GST and PST for service companies working across BC and Alberta

A crew finishes a repair job in Fort St. John on Monday and a hauling job in Grande Prairie on Wednesday. Same truck, same customer, two provinces. Should both invoices carry the same tax? For a lot of service companies working on both sides of the BC and Alberta border, the honest answer at the office is “we think so.”

This guide walks through the basics: what GST is, why Alberta has no PST, which services BC’s PST actually covers, how to handle customers who don’t pay tax, and what records you need to keep. It’s written for owners of trucking, rental, oilfield and field-service companies, not tax specialists.

Before we start: this is general information, not tax advice. Sales tax rules have a lot of exceptions, and they change. Talk to your accountant about your specific services, and check the official pages linked below before you set up your invoices.

The short version

	Alberta	British Columbia
GST	5%	5%
PST	None	7% general rate, on taxable goods, leases and some services
Who sets the rules	CRA	CRA for GST, BC Ministry of Finance for PST

The Canada Revenue Agency lists the GST rate as 5% in both Alberta and British Columbia, with a PST rate of 0% for Alberta and 7% for BC.¹ Neither province uses the harmonized sales tax (HST), so GST and PST are separate taxes with separate rules, separate registrations and separate returns.

GST: the same 5% on both sides of the border

GST is federal. If you’re registered, you charge 5% on taxable supplies in Alberta and in BC. Since the rate is the same in both provinces, most companies working only in these two provinces won’t see a difference in the GST line from one job to the next.

Where it starts to matter is when you take work in a province that uses HST. The CRA says the rate you charge depends on the “place of supply,” meaning the province where the supply is considered to be made.² For services, there are a few general rules, but there are also specific ones that override them. Two that come up a lot for field work:

• Services related to real property (land, buildings, a lease site) are generally supplied in the province where the largest proportion of the real property is located.²
• Services related to goods (repairing a piece of equipment, for example) generally depend on whether the goods stay in the same province while the service is performed.²

If you only work in BC and Alberta, the place-of-supply question mostly matters for PST, which is next. If you ever cross into Saskatchewan, Manitoba or an HST province, it’s worth an hour with your accountant before the first invoice.

Alberta: no PST

Alberta does not have a provincial sales tax.¹ On an Alberta job, a registered company charges GST and nothing else. That sounds simple, and it is, but it creates a common mistake for BC-based companies: copying a BC invoice template to an Alberta job and leaving the PST line on. Your customer will catch it, and fixing it means a credit note and a new invoice.

BC PST: a sales tax that only touches some services

BC’s PST is a retail sales tax. According to the province, it applies when taxable goods, software or services are acquired in BC or brought into BC for use there, and the general rate is 7% on the purchase or lease price.³

The part that trips up service companies is that most services are not taxable under PST. The province’s small business guide lists the main taxable services as related services (repairing or maintaining taxable goods), legal services, software, telecommunication services and a few others.⁴

What counts as a “related service”

BC’s Bulletin PST 301 defines related services as services provided to goods, or services to install goods. PST applies at 7% to a related service provided in BC, even if the customer is not a BC resident.⁵ Examples the bulletin gives include repairing and painting vehicles, repairing business equipment and applying protective treatments like rust proofing.⁵

The same bulletin lists things that are not related services, or that are exempt. A few that matter to field companies:⁵

• Installing goods that become part of real property or affixed machinery on installation is not a related service.
• Work an employee does for their own employer is not a related service. The bulletin’s example is a company employee repairing a company truck.
• Towing, roadside tire changes and battery boosts are exempt.
• Moving, courier and freight transportation services are generally exempt.
• Disposal services are exempt.
• Diagnostic, testing and safety inspection services are exempt, unless they’re provided along with a taxable repair.

That last point is a good example of why this gets nuanced. An inspection on its own may be exempt, while the same inspection bundled with a repair may not be. If your company does testing, inspection or repair work, read the bulletin’s full list or ask your accountant how your specific jobs are treated.

Equipment rentals and travel charges

Two more points from the same bulletin:

• Leases. PST applies to the lease price of taxable goods.³ And services a lessor provides to leased equipment during the lease generally don’t get the usual exemptions. The bulletin’s example is a portable toilet rented for a jobsite, where the waste disposal service the rental company provides is taxable.⁵ If you rent equipment and also service it, that matters.
• Travel. For taxable related services, PST is calculated on the total price, including labour, travel time, travel costs and per diems.⁵ If you bill a travel charge on a taxable repair, it carries PST too.

