What Are Taxes?

Everyone who lives in Canada pays taxes to all three levels of government:

• federal government,
• provincial government, and
• municipal (city or town) government.

Taxes pay for many services that everyone in Canada uses. For example:

• medical care,
• police,
• schools,
• universities,
• defence,
• roads,
• bridges,
• parks,
• swimming pools, and
• community centres.

There are different kinds of taxes in British Columbia. The main taxes to know about are:

• income tax,
• sales tax,
• property tax,
• duty, a tax you pay when you bring goods into Canada, and
• consumer taxes.

This information applies to British Columbia, Canada. Last reviewed for legal accuracy by People's Law School, 2014.

Paying Taxes in BC © People's Law School is, except for the images, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence.