Chilliwack, Canada Short-Term Rental Regulations: A 2026 Guide For Airbnb Hosts

Do you own a place in Chilliwack, British Columbia and you're weighing whether to put it on Airbnb or Vrbo? Well, the good news is that you can, so long as you live on the same lot as the rental. Chilliwack sits in the Fraser Valley Regional District, and since late 2021 the City has run a home-share model rather than a ban, so a spare bedroom, the coach house behind it, or your legal secondary suite are all fair game. What you can't do is buy a second place across town, furnish it, and rent it out by the night.

The home-share requirement is the catch, and it has hardened considerably since 2024, because it used to be a City rule that only Chilliwack enforced whereas now the Province enforces the same idea through a registry the booking platforms check before a listing can take money. So you need two permissions rather than one, a City of Chilliwack business licence at $100 a year plus a provincial registration at either $100 or $450 a year, and both numbers have to sit on the listing where a guest can see them. Unfortunately for anyone who came here planning a whole-unit investment rental, there's no version of that which works in Chilliwack.

So let's walk through what it takes to do this properly in 2026: what the Short-Term Rental Bylaw allows, what the two registrations cost, the parking rule that quietly decides how many bedrooms you get to rent, the three layers of tax, how hard the City pushes, and who to phone when your situation doesn't fit the form. Every figure below comes from the City of Chilliwack's or the Province of British Columbia's own documents, read in July 2026, and where I couldn't confirm something I've said so plainly. Before you spend a dollar on furniture, though, run the property through BNBCalc first.

What are Short-Term Rental (Airbnb, VRBO) Regulations in Chilliwack, Canada?

Two City documents do most of the work, and they say the same thing in slightly different words, which is why people get confused about which governs.

Short-Term Rental Bylaw 2021, No. 5141 is the operative one. Chilliwack Council adopted it on 24 November 2021, and its section 2 repealed the old "Bed and Breakfast Bylaw 2003, No. 2968" outright, so B&Bs and Airbnbs now run under one set of rules. Everything else starts from its definition: a Short-Term Rental is an Accessory Home Occupation renting to guests for 28 consecutive days or less, in no more than three Sleeping Units, on the same lot as the Principal Residence. In the bylaw's own words, a "Sleeping Unit" is a lodging room with no cooking facilities in it, while a "Principal Residence" is where you live and conduct your daily affairs.

The second document is Zoning Bylaw 2020, No. 5000. It carries that identical definition in Section 2, having been amended into shape by "Zoning Bylaw Amendment Bylaw 2021, No. 5139" on 19 October 2021, and the zoning side matters more than it looks. Section 4.06(3) normally caps an Accessory Home Occupation at 30 m² of gross floor area, so a three-bedroom short-term rental would blow through that instantly. Subparagraph 4.06(3)(a)(i)(F) carves the exception out and sends you back to the Short-Term Rental Bylaw instead, which is the only reason a bedroom rental is legal at all.

Put the two together and you get a short list of limits that no amount of paperwork will shift:

• Three sleeping units, eight guests. Section 6 of the bylaw allows no more than three Sleeping Units "to a maximum of eight guests in total", and the City's short-term rental FAQ sheet repeats both caps.
• Somebody has to live there. Section 4 requires the property to be occupied by the owner, or by someone renting it from the owner under the Residential Tenancy Act, and that person has to be named on the business licence.
• The whole house, only while you're away. Section 5 permits the entire principal residence to be rented while the owner or operator is temporarily away, to a maximum of 28 consecutive days a year, on a one-month business licence.
• Your licence number goes in the ad. Section 7 requires it in online accommodation advertisements, and requires the licence to be posted somewhere visible inside the rental.
• No creative structures. The FAQ is blunt that short-term rentals aren't permitted in recreational vehicles, or in anything else that isn't a dwelling unit or accessory dwelling unit.