PST is calculated on the price before GST, so you don’t charge PST on the GST.⁴

What about BC work done in Alberta?

If your BC company repairs a customer’s equipment that stays in Alberta, the bulletin says related services provided outside BC are generally not subject to PST, unless the goods were taken out of BC mainly to get the service and then brought back.⁵ In that case it’s usually the customer who self-assesses. Again, the details depend on where the goods are and why.

The rules change

Keep an eye on the province’s announcements. BC planned to expand PST to several professional services, including accounting, engineering and security services, and as of September 2026 the province says that expansion is paused.³ Rule changes usually come with effective dates and transition rules, so check the PST pages at least once a year.

Customers who don’t pay tax

Some customers are exempt from PST, GST or both, and an exemption without paperwork is a tax bill waiting to happen.

On the PST side, the province says that when you give an exemption, you must keep specific information in your records to show why you didn’t charge tax. If you don’t, you can be assessed for the tax plus penalties and interest. If the customer can’t provide the required documentation at the time of sale, you charge PST, and you may refund it if they provide it within 180 days.⁶ Some examples from Bulletin PST 301:⁵

• Goods held for resale or leasing: record the customer’s PST number on the invoice, or get a completed Certificate of Exemption (FIN 490).
• Multijurisdictional vehicles: record the customer’s prorate account number on the invoice.
• First Nations individuals and bands: related services are exempt if provided wholly on First Nations land.

On the GST side, the CRA says status Indians generally don’t pay GST on services performed entirely on a reserve, provided they show proper documentation. You record the 10-digit registry number or band name from their status card on the invoice.⁷

The practical rule: the exemption number lives on the customer’s record and prints on every invoice. If it only lives in someone’s memory, it won’t be there when an auditor asks.

How long to keep records

The CRA’s general rule is to keep records for six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to. It also says records must be kept at your place of business or residence in Canada, and that records kept outside Canada and accessed electronically from Canada are not considered to be kept in Canada.⁸ BC’s PST guide asks for five years.⁴ Most companies just keep everything for at least six.

“Records” means more than the invoice. It’s the ticket, the quote, the exemption number, and anything that explains why a job was taxed the way it was.

A quick checklist

1. Confirm whether you need to be registered for GST, BC PST or both.
2. Go through your services and mark each one as GST only, GST and PST, or exempt. Ask your accountant about anything that sounds like testing, inspection, installation or work on rented equipment.
3. Set tax by where the work and the equipment are, not by where your office is.
4. Store exemption numbers on the customer record, not on sticky notes.
5. Keep tickets, quotes and invoices together for at least six years.

Where Dispatch fits

Dispatch isn’t accounting software, and it won’t decide for you whether a service is taxable. That’s a conversation for your accountant. What it does is apply what you’ve decided, every time. GST and PST rates are set per province, each catalog item has its own tax setting, and tax-exempt clients carry their exemption number on their record. Taxes are recalculated when the invoice is created, so the invoice reflects the current setup. You can read more about GST and PST across provinces and client rates and the catalog, or see how it works for equipment rental companies.

If tax is one of the things your office double-checks by hand on every invoice, book a demo and bring a couple of real jobs from each province.

Footnotes

1. Canada Revenue Agency, “GST/HST calculator (and rates),” Canada.ca, 2025. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/charge-collect-which-rate/calculator.html ↩ ↩²

2. Canada Revenue Agency, “GST/HST rates and place-of-supply rules,” Canada.ca, 2026. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/charge-collect-place-supply.html ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Province of British Columbia, “B.C. provincial sales tax (PST),” gov.bc.ca, updated September 2026. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/sales-taxes/pst ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Province of British Columbia, “Small business guide to PST,” gov.bc.ca, updated October 2026. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/sales-taxes/pst/publications/small-business-guide ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. BC Ministry of Finance, “Bulletin PST 301: Related Services,” revised July 2026. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/taxes/sales-taxes/publications/pst-301-related-services.pdf ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

6. Province of British Columbia, “PST exemptions,” gov.bc.ca, updated 2025. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/taxes/sales-taxes/pst/exemptions ↩

7. Canada Revenue Agency, “GST/HST and First Nations peoples,” Canada.ca, 2026. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses/charge-collect-indigenous-peoples.html ↩

8. Canada Revenue Agency, “Where to keep your records, for how long and how to request the permission to destroy them early,” Canada.ca, 2026. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/keeping-records/where-keep-your-records-long-request-permission-destroy-them-early.html ↩