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CSV with the default and other valid Xero tax codes per account. Import file and rate list below.
Download chart of accounts (CSV)Also available
Alberta gives bookkeepers the gentlest sales tax setup in Canada: a single 5% GST, no provincial layer, and no harmonization arithmetic. That very simplicity produces its own error pattern, because the ledger’s hard cases all arrive from outside the province. This Xero chart of accounts sets the GST default on every account using Xero’s Alberta rate names and marks exactly where the out-of-province exceptions belong.
The two-file package
The readable CSV is the working reference: account, class, default Xero tax code, other codes seen on that account, and a note saying why. The import CSV matches Xero’s chart-of-accounts import format with AB - GST on Purchases, AB - GST on Sales, and the custom 0% rates already in the Tax Code column, so accounts arrive coded instead of blank.
Three rates you add once
A Canadian Xero organisation starts with the provincial pairs only. Alberta work needs three more, all at 0%, created under Tax settings before you import: Zero Rated (groceries, exports, international fares), Exempt (bank fees, insurance, residential rent), and Out of Scope (wages, permits, drawings, transfers). They compute identical zeros but tell different stories to the CRA, and the exempt-versus-zero-rated distinction decides whether input tax credits on related costs survive.
Where an Alberta ledger actually goes wrong
Not on the 5%. The failure modes are imported:
- Suppliers charging their province’s tax. An Ontario vendor’s 13% on goods delivered to Calgary is a place-of-supply error, not a bigger ITC. The purchasing accounts carry this warning because paying it quietly costs real money.
- Sales into taxed provinces at 5%. Deliveries and clients in Ontario take 13%; BC and Quebec take their own systems. Xero seeds every province’s pair, so the correct rate always exists; the sales accounts list them as routine alternatives.
- Foreign platforms under the simplified regime. SaaS and ad platforms that charge GST without being full registrants give you tax you cannot claim. Register your GST number with them instead. The software and advertising accounts flag it.
The federal quirks still apply at 5%: meals and entertainment carry a 50% ITC limit, recreational club dues yield no credit at all, and commercial rent is taxable while residential rent is exempt.
Import and daily rhythm
- Add the three custom rates in Xero (two minutes, once).
- Import via Accounting, then Chart of accounts, then Import; dry-run in a demo org if it is your first time.
- Remember Xero’s line-tax priority: contact default, then item, then account. These defaults are the floor, not a cage.
- Circulate the readable CSV; its notes are the induction doc for anyone touching the books.
Companies arriving in Alberta from an HST province should treat this chart as a remap, not a rename. The account list can carry over, but every default that used to say 13% now needs the AB pair, the exempt insurance note loses its provincial-tax rider, and the sales accounts’ alternatives flip from “occasionally another province” to “every non-Alberta client.” Running the import into a Xero demo organisation first shows the whole remapped picture in ten minutes and costs nothing.
Keeping thousands of small documents on the right side of those defaults is the recurring work. Dext pins recurring suppliers to rules. ExpenseFlow reads each receipt and bill, catches the wrong-province and simplified-regime cases before they post, and lands coded transactions in Xero against these accounts. Hubdoc captures and archives the documents behind the numbers.
Account numbering is conventional and gapped: 1000s assets, 2000s liabilities, 3000s equity, 4000s revenue, 5000s cost of sales, 6000s overheads, so growth never forces a renumber.
Working in QuickBooks? Use the Alberta chart of accounts for QuickBooks. The rates themselves are documented in the Alberta Xero tax rates reference.