Sitting above all of that is provincial law, which since 2024 says much the same thing with sharper teeth. Section 14 of the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act limits short-term rental accommodation services to a host's principal residence plus not more than one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit, and the Province's principal residence requirement page lists Chilliwack among the communities where that applies as of 1 June 2026. Abbotsford, Mission, Maple Ridge and Kent are on the same list, so the Abbotsford guide and the Mission guide describe a similar market next door.

Starting a Short-Term Rental Business in Chilliwack

Since the principal-residence rule decides everything, the honest first step is working out whether your property clears it, because most of the ones people ask about don't.

Unfortunately for the investor case, there is no business here. A condo you own but don't live in, a rental house across the valley, a cabin you visit on weekends: none of those can carry a Chilliwack licence, and none can hold a provincial registration in a principal-residence community either. No corporate structure changes that. The old escape hatch is gone too, because the Province removed legal non-conforming use protection for short-term rentals, so "I was doing this before the bylaw" stopped being an argument in 2024.

What's left is a genuine home share, and it comes in three shapes. You can rent up to three bedrooms inside the home you live in. You can rent a legal secondary suite, coach house or garden suite on the same lot, which the City's FAQ confirms in as many words. Or you can rent the whole place while you're travelling, up to 28 consecutive days a year. Renters get in too, mind you, since the FAQ allows tenants to operate with written permission from the owner and from the strata council where there is one.

Three practical things narrow it further, and they're the ones that catch people after they've already bought the furniture:

• Parking sets your bedroom count. The Zoning Bylaw's parking table requires one space per Sleeping Unit, unenclosed, freely accessible to the guest and signed for guest use only, and the FAQ works the example through: supply one space and you get one bedroom. The City's operator guidebook adds that your own household normally needs two spaces first, one of them outside a garage, which is why apartments and townhouses so often can't manage the extra stall.
• One licence per lot. Section 26(2) of the Business Licence Bylaw 1990, No. 1484 allows only one Short-Term Rental business licence per lot, so you can't run bedrooms in the main house and the coach house as two operations.
• Strata bylaws beat City bylaws. Where your strata prohibits short-term rentals you can't operate one, and the FAQ says the City is neither responsible for nor able to enforce strata rules. Do check them before you pay anything.

Assuming none of that fits, there's still a fallback in Chilliwack, and it's the longer stay. A rental of more than 28 days with a written fixed-term tenancy agreement or a security deposit counts as a long-term rental and is exempt from the business licence entirely, and ordinary boarding sits outside these rules too. If you're set on a whole-unit nightly rental and flexible about where, Hope and Merritt both appear on the Province's exempt list, so the principal residence requirement doesn't reach either of them.

Short-Term Rental Licensing Requirement in Chilliwack

Once your property clears the principal-residence test, you're still looking at two separate applications to two different governments, and they don't talk to each other.

The City one comes first, because the Province asks for it. Chilliwack licenses a short-term rental as an Accessory Home Occupation, and Schedule "A" of the Business Licence Bylaw prices a home occupation at $100.00 a year, which the FAQ confirms as the short-term rental fee as of July 2026. Licences run on the calendar year rather than from the date of issue, so one bought in September still expires on 31 December, and the Business Licence Office takes applications online or in person. Section 29 knocks $10 off an annual renewal where payment reaches the City by 15 December of the preceding year, which is small money but free money. The vacation licence is cheaper still, since the part-year schedule prices a one-month licence at one tenth of the annual fee, so renting your whole home while you're away costs $10.

Getting the licence isn't automatic, and it isn't permanent either. Chilliwack's Director of Development and Regulatory Enforcement acts as the Licence Inspector, and that person may suspend a licence for reasonable cause, or revoke or refuse one based on prior violations of City bylaws, while Council can refuse by a two-thirds vote or cancel for cause. There's no grandfathering, either. The FAQ tells anyone already running an unlicensed short-term rental that they must meet the current regulations and address all deficiencies before the licence issues.

