes, mountain bikes, and e-bikes, are fully exempt from PST. BC kept this exemption specifically when it returned from the short-lived HST system, as a policy choice to encourage cycling rather than an oversight.

The Exceptions to the 7% Rate

Most taxable goods and services sit at the standard 7% PST rate, but BC runs more special rates than most provinces bother with, and getting one of these wrong is an easy, expensive mistake. Liquor is taxed at 10% PST rather than 7%. Vapour products carry a 20% PST rate. Fossil fuel combustion systems, the furnaces and boilers that burn gas or oil to heat a home, are taxed at 12%. None of these numbers are typos or regional variants; they’re the actual, separate rates set out in BC’s tax bulletins.

Short-term accommodation runs its own combination entirely. Hotel and short-term rental stays carry an 8% PST rate, a full point above the standard rate, and on top of that, most municipalities and regional districts layer on a Municipal and Regional District Tax of up to 3%, collected specifically to fund local tourism marketing. The City of Vancouver adds one more layer beyond that. An additional 2.5% Major Events MRDT applies to short-term stays within Vancouver specifically, in effect from February 1, 2023, through January 31, 2030, which means a Vancouver hotel room can end up carrying 8% PST, 3% MRDT, 2.5% Major Events MRDT, and 5% GST all at once, pushing the effective total well past the 12% most people assume applies everywhere in the province.

Vehicles Run on a Sliding Scale, and the Scale Depends on How You Bought It

Nowhere in BC’s tax system does the rate swing more than it does on vehicles, and the rate you pay depends on two things most buyers don’t think to check: the vehicle’s price, and whether you bought it privately or from a GST-registered dealer.

Buy a passenger vehicle from a dealership for under $55,000, and the standard 7% PST applies. Push past that threshold and the rate climbs in stages, 8% from $55,000 to $55,999.99, 9% from $56,000 to $56,999.99, 10% from $57,000 up to just under $125,000, 15% from $125,000 to just under $150,000, and 20% at $150,000 and above. Buy the same vehicle at a private sale instead, and the calculation changes entirely. Private sales carry a flat 12% PST on any passenger vehicle under $125,000, regardless of exactly where in that range the price falls, before matching the dealer-purchase rates of 15% and 20% at the higher brackets. Non-passenger vehicles, larger trucks, motorhomes, and similarly classed vehicles, sidestep the sliding scale altogether and sit at a flat 12% PST on private sales no matter the price.

Zero-emission vehicles get a meaningfully higher starting threshold before the escalating rates kick in, currently $75,000 rather than $55,000, a policy set to run through February 22, 2027. It’s worth being precise about one detail that trips people up here specifically. The exemption that once let qualifying used ZEVs skip PST entirely ended on April 30, 2025. If you’re shopping for a used electric vehicle now, that exemption is gone, and the vehicle is taxed on the same rising scale as any other used vehicle, adjusted only by the higher ZEV bracket thresholds rather than a full pass.

What’s Changing October 1, 2026

This is the development most existing guides to BC sales tax simply haven’t caught up with yet, because it’s recent enough that a lot of what’s online was written before the details were finalized. Following BC’s 2026 budget, the province is expanding PST to a defined list of professional services, effective October 1, 2026, at the standard 7% rate. The newly taxable services include accounting services, covering bookkeeping, assurance, and tax accounting work, along with security services and non-residential real estate services, which sweeps in commercial property trading, rental property management, and strata management.

Architectural, engineering, and geoscience services get a narrower version of the same treatment. Rather than the full purchase price becoming taxable, PST on those three service categories applies to only 30% of what’s actually charged, a partial-inclusion rule the province built in specifically for those professions. Legal services, worth noting explicitly since it’s a common point of confusion, were already subject to PST well before this change; they’re not new to the list, they’re simply staying where they’ve been for years.

