Record a PST remittance to the province

If your business collects PST (British Columbia, Saskatchewan, or Manitoba's RST), every sale parks the tax you charged in a PST Payable account. The payment you later send the province settles that balance. It is not an expense: booking it as one overstates your costs while the books keep saying you still owe the province.

Record the remittance from the bank line

When the withdrawal is in Ledger › Banking › Transactions:

1. Open the withdrawal's details with the arrow at the right of the row, and look under "Not what it looks like?".
2. Choose Tax payment, then pick PST as the regime. There is no period to pick: PST is filed with the province on its own schedule, not through a TALISK_HQ filing period.
3. If you have recorded the return this payment pays (see "The commission the province pays you", below), choose it in the box beside the regime. Leave it on No return recorded if you have not.
4. Confirm with OK. TALISK_HQ posts one entry that reduces PST Payable and takes the money out of the account the line belongs to. The line shows a "PST remitted" pill and stops reading as uncategorized. Its Category column names the account the money went to (PST Payable, or your province's own PST Payable account) in grey italics. That is not a category to fill in: the remittance already booked it. To give the line a category instead, undo the remittance first.

The amount remitted is the line's own amount. TALISK_HQ does not check it against the PST balance, because a small over- or under-payment against the running balance is normal between filings; your PST Payable account keeps showing the live balance either way.

If you are registered in more than one province

Each province you register with gets its own PST Payable account, so that province's return reconciles to one account instead of everything landing in a shared pot. That means a payment has to say which return it settles.

If your book has two or more registrations, a Which province? box appears beside the regime, listing only the provinces you are registered in. Choose the one this payment went to and confirm. HQ then reduces that province's balance and leaves the others alone.

There is no default and HQ will not guess. A bank line carries an amount and a description, and nothing in either says which province was paid. Guessing would reduce the wrong province's balance after the money had already gone, and you would not find out until a return failed to reconcile.

With one registration, or none, nothing is asked: there is only one answer, and HQ uses it.

Undo

Open the marked line's details and choose Undo PST remittance. The entry is removed and the PST owing shows on your books again.

A payment recorded without naming its return

A payment recorded before payments could name their return, or one left on No return recorded, does not mark its return paid. If the line sits in a period you have locked, undoing and recording it again is refused. Instead open the return on the PST returns tab and choose Link a payment: it names the return on that payment without touching the entry, so the return shows Paid. It does not add the commission; a commission the payment never recorded stays missing from your books.

How this differs from GST/HST

GST/HST payments settle a filed period, so their action asks which filing the payment belongs to, and TALISK_HQ connects it to the payment recorded on the GST/HST tab if there is one. PST has none of that machinery on purpose: there is no return to freeze and no refund receivable, so the remittance is simply a payment against the liability. The PST tab reports what you collected in the province's period so you can fill in its return; the number it reports is not reduced by the remittance you send afterwards.

The commission the province pays you

BC pays you a slice of the PST you collected, for collecting it. It is Box C on the return, and Saskatchewan and Manitoba have their own version. As the rule stands in BC it is 6.6% of the tax collectable, up to $198 a reporting period, and only if you file and pay on time.

You keep it, so you send the province less than you collected. That difference is not a discount on the tax: it is income, compensation for acting as the province's collection agent, and it is taxable like any other income.

It also has to go somewhere. If you record only what left your bank, the slice you kept stays in PST Payable as an amount you owe and nobody will ever collect, and it builds up every time you file.

So the commission is recorded from the return itself, in two steps:

1. Record the return you filed (Reports › Tax › PST returns, or the PST tab). Type the commission you kept from Box C, along with the PST collected. Recording the return posts nothing.
2. Record the payment on its bank line as above, and choose that return in the box beside the regime. The box says how much commission comes with it. HQ then clears the whole liability at once: the province gets what you sent, the commission goes to income, and PST Payable comes back to what you genuinely still owe. On the PST returns tab that return then shows Paid beside Recorded.

The commission is recorded once per return. If you paid one return in two payments, the first payment that names the return carries it and the box says so for the second. Undo that payment and its commission leaves with it; the next payment you record against the return carries it instead.

There is no box for typing a commission at the payment any more. The figure belongs to the return, so it is typed once, where you read it, and every payment against that return agrees with it.

HQ does not work the figure out for you, on purpose. Whether you qualify depends on having filed on time, which HQ cannot see, and the rate and the cap change. Read the number off your own return and type it in.

If you did not claim a commission, leave it at zero on the return, or choose No return recorded when you record the payment. The entry is then exactly what it would have been before, and nothing is assumed on your behalf.

When the balance does not clear

Once a return is recorded and paid, HQ checks that PST Payable for that province came back to what you still owe. If it did not, Books health raises a card naming the cause it can see: a commission the books never recorded, a payment that sent more or less than the return said was due, or books that hold a different PST figure than your returns reported. The card links to your PST returns. If another PST payment sits in that window without naming a return, HQ cannot tell which return it paid, so it says nothing rather than guess.