Then there's the provincial registration, which is the piece that didn't exist in 2024 and now does more work than the City licence. The Province's register as a host page sets the annual fee at $100 where you live in the short-term rental, meaning bedrooms in your home or your whole home while you're away, and $450 where you don't live in it, which covers the secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit on your property. Add a $1.50 service fee to either, and remember that fees aren't refunded if the application is denied. Registration renews every year, the window opens 40 days before expiry with email reminders at 40, 14 and one day out, and any change to your registered details has to reach the Registrar within 14 days.

Both numbers then have to be visible. The Province requires the registration number on the listing and requires a valid local business licence number alongside it wherever the local government demands one, which Chilliwack does. Platforms validate those registration numbers against registry data before a listing runs, so this is the point where an unregistered Chilliwack listing stops being a paperwork problem and starts being a listing that can't take a booking.

The safety requirements attach to the licence rather than the registration, and they're stricter than most hosts expect from a home share. Sections 8 through 18 of the Short-Term Rental Bylaw require Building Code compliance on bedroom windows, ventilation, stairs, handrails, guards, egress and garage separation. They also require smoke alarms in each guest bedroom and between it and the rest of the building, interconnected, permanently wired, with no disconnect switch, and linked to a monitored security alarm panel.

That last clause is the expensive one. On top of it you need carbon monoxide alarms to Building Code standard, one 3A10BC fire extinguisher on each floor, emergency lighting with battery back-up, GFCI protection on bathroom receptacles, no extension cords anywhere, no indoor propane storage, and flammables limited to a single 4-litre ULC-listed container. The fire safety plan gets approved by the Chilliwack Fire Department and then posted on each bedroom door in a tamper-proof frame. One quirk worth knowing if you're planning breakfasts: section 20 bars meals from being prepared or served after 11:00 am.

Required Documents for Chilliwack Short-Term Rentals

Since the Fire Department has to sign off before a licence issues, the application is less a form than a small evidence file, and assembling it is where the calendar time goes.

Question 8 of the City's FAQ and section 26 of the Business Licence Bylaw between them set out what Chilliwack wants:

• The Accessory Home Occupation business licence application form, with the $100 fee.
• Proof the rental operates on the same lot as your principal residence. Government-issued identification showing the address, the previous year's Home Owner Grant, a voter registration card or utility bills all count.
• The number of Sleeping Units, which the City asks you to show with a marked-up floor plan.
• A parking plan meeting the Zoning Bylaw, drawn on an aerial photo or site plan with each stall outlined and labelled. The City's operator guidebook points hosts at the online mapping tool to measure stalls, and at Zoning Bylaw sections 5.02 and 5.03 for minimum stall dimensions.
• A Property Owner Consent Form, where you rent rather than own. The bylaw requires written consent from the owner.
• A Strata Consent Form, where the unit is a strata lot. It must confirm in writing that the short-term rental doesn't contradict the strata bylaws or the Strata Property Act.
• A Fire Safety Self-Inspection Form and a Fire Safety Plan, both approved by the Chilliwack Fire Department.

Insurance sits outside that list, and the City is careful about how it words this. Applicants are "encouraged to confirm their insurance policy allows for STRs", and the FAQ makes clear that telling your insurer you intend to run a short-term rental is your responsibility rather than the City's. A standard homeowner policy frequently won't cover paid guests, so make sure you have that conversation before your first booking rather than after your first claim.

The provincial application asks for a different set again. You'll need the property address and its Parcel Identifier (PID), the number of bedrooms and the ownership type, your name, contact details, Social Insurance Number and date of birth, any co-host or property manager details including a GST number where one applies, proof of principal residence, and a copy of your valid Chilliwack business licence. Which is the practical reason to do the City licence first.

Chilliwack Short-Term Rental Taxes

Assuming you get through both applications and are able to start taking bookings, there's still tax, and three separate governments want a piece of every night.