Businesses that will be providing any of these newly taxable services on or after October 1 need to register to collect PST if they aren’t already, and the province allows registration up to six months ahead of a business’s first taxable sale under the new rules, meaning a business planning for the October 1 start date could have registered as early as April 1, 2026. If you run a business in one of these fields, or you’re a client budgeting for accounting, engineering, or security services heading into that date, this is the single most consequential recent change to BC’s sales tax system, and it’s worth confirming directly with your service provider or your own accountant whether your specific work falls inside the new taxable categories, since the definitions carry real technical nuance the province is still refining through regulation.

Registering to Collect Tax: Two Different Thresholds

For anyone running a business in BC, GST and PST registration follow genuinely different rules, and conflating them is an easy way to miss an obligation. GST registration becomes mandatory once a business’s revenue crosses $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters, the same small-supplier threshold that applies across Canada. PST is different, and BC does allow a small seller exception, but it’s narrower and more conditional than the GST rule. A seller generally stays exempt from PST registration only if gross revenue from taxable sales stays at or under $10,000 over a rolling 12-month period, and the business doesn’t sell from an established commercial premises, a definition the province reads broadly enough to include a market stall or even a dedicated sales space in a home, used regularly. Cross either line, the revenue threshold or the fixed-premises condition, and registration becomes mandatory regardless of how small the business otherwise is.

Out-of-province sellers making taxable sales into BC face their own version of the same $10,000 threshold, measured on sales delivered into the province specifically, and certain categories, vapour products among them, require registration regardless of revenue at all.

A Few Mistakes Worth Watching For

Assuming BC charges a single blended sales tax, the way Ontario or Nova Scotia does, is the single most common misunderstanding, and it matters practically whenever someone’s estimating a total price or setting up invoicing software built around a single combined rate. The two taxes are calculated separately, on the same base price, not stacked on top of each other, so a $100 item carries $5 of GST and $7 of PST rather than PST being calculated on a GST-inclusive total.

The second common mistake, and the one about to get more expensive for a specific set of businesses, is assuming professional services are broadly PST-exempt in BC because they mostly have been for years. That assumption stops being safe on October 1, 2026, for the specific service categories listed above, and treating an old assumption as still true past that date is exactly the kind of stale information this whole system punishes.

Where This Leaves You

If you’re a consumer, the practical takeaway is simple: the 12% combined rate covers most everyday purchases, but accommodation, vehicles, liquor, and vapour products all run on their own separate math, and it’s worth checking the specific rate before assuming 12% applies. If you run a business, particularly one that provides accounting, architectural, engineering, geoscience, security, or non-residential real estate services, October 1, 2026 is the date to build your compliance around, and registering before that date rather than after it is the difference between a smooth transition and a scramble.

For a deeper look at how these taxes interact with other BC-specific obligations, our guides to British Columbia’s used car tax rules and the BC hotel tax and MRDT system go further into those two categories than fits here. Business owners weighing the October 2026 changes against their broader tax picture may also find our breakdowns of the BC small business tax rate and the full range of British Columbia tax credits useful for the bigger picture beyond sales tax alone. And if you’re buying property rather than goods or services, remember that real estate runs on an entirely separate tax altogether, covered in our guide to the BC property transfer tax, which PST does not touch. Anyone curious how the fossil fuel combustion system rate connects to BC’s broader climate policy may also want to read our piece on the BC carbon tax, a separate system entirely from PST despite the occasional overlap in what gets taxed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does BC have HST? No. BC briefly adopted the Harmonized Sales Tax between 2010 and 2013, then reversed it after a provincial referendum. Since April 1, 2013, BC has charged GST and PST as two separate taxes.

Is PST charged on top of GST, or on the pre-tax price? Both taxes are calculated separately on the same pre-tax price, not stacked on top of each other. A $100 purchase carries $5 of GST and $7 of PST, not PST calculated on a GST-inclusive total.

Do businesses get PST back the way they do with GST input tax credits? Generally no. PST paid by a business on its own purchases is usually a real cost with no equivalent input tax credit system, unlike GST.

Is BC PST expanding to legal services in October 2026? No. Legal services have been subject to PST in BC for years already. The October 1, 2026 change adds accounting, architectural, engineering, geoscience, security, and non-residential real estate services to the taxable list.