GST/HST filing in Surrey

The tax point is earlier than the revenue point

For a business paid on completion, sales tax timing is invisible — you invoice, you collect, you remit. For a business paid in deposits, draws and progress billings, it is the central problem. GST generally becomes payable on the earlier of the day the invoice is issued and the day the consideration is received. Take a deposit in February for work starting in April, and the tax on that deposit belongs to the reporting period in which it arrived, not the period in which the job is finished or the margin is known.

The practical result is a Surrey contractor or project business holding money that feels like working capital and is not. Deposits get spent on materials and mobilisation, entirely rationally, and then the filing period closes and the remittance is real. Nothing about the business was unprofitable; the cash simply moved through in the wrong order. The fix is mechanical rather than clever: the tax portion of every deposit and every draw moves to a separate account the day it lands, and the operating account never sees it.

Progress billings, holdbacks and what the return has to show

Where a contract is billed in stages, each billing carries its own tax point, and the return for a period has to reflect the billings issued in it rather than the jobs completed in it. Holdbacks complicate this further, because the amount withheld is not the same as the amount invoiced, and a return prepared from cash receipts will not agree with one prepared from invoices. Neither is wrong in isolation; what is wrong is switching between them, which is what produces a reconciliation nobody can close at year-end.

The discipline that makes this manageable is reconciling the return to the sales ledger every period — billings issued, tax charged, tax remitted — rather than assembling a return from a bank feed. It takes minutes when the books are current and days when they are not. Our overview of what the CRA looks at in a GST review is worth reading before the question is asked rather than after.

PST on work that improves real property

British Columbia's 7% PST behaves differently on construction and improvement work than most people expect. On a contract to improve real property, the contractor is generally treated as the end user of the materials: you pay PST on the materials rather than charging it to the customer, and the tax becomes a cost inside your price rather than a pass-through. Supply-only arrangements are treated differently. Because the answer follows the wording of the contract, the treatment has to be settled before the quote goes out — a price built on the assumption that PST would be recovered from the customer cannot absorb it afterwards.

PST is registered and filed separately from GST, with the BC Ministry of Finance rather than the CRA, and PST paid on inputs is generally not recoverable. Our BC PST guide covers the registration side, and the rates sit with their source on the BC tax facts page.

What is covered

• GST/HST returns prepared from the sales ledger and filed on your reporting period
• Tax points applied correctly to deposits, draws and progress billings
• Holdback treatment kept consistent between the books and the returns
• Input tax credits claimed on materials, subtrades and equipment
• PST position on real property contracts settled before pricing
• Separate BC PST returns where PST applies to what you sell
• Every return reconciled to the ledger rather than to a bank balance

Remote, with no Surrey office

EverStone has no office in Surrey and does not plan one. The practice runs from a single Abbotsford location, and Surrey businesses are served entirely online: records arrive electronically, returns are reviewed by video call, and approvals happen by e-signature. For a business whose principals are on sites across the city rather than at a desk, that is generally the more workable arrangement. One CPA holds the file, which is what keeps the deposit treatment consistent from the first draw to the final billing.