Charge	Rate	Collected by
Goods and Services Tax (GST)	5%	The platform, unless you're GST-registered yourself
Provincial Sales Tax on accommodation	8%	The online marketplace facilitator, or you if you book direct
Municipal and Regional District Tax (MRDT)	3%	Same as PST, remitted to the Province for the City of Chilliwack

The provincial pair are the ones with local detail, because British Columbia's PST and MRDT on accommodation page sets 8% PST on short-term accommodation province-wide and then allows up to 3% MRDT in participating areas, and Chilliwack is one of them. Schedule 2, item 23 of the Designated Accommodation Area Tax Regulation designates "that part of the Fraser Valley Regional District consisting of the City of Chilliwack and Electoral Areas E and H" at a rate of 3%, with the City of Chilliwack as the designated recipient and a repeal date of 1 January 2027. That date is a renewal deadline rather than an expiry, though it does mean the rate is worth rechecking after the new year. So the provincial layer on a Chilliwack booking is 11% as of July 2026, and GST of 5% goes on top.

Who actually hands the money over depends on how you sell. Where you list only through an online marketplace facilitator such as Airbnb or Vrbo, you don't have to register to collect PST and MRDT, because the platform does it. The moment you also take a direct booking, through your own site or a phone call, you must register and collect on those sales yourself. Be aware of one trap buried in that page, though: even where the facilitator collects, the host stays jointly and severally liable for tax the facilitator fails to remit.

A few exemptions can take you out of PST and MRDT altogether, since accommodation is exempt where the same person stays 27 consecutive days or more, and exempt for a host who doesn't list on an online marketplace and either stays under $2,500 of accommodation revenue a year or charges $30 or less per day. Note that second pair carefully, because listing on Airbnb disqualifies you from both, by design.

GST is federal and simpler, and the Canada Revenue Agency's platform-based short-term accommodation rules put the rate at 5% in British Columbia and split collection the same way: a GST-registered host charges and collects it themselves, including on platform bookings, while the platform operator collects where the host isn't registered. You're generally required to register once taxable supplies pass $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters.

The sting in the tail is an income tax rule rather than a sales tax one, and it's the reason compliance in Chilliwack pays for itself. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act denies deductions for a "non-compliant short-term rental", meaning one operating where short-term rentals aren't permitted or one that fails to meet all registration, licensing and permit requirements. The denied share is your expenses multiplied by non-compliant days over total short-term rental days, and it has applied to tax years after 2023. Skipping the $100 business licence therefore doesn't save you $100. It can cost you the mortgage interest, the utilities and the cleaning.

One last thing to keep in mind is that the three governments count days differently, since the City stops calling it a short-term rental at more than 28 consecutive days, the Province's registry stops at 90 consecutive days, and PST exemption starts at 27 consecutive days to the same person. A 40-night booking therefore sits outside Chilliwack's short-term rental bylaw, outside PST, and squarely inside the provincial registration requirement. I couldn't find a City or Provincial page that addresses that overlap head-on, so if your model runs on month-plus stays, phone the Planning Department and get the answer in writing rather than reasoning from the definitions the way I just did.

British Columbia Wide Short-Term Rental Rules

Those three different day counts are a fair sign of how much of the Chilliwack framework is really provincial, so it helps to see the provincial machine on its own terms.

The Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act, SBC 2023 c. 32 covers any accommodation provided to the public for a fee for less than 90 consecutive days, and its section 14 imposes the principal residence requirement: outside exempt land, the service may only be provided in the host's principal residence and, at most, one secondary suite or accessory dwelling unit. The Province frames that as a floor rather than a ceiling, since local governments stay free to be stricter, and Chilliwack already is.

