industries

Preparing for the PST

As business owners bid farewell to B.C.’s HST, they can transcend the mass confusion with some simple tips to help transition back to the PST. To many small- and medium-sized business owners, it can feel as painful as a root canal, as complicated as the math required to land the Curiousity Rover on Mars, and as unwelcome as the flatulent cousin who crashed on your couch last New Year’s Eve.   “It” is the Provincial Sales Tax, and it’s coming back.  

By Shachi Kurl /

HST to PST | BCBusiness
Because B.C. residents voted to chuck the HST last year, business owners must make the tough transition back to the PST.

As business owners bid farewell to B.C.’s HST, they can transcend the mass confusion with some simple tips to help transition back to the PST.

To many small- and medium-sized business owners, it can feel as painful as a root canal, as complicated as the math required to land the Curiousity Rover on Mars, and as unwelcome as the flatulent cousin who crashed on your couch last New Year’s Eve.
 
“It” is the Provincial Sales Tax, and it’s coming back.
 
One year after a referendum that saw B.C. voters roundly dump the HST (while rightly dumping on the ham-fisted way the B.C. government introduced the harmonized tax), bureaucrats in Victoria are busily beavering away, creating a to-do list as they gear up for the transition on April 1, 2013.
 
It will be a time of mixed emotions for business operators. In July 2010, many were not sorry to see the backside of the PST. It was a tax with such a dizzying array of rules and regulations, a business owner often had to figure out whether or not to charge tax based on the colour or cut of the item sold – or based on who the product was being sold to. Example: pencils sold to architects were taxable. To artists? Not so much. Why? I’m sure a tax specialist could tell you, but I can’t.
 
Many others saw their businesses hit when haircuts, travel agent fees, funerals and movie tickets, previously provincial tax exempt, now saw an extra seven per cent added to the retail price. And all absorbed the anger, uncertainty and frustration expressed by customers dealing with a tax they hadn’t asked for and didn’t entirely understand.
 
Whatever their feelings, all B.C. business owners will have to make sure they’re prepared for the change.

Here now is some early important stuff to know. Print it out and tack it to your fridge. And be sure to look at it before midnight on March 31, 2013.

  • Depending on how long you’ve been in business, you’re going to have to register, or re-register for the PST. Registration begins January 2, 2013. That gives you to three months to get it done.
  • Look for detailed instruction letters from the Ministry of Finance sometime in December, that is, if government is able to meet its own timelines.
  • You can register online. You can also register by phone or fax or through the mail.
  • You can also file and remit PST online once it’s all up and running.
  • Those walk-in Service BC centres will also be a point of information, delivery and contact during the registration process.

Government swears up and down this will be a smooth transition, and you, the business owner, will have access to all the information and help you’ll need to welcome back PST. Unfortunately, the tax and all its niggling rules will come back largely the same way it went out.

Somewhere in B.C., a pencil salesman quietly weeps. But you won’t. You’ll be prepared.