How much to charge for home care: build a private-pay rate from your own costs

Start with the wage you pay for the service, then add what the law and your own policies put on top.

Federal payroll contributions

• CPP: employers contribute at the same rate as employees. For 2026 that is 5.95% of pensionable earnings, up to a maximum employer contribution of $4,230.45 (CRA, CPP rates (opens in a new tab)). These are 2026 figures; check that page for the year you are pricing.
• EI: the employer premium is 1.4 times the employee premium. The 2026 employee rate is 1.63%, or 1.30% in Quebec (CRA, EI rates (opens in a new tab)). The 2027 employee rate is already set at $1.64 per $100 of insurable earnings, or $1.29 in Quebec (ESDC (opens in a new tab)).
• Quebec: employers there have their own set of contributions, listed on Revenu Québec’s source deductions and employer contributions page (opens in a new tab).

Workers’ compensation

Premiums are a rate per $100 of payroll, set by your industry class. Boards publish averages, but the average is not your rate, so look up your own class. WSIB (opens in a new tab) in Ontario has set its 2027 average at $1.18 per $100 of insurable earnings, down from $1.23 in 2026. WorkSafeBC (opens in a new tab)’s 2027 average base rate is $1.55 per $100 of assessable payroll, across 511 classification units. WCB Alberta (opens in a new tab) and the CNESST (opens in a new tab) in Quebec also charge per $100 of payroll, by class.

Employer health tax

Ontario’s Employer Health Tax (opens in a new tab) is a payroll tax. Eligible employers (Ontario payroll under $5 million, or registered charities) get a $1 million exemption, shared among associated employers. BC (opens in a new tab) works differently. Employers with BC remuneration of $1,000,000 or less don’t pay. Between $1,000,000 and $1,500,000, the tax is 5.85% of the amount above $1,000,000. Above $1,500,000 it is 1.95% of total BC remuneration, with no exemption.

Paid leave

In Ontario, vacation pay (opens in a new tab) is at least 4% of gross wages, or 6% after five years of employment. Holiday pay comes on top and differs by province (see below).

Staff are paid for hours no client sees on an invoice. For most agencies the biggest of these is travel between visits.

• Ontario (opens in a new tab): time spent travelling during the workday is work time. The commute from home is not.
• BC (opens in a new tab): going from one job site to another during the workday is work time. Getting to the first site is unpaid commute time.
• Quebec (opens in a new tab): the CNESST treats a worker as at work during travel the employer requires.
• US (opens in a new tab): the Department of Labor says travel from job site to job site during the workday is compensable, and the third-party employer (the agency) must make sure it is paid. Normal travel from home to work is not work time.

Travel isn’t the only gap. Track these too, and check your province’s rules on each one:

• Orientation and training shifts
• Supervision visits
• Team meetings
• Waiting time between visits
• Documentation finished after the visit ends

Work out your billable share

1. 1

   Pick a recent period

   A full pay period or a month of real records.

2. 2

   Add up paid hours

   Every timesheet hour, including travel, training and meetings.

3. 3

   Add up billable hours

   Only the hours that reached a client invoice.

4. 4

   Divide billable hours by paid hours

   If 85 of every 100 paid hours were billed, your billable share is 0.85. Divide your loaded wage by it.

Short-shift rules

Some provinces make you pay for time you may not be able to bill. Ontario’s three-hour rule (opens in a new tab) covers an employee who regularly works more than three hours a day, is required to report, and works less than three hours despite being available: you pay three hours at the regular rate. BC (opens in a new tab) requires staff to be scheduled for at least two hours. Quebec’s 3-hour indemnity (opens in a new tab) applies when the employer shortens a worker’s usual shift, with exceptions that matter in home care, such as workers hired for periods under 3 hours. A minimum visit length keeps these rules from eating your margin.