Registration became the enforcement mechanism in 2025. Hosts, platforms and strata hotel platforms have all had to be registered since 1 May 2025, hosts have had to display the number on every listing, and platforms validate those numbers against registry data. Platforms must also remove a listing at a local government's request where it breaches a business licence requirement, and must share listing data with local governments every month. That feed is the quiet part, because Chilliwack no longer has to find your listing. The platform hands it over.

The penalties changed at the same time, in both directions, since the Province raised the maximum municipal ticketing fine from $1,000 to $3,000 per infraction, per day and lifted the regional district maximum for Offence Act prosecutions from $2,000 to $50,000. Separately, the Short-Term Rental Accommodations Regulation sets the provincial administrative penalties: failing to register a short-term rental offer, or contravening the principal residence requirement, each run to $5,000 for a first contravention, $7,500 for a second and $10,000 for a third, while missing a business licence number or a registration number on the listing runs $500, $750 and $1,000. Section 27(2) of the Act allows a separate penalty for each day a contravention continues, so those are daily ceilings and not one-off ones.

Which communities the principal residence requirement reaches is the part that moves annually, and it's the thing to recheck before you buy anywhere in the Fraser Valley. A local government whose rental vacancy rate has been 3% or more for two consecutive years can ask by resolution to opt out, submitted by 28 February and effective 1 June of the same year if approved. Chilliwack was still on the list on the Province's page as I read it in July 2026. Nearby, Maple Ridge is on it as well, whereas Hope, Harrison Hot Springs, Merritt and Kelowna are all exempt, which is a different investment picture altogether an hour up the highway.

Does Chilliwack Strictly Enforce STR Rules?

Enforcement is where the provincial data feed and the City's own habits meet, and the honest answer is that Chilliwack is firm on paper and reactive in practice.

The City's Bylaw Enforcement department says so itself: it "operates primarily on a reactive, complaint-driven basis, in accordance with the Bylaw Compliance and Enforcement Policy approved by City Council", and it aims at voluntary compliance through education rather than penalties. Even so, the same page warns that "more direct enforcement approaches, including immediate ticketing may occur". Officers work well beyond office hours, Monday to Friday from 8:30 am to 7:30 pm and weekends from 8:30 am to 7:00 pm, which lines up neatly with when a party complaint comes in. Disputed tickets then go to the Upper Fraser Valley Bylaw Adjudication System, a municipal bylaw court authorised by the Province.

The bylaw's own penalties are heavy at the top end, though. Section 21 lets a bylaw officer, a building inspector or a Royal Canadian Mounted Police member enter any property to check compliance, while section 22 makes each day a violation continues a separate offence and section 23 exposes anyone convicted to a fine of $10,000, or imprisonment, or both. Multiply a per-day offence by a summer season and that stops being theoretical. I wasn't able to read Chilliwack's Municipal Ticket Information Bylaw, which is where the everyday ticket amounts live, because the City's council document portal blocks automated access, so treat the $10,000 as the ceiling on a prosecution rather than the number on a first ticket.

The City's own operator guidebook lists what it considers the everyday offences, and it's a useful checklist of what a bylaw officer would look for: operating without a valid business licence, operating in a home that isn't your principal residence, advertising without displaying a valid business licence, advertising above the guest limit, and operating an unsafe property. Three of those five are visible from the listing page alone, which tells you how the first contact usually happens.

What changed the balance of power is the registry. Before it existed, enforcement depended on someone complaining, and complaints have a known blind spot. When Fraser Valley Today reported in November 2023 on unlicensed listings inside a 16-unit Chilliwack apartment building, the City confirmed no business licence existed for it and noted that its ability to act would improve once the Province's registry arrived. That registry now exists, platforms validate against it, and listing data reaches the City monthly. So the risk today isn't a fine after a profitable summer. It's a listing that never goes live.

How to Start a Short-Term Rental Business in Chilliwack

Given how much of that risk lands before you ever host anyone, the order of these steps matters, since the early ones tell you whether the later ones are worth paying for.

