Trades accountant in Abbotsford

The sales-tax answer is decided in the quote, not the invoice

British Columbia charges 7% provincial sales tax, and for a trades company that number moves depending on what the contract actually says it is for. Where the agreement is to improve real property — a foundation, a roof, wiring fixed into a structure — the installer is treated as the final consumer of the materials and absorbs the tax as a cost of the job. Where the same company sells a piece of equipment across a counter, or supplies goods without affixing them, the tax rides on the invoice instead. Two Abbotsford jobs with identical materials can therefore land in opposite places purely on wording. That is why the treatment has to be settled while the estimate is being priced: once the number is out the door, absorbing an unbudgeted tax comes straight out of margin. The BC PST guide walks through where the line falls.

T5018 slips follow the payment, not the trade

A company whose main business activity is construction and which pays others for construction services generally has to file T5018 information returns summarising those payments. The obligation attaches to the nature of the business and the nature of the payment — not to whether the payee sent a proper invoice, and not to whether the work happened locally or three hours up the highway. The practical failure is almost never refusal; it is a bookkeeping structure that never separated subtrade labour from material purchases, so at year-end nobody can say what was actually paid to whom. Coding subtrade payments to their own accounts as they happen turns the filing into a report rather than a reconstruction. Background sits in the T5018 reporting guide.

Clearance letters belong in the payment process

WorkSafeBC lets a hiring company confirm whether a subtrade's account is in good standing before releasing money. Skipping that check does not just create a safety-file gap — it creates an accounting exposure, because a hiring company can end up assessed for premiums a subtrade never paid, long after the job closed and the profit was booked. Treating clearance as a condition of final payment, filed against the invoice, converts a legal risk into a routine control. It also keeps the subtrade-versus-employee question honest: a crew that has no coverage, no other customers and no equipment of its own is a payroll problem waiting to be found. The BC workers' compensation registration guide covers who has to register.

Holdbacks move profit between years

BC lien legislation contemplates money being retained on a project and released only after a defined period has run. For accounting that is a timing question rather than a legal one. Amounts held back on work already performed still relate to revenue that has been earned, and amounts a company is holding from its own subtrades still relate to costs it has incurred. Recognise those on the wrong side of a year-end and a strong season looks weak, or a weak one looks strong, and every decision that follows — instalments, equipment purchases, how much to take out personally — is made off a wrong number. Getting the cut-off right is the single highest-value hour in a construction year-end.

Seasonality, instalments and the equipment decision

Abbotsford's building season is compressed by weather, which means revenue arrives in a burst and the tax on it arrives afterwards, often just as spring costs ramp back up. Planning around an averaged monthly figure produces a shortfall almost every time. Instalment obligations are better set against the actual draw calendar, and the tax consequences of a heavy year are better known in autumn than in April. Equipment timing matters for the same reason: when a machine is bought and put into use changes what can be claimed against that year's income, so a purchase decided in December is a different transaction from the same purchase in January. Capital cost allowance on equipment sets out the classes.

What is covered

One Chartered Professional Accountant handles the whole file:

• T2 corporate return and year-end financial statements
• T5018 subcontractor information returns
• GST and BC PST registration, filing and reconciliation
• Bookkeeping structured around jobs, holdbacks and equipment
• Cut-off and revenue timing on open projects
• Salary and dividend planning tied to the corporate return
• CRA correspondence and review responses

Remote by design

EverStone is a sole practitioner CPA firm with a single office, in Abbotsford, and every engagement runs online — video meetings, e-signature, secure document exchange. For an Abbotsford trades company that mostly means the file gets dealt with from the truck or the site trailer instead of costing half a working day. The same CPA who prepares the return is the one who answers the phone in June, which matters more in construction than in most industries, because the questions that decide the tax outcome tend to arrive mid-job rather than at year-end. See construction accounting in BC for the wider picture.