BC's PST Expansion: What It Means if You're a Juniper Client & What It Means if You're Not
- Jul 3
- 4 min read
Hi, I'm Joanne, founder of Juniper Integrated Business Services. I want to walk you through a change coming to British Columbia's tax rules, because depending on your business, it's going to show up in one of two places: on the invoices you send, or on the invoices you receive.
Starting October 1, 2026, BC is expanding the Provincial Sales Tax to cover a group of professional services that have never been taxed before. Accounting and bookkeeping are on that list. So if you're a Juniper client, this affects your relationship with us directly, your invoices from Juniper will include PST starting this fall.
If you're not one of our bookkeeping or accounting clients, this still likely affects you, because the same expansion applies to architects, engineers, security companies and commercial real estate services. If your business relies on any of those, you'll see the change on their invoices instead.
Either way, here's what's actually changing, and what we're doing to make sure nobody is caught off guard.
What's changing on October 1, 2026
Historically, BC's PST applied mostly to goods, physical products you can touch and buy, plus a short list of specific services like legal work and telecommunications. Most professional services were exempt.
That changes this fall. Starting October 1, 2026, PST applies to:
Accounting services, including bookkeeping and assurance work
Architectural services
Engineering and geoscience services, taxed on 30 percent of the fee rather than the full amount
Security and private investigation services
Non-residential real estate services, including commissions, rental property management and strata management
Legal services are already PST taxable and aren't new here, they're just often mentioned alongside this change since they've been the one professional service BC has taxed for years.
If your business buys any of these services, or provides them, the 7 percent tax applies starting this fall.
PST vs. GST & Why The Difference Matters
If you're used to GST, PST works in a fundamentally different way, and that difference is worth understanding before October.
GST is what's called a flow-through tax. Your business collects it from clients, but you also get to claim back the GST you paid on your own business expenses through input tax credits. In practice, GST usually isn't a real cost to your business, it just flows through you on its way to the government.
PST doesn't work that way. There's no equivalent credit system. When you pay PST on something, that cost stays with you. When you charge PST to a client, you can't offset it against anything you paid. It's a straight cost, both coming in and going out.
That's the part of this change that catches people off guard. It's not just a new line item on an invoice, it's a cost that sits permanently in your expenses if you're the one paying it, or in your pricing if you're the one charging it.
If You're a Juniper Client
Starting October 1, 2026, Juniper's accounting and bookkeeping services become subject to PST. That means a 7 percent charge will start appearing on your invoices from us.
We're not raising our fees. This is a tax we're required to collect and remit to the province, the same way we already do with GST, just under a separate set of rules. We'll be updating our billing systems ahead of October so the transition is clean, and we'll reach out directly before the change takes effect so there are no surprises on your first invoice.
If you want to understand what this means for your budget or your own client pricing, that's exactly the kind of conversation we're set up to have with you.
If You Buy These Services Somewhere Else
If your business relies on an architect, engineer, security company or commercial real estate service, you'll see the same 7 percent charge appear on invoices from them starting this October.
A few things worth doing before then:
Check whether your current contracts or service agreements say anything about how tax changes are handled
Ask your service providers whether they're already registered to collect PST, since registration opened back in April
Build the added cost into your budget or pricing if you pass professional fees through to your own clients
Engineering, architectural and geoscience services get a partial break, PST only applies to 30 percent of the fee rather than the full amount, so the real cost increase there is closer to 2 percent than 7 percent. Everything else on the list is taxed on the full fee.
How Juniper Can Help You Through This
None of this is complicated once you know where you stand, but the transition still means real work: updating invoicing, reviewing contracts, adjusting a budget or a pricing model. That's exactly the kind of change we help clients manage day to day.
If you're a Juniper client, we're already working through what this means for your account and will be in touch directly before October. If you're not yet working with us and want a second set of eyes on how this affects your business, whether you're bracing for higher costs on the services you buy or figuring out how to pass a new tax through to your own clients, reach out and we can walk through it together.
Change like this is easier to handle with someone who's already looking at the numbers with you. If you want to talk through what this means for your specific business, book a time and we'll walk through it together.