1. Confirm you live on the lot. Not the same building, the same lot, and be ready to prove it with identification, a Home Owner Grant or utility bills showing the address. If nobody lives there, stop here.
2. Read your strata bylaws, or get your landlord's consent. Strata rules override the City's permission, and a tenant needs written owner consent before the application goes anywhere.
3. Count your parking before you count your bedrooms. One unenclosed, freely accessible, signed stall per sleeping unit, on top of the spaces your own household needs. This single rule decides whether you're running a three-bedroom operation or a one-bedroom one.
4. Fix the building and fire deficiencies first. Interconnected hardwired smoke alarms tied to a monitored panel, carbon monoxide alarms, an extinguisher per floor, emergency lighting, GFCI outlets. The Fire Department signs off before the licence issues, so an old house can add weeks here.
5. Apply for the Accessory Home Occupation business licence and pay the $100, online or in person at 8550 Young Road.
6. Register with the Province and pay $100 or $450 plus the $1.50 service fee, uploading your Chilliwack business licence as part of the application.
7. Put both numbers on every listing and post the licence somewhere visible inside the rental. A missing number is its own contravention, and platforms check the provincial one automatically.
8. Sort out tax before the first guest. Confirm your platform is collecting the 8% PST and 3% MRDT, and check whether your total supplies push you over the $30,000 GST registration threshold.
9. Diarize both renewals. The City licence runs on the calendar year and knocks $10 off if you pay by 15 December, whereas the provincial registration renews on its own anniversary with a window opening 40 days out.

Once the rules are settled, the question left is whether the numbers work, and that's worth answering with local data rather than a national average. Nightly rates and occupancy across the Chilliwack market will tell you soon enough whether a two-bedroom home share clears the $100 licence, the provincial fee and the extra insurance, or whether a long-term tenant in the same suite is the better trade.

Who to Contact in Chilliwack about Short-Term Rental Regulations and Zoning?

Because those numbers depend on how many bedrooms and stalls the City signs off on, the fastest way to firm them up is a phone call, and it helps to know which of these offices owns your question.

The City of Chilliwack

Planning Department, for the bylaw, zoning, principal-residence questions and the application itself.

• Address: 8550 Young Road, Chilliwack BC V2P 8A4
• Phone: 604-793-2906
• Fax: 604-793-2285
• Email: [email protected]
• Director of Planning: Gillian Villeneuve

Business Licence Office, for the licence application, fees, renewals and changes.

• Address: 8550 Young Road, Chilliwack BC V2P 8A4
• Phone: 604-793-2909
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, excluding statutory holidays

Bylaw Enforcement, for complaints and anything already under investigation.

• Address: 8550 Young Rd, Chilliwack BC V2P 8A4
• Phone: 604-793-2908
• Fax: 604-795-8443
• Office hours: Monday to Friday, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm

Legislative Services, on 604-793-2986, issues certified copies of a consolidated or amendment bylaw, which is what a lender or insurer will want rather than a web page.

The Province of British Columbia

Registration, the principal residence requirement and provincial penalties belong to the short-term rental registry rather than to the City.

• ServiceBC call centre: 1-833-828-2240, Monday to Friday 7:30 am to 5:00 pm
• Registry email: [email protected]
• Changes to an existing registration: [email protected], within 14 days of the change
• Apply or renew: through the provincial host registration page

PST and MRDT are a third desk again, run by the Consumer Taxation Programs Branch on 1-877-388-4440 or [email protected], Monday to Friday 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

What Do Airbnb Hosts in Chilliwack on Reddit and Bigger Pockets Think about Local Regulations?

Since those offices only tell you what the rules are, it's fair to ask what hosts make of living under them. I want to be straight about the sourcing, though, because Reddit blocks automated access, so what follows is my read of the public record in Chilliwack rather than any kind of survey.

