Sales tax in British Columbia

British Columbia runs a provincial sales tax separately from the federal layer, and the two do not share a base — some goods and services are treated differently by each. That is why a combined percentage is a convenience for the customer and a trap for the books: what you owe is two amounts, to two authorities, on two schedules.

SeroBooks keeps them as separate payable accounts from the moment of sale, so neither return is assembled by splitting a blended number afterwards.

A BC retailer buying inventory for resale generally should not pay provincial tax on it. This makes the purchase side genuinely asymmetric with the sales side — the same item taxable on the way out, exempt on the way in — and it is one of the few places where software written for a single-tax country gets Canadian books wrong.

Recorded correctly, your cost of goods reflects what you actually paid, and your margins stop being quietly understated.

Tax is decided per line, not per invoice. Each line's treatment comes from the product's tax category and the place of supply, so a GST-only item and a GST-plus-provincial item sit on the same sale without anyone thinking about it. Combined rates split into their federal and provincial halves in the ledger — one payable account per tax actually levied — which is what lets a return be filed from the books rather than rebuilt in a spreadsheet.

The Tax report then reads that same ledger for any period: taxable sales by rate with the base for each, zero-rated sales counted rather than dropped, credit notes netted, and a self-check against the sales ledger that says so out loud when the two disagree. Input tax credits accrue from purchase documents as they are entered.