Overhead is everything you pay for that isn’t a visit. List a full year of it:

• Office and scheduling salaries
• Insurance and rent
• Software
• Recruitment and screening
• Marketing and accounting
• Vehicles, or mileage you don’t bill back

Divide the annual total by the billable hours you expect to deliver that year. Use a realistic forecast, not full capacity.

Overhead per hour falls as billable hours grow, because the same office costs spread thinner. So a wrong forecast hurts both ways. Price on today’s low volume and you may lose clients you could have won. Price on the volume you hope to reach and you lose money every month until you get there.

Margin is profit as a share of the price. Markup is profit as a share of the cost. People use the words loosely, and the same 20% gives two different prices:

• 20% margin: cost ÷ 0.80. On a cost of $33.24 (example only), that is $41.55.
• 20% markup: cost × 1.20. On the same cost, that is $39.89.

Pick one and write it down, so next year’s update uses the same rule. There is no “typical” margin here, because an average would not describe your agency. Start from what the margin has to pay for: growth, bad debt, the gap between payroll and client payments, and mid-year cost changes. Round the result to a rate you can explain to a family in one sentence.

Every number below is a placeholder to show the arithmetic. None of them is a market rate.

Replace each row with figures from your payroll records and the official tables. Where GST/HST applies, it goes on top, on its own invoice line.

It depends on who pays. CRA’s GST/HST Info Sheet GI-166 (opens in a new tab) defines a home care service as a household or personal care service (bathing, feeding, help with dressing or medication, cleaning, laundering, meal preparation and so on) for someone who needs help because of age, infirmity or disability.

• The service is exempt only when a government, a municipality or an organization administering a government or municipal program pays for it. Being eligible for funding is not enough.
• Extra home care a client buys privately is also exempt while they are receiving a publicly funded home care service at the same time. Once that funding ends, later out-of-pocket service is not exempt.
• Care paid entirely out of pocket is generally not exempt.
• Nursing services may fall under a separate exemption, not the home care one.

Registration has its own threshold. Under CRA’s RC4022 (opens in a new tab), you stop being a small supplier when taxable revenues pass $30,000 in a single calendar quarter (you register from the supply that takes you over) or over four consecutive calendar quarters (at the end of the month after that quarter). Public service bodies use $50,000. For more on this, see GST/HST on home care services.

A rate only holds if the client agreement says how it applies. Write these down before the first visit.

Holiday pay, province by province

• Ontario (opens in a new tab) has nine public holidays. A staff member who agrees in writing or electronically to work one gets either regular wages plus a substitute day off with public holiday pay, or public holiday pay plus premium pay of 1.5 times the regular rate for the hours worked.
• BC (opens in a new tab) pays statutory holiday pay equal to an average day’s pay, whether the employee works or takes the day off.
• Alberta (opens in a new tab): when an eligible employee works a general holiday that is a regular work day, the employer either pays 1.5 times the regular rate for the hours worked plus the average daily wage, or gives a future day off paid at the average daily wage. Eligibility needs at least 30 workdays with the same employer in the 12 months before the holiday.

Base your client holiday rate on what the day actually costs you under your province’s rules, rather than a multiplier you picked up somewhere.

Cancellations and rate increases

For cancellations, decide the notice window, whether a late cancellation is charged, and whether the staff member is still paid. When you raise rates for current clients, give written notice and name the cost that changed: new CPP and EI figures, a new workers’ compensation rate, or a wage increase. Families take a reason better than a bare number.

The billable-share step needs paid hours and billed hours side by side. CareKindle keeps both from the same verified visits.

• Payroll: timesheets come from verified visits, priced at the same scheduled time as the invoice. Each staff member has a pay rate card by service code, with the history behind it, and a single shift or a client can carry its own pay rate.
• Billing: each client can have its own rate per service, by the hour or flat per visit, with the right tax on every line (GST/HST by province in Canada, or your own rate and label).
• Scheduling: reassign or cancel a shift from the same right-click menu, and a cancellation can carry a late fee.
• Visit verification: GPS clock-in and clock-out on the staff app, so billed and paid time come from the same visit.