The record starts with the consultation, which ran from 16 June to 9 July 2021 ahead of a public hearing on 19 October 2021, and the City's engagement page records that Council chose what it called "Option 4 - Same Parcel". The stated reasoning was that a resident living on site protects long-term housing stock and gives someone local to answer for a problem property. Whatever you make of the policy, that's an unusually clear statement of intent, and it explains why the City has never softened the line since.

Three friction points are built into the documents themselves, and I'd expect any Chilliwack host to raise them:

• Parking decides the business, and nobody expects that. A licence covers only as many bedrooms as you can supply signed, unenclosed, freely accessible stalls for, so a planned three-bedroom operation quietly becomes a one-bedroom one. Townhouse and apartment owners come off worst.
• Two registrations feel like one too many. Paying $100 to the City and then $100 or $450 to the Province for permission to rent the same spare room reads as duplication, and the two renew on different clocks.
• Enforcement used to cut one way. The Fraser Valley Today reporting from 2023 caught the neighbour's version, where residents of a multi-family building found the City wouldn't intervene in what it treated as a landlord-tenant matter. Licensed hosts, meanwhile, spent years watching unlicensed listings undercut them.

That third one has largely resolved itself, which is the new thing about 2026. Once a platform has to validate a provincial registration number and hand a listing feed to the City every month, the gap between the operators who did the paperwork and the ones who didn't stops being a matter of luck. That's the wider lesson here, and it holds well outside British Columbia: a registration regime doesn't punish hosts so much as redistribute the advantage toward whoever bothered to comply, and the people who complain loudest about the paperwork tend to be the ones it was about to protect.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you run an Airbnb in Chilliwack, British Columbia in 2026?

Yes, but only on the same lot where you live. Chilliwack's Short-Term Rental Bylaw 2021, No. 5141 treats a short-term rental as an accessory home occupation of 28 consecutive days or less, capped at three bedrooms and eight guests, operating on the same lot as your principal residence. You need a City business licence costing $100 a year and a British Columbia registration costing $100 or $450 a year, and both numbers must appear on the listing. Renting a property you don't live at is not permitted.

How much does a Chilliwack short-term rental licence cost?

The City's Accessory Home Occupation business licence is $100 a year, and it runs on the calendar year rather than from the date of issue. Renewals are discounted by $10 when payment reaches the City by 15 December of the preceding year. Renting your entire principal residence while you're away, which is capped at 28 consecutive days a year, needs a one-month licence priced at one tenth of the annual fee, so $10. Provincial registration is separate and costs $100 or $450 plus a $1.50 service fee.

Do you need a provincial registration number as well as a Chilliwack business licence?

Yes. Since 1 May 2025, every short-term rental host in British Columbia has had to register with the provincial registry and display the registration number on the listing, alongside the local business licence number where a local government requires one. Chilliwack requires one. Booking platforms validate registration numbers against provincial registry data before a listing runs, so a missing or invalid number generally means the listing cannot take bookings at all.

What taxes apply to a short-term rental in Chilliwack?

Three. British Columbia charges 8% PST on short-term accommodation, and Chilliwack sits in a designated accommodation area carrying a 3% Municipal and Regional District Tax, so 11% provincially. Federal GST of 5% applies on top. Where you list only through a platform such as Airbnb or Vrbo, the platform collects PST and MRDT, and it collects GST unless you're GST-registered yourself. Take any direct bookings and you must register and collect on those sales yourself.

What happens if you run an unlicensed short-term rental in Chilliwack?

Under the Short-Term Rental Bylaw, each day a violation continues is a separate offence, and a conviction carries a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment, or both. Provincial administrative penalties run to $5,000 for a first contravention of the registration or principal residence requirements, rising to $10,000 for a third. Section 67.7 of the Income Tax Act separately denies income tax deductions for a non-compliant short-term rental, so the expenses stop being deductible too.

Last verified: July 2026. Every ordinance, tax rate, state law, and contact detail in this guide links to or comes from its official source.