- Short answer
- Yes if you carry on a business and sales connected with Australia reach A$75,000; at A$1,000 customs value or less you charge GST at checkout.
- Which 12 months count
- The current month plus the previous 11, or the current month plus the next 11 — either window counts.
- Marketplace sales
- Where the EDP operator owes the GST, those sales sit outside your test; your own store sales still count.
- Customs value excludes freight
- Sale price minus freight and insurance; on low value goods GST applies to the total delivered price.
- Stock warehoused in Australia
- Goods held in Australia before sale are not low value imports, and simplified registration is unavailable.
- Shopify's role
- Basic Tax's guide covers stores based in Norway, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand or Singapore; filing and remitting stay yours.
- Non-profit threshold
- A$150,000 replaces A$75,000 for a non-profit organisation.
When the A$75,000 threshold makes you register
Two conditions have to be true together, not either one alone. The ATO states you must register for GST in Australia if both apply: you are carrying on a business or enterprise, and your GST turnover from sales connected with Australia is equal to, or greater than the registration turnover threshold of A$75,000 (or A$150,000 if you are a non-profit organisation).
What feeds that turnover is narrower than your store's revenue. GST turnover includes the combined value of two things: imported services and digital products to Australian consumers, and low value imported goods to consumers — not everything the store sold.
Either of two windows can take you over it: current GST turnover is the current month and the previous 11 months, projected GST turnover the current month and the next 11. One of them reaching A$75,000 is enough.
Below the threshold registering is a choice with a condition attached: if you choose to register, you should stay registered for at least 12 months.
A turnover threshold is also not the universal shape of a cross-border tax — sell into Great Britain and an overseas seller usually registers regardless of turnover.
What the A$1,000 customs value changes
The second figure settles nothing about registration — it settles who collects. Where a non-resident business sells goods into Australia with a customs value of A$1,000 or less, the ATO says GST applies and you will have to collect this from your customer and send the GST to us.
Customs value is not the total your customer pays: the ATO defines it as the price the goods are sold for, minus freight and insurance from the place of export. It decides which side of the line a consignment falls on; on the low value side the GST applies to the total delivered price, shipping and insurance included.
Goods count as low value when that customs value is A$1,000 or less when the price is first agreed with the consumer. Goods above that line are not low value imported goods, so they do not feed either of the two categories the ATO lists under GST turnover. The ATO flags one further carve-out: GST will not apply to some sales, which the ATO points to under GST-free supplies for non-residents; we list which sales those are.
There is also no floor under that line that we could find. Across the ATO pages behind this answer — how Australian GST works, low value imported goods, the merchant and EDP operator pages, and the non-resident businesses hub — read on 7 September 2026, we found no minimum sale value below A$1,000 under which the GST would stop applying.
Which side of A$1,000 a consignment falls on
| Consignment | Who charges the GST | What your checkout does |
|---|---|---|
| Customs value A$1,000 or less | You, the non-resident seller | Collects GST from the customer; you send it to the ATO |
| Imported over A$1,000 | The border, from the importer | Leaves it off — GST, customs duty and clearance charges apply at the border |
| Several low value goods shipped together, over A$1,000 in total customs value | The border, from the importer | Leaves it off — sent as separate consignments, each would have been charged at checkout |
| Tobacco or alcoholic beverages | Not settled by this rule | Excluded from the low value definition at any agreed price |
ATO, read 7 September 2026.
Who collects when the sale goes through a marketplace
Sell the same goods through a marketplace and the obligation can move off you entirely. The ATO calls that marketplace an electronic distribution platform, or EDP, and sets out when its operator carries the GST instead of the merchant.
If you operate an EDP, you will generally be responsible for GST on a sale made by a merchant through your platform if: you are registered, or required to be registered, for GST; it's a sale of low value imported goods to a consumer; either you or the merchant helps to get the goods to Australia; it's a sale of an imported service or digital product to an Australian consumer.
The GST stays with you, the merchant, only when three things are true at once: a document issued to the customer identifying both the sale and the merchant — not the EDP operator — as the supplier, a written agreement that the merchant pays the GST, and an EDP operator who does not control the elements of the sale. Where several platforms are involved, only one operator is responsible for that supply.
Your own store's sales are still tested on their own. The ATO addresses the mixed case directly: you do not include the sales you make through the EDP, but you must register if the sales from your online store meet the A$75,000 registration turnover threshold on their own.
Simplified or standard registration
What picks between simplified and standard registration is what you need, not how much you sell. Simplified GST registration is built for a seller whose sales connected with Australia are imported services, digital products or low value imported goods.
Simplified against standard registration
| What you need | Simplified GST | Standard GST |
|---|---|---|
| Identifier | ATO reference number (ARN) | ABN |
| Tax invoices | Can't issue tax invoices | For a seller who needs to issue them |
| GST credits | Can't claim GST credits | Claimable, including on taxable importation |
ATO, read 7 September 2026.
Under the simplified type you must lodge your GST returns and pay your GST by the quarterly payment date, and you can pay electronically. An ABN and an ARN are mutually exclusive.
One model closes the simplified door altogether. A non-resident business that imports goods and warehouses them in Australia before selling them online — directly or through an EDP — has a GST obligation because the goods are located in Australia, so standard registration is the route. That is where the goods, not the seller, stop being foreign — and the test starts to look like a threshold written for sellers established in the country.
What Shopify does — and what stays yours
Shopify's part here is arithmetic, not compliance, and its Basic Tax guide applies if your store is based in Norway, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand or Singapore. Its Basic Tax service requires you to input a tax registration number to calculate your taxes, so the rate follows a registration number you obtained yourself. What comes after the calculation stays with you, and Shopify says so on the same page.
It's your responsibility to consult with local tax authorities or a tax professional to verify that you charge your customers the correct tax rates, and to ensure that you file and remit your taxes correctly.
That sentence is not Australia-specific — it is the general division of labour: filing and remitting stay with you on the taxes the platform calculates.
This article was written entirely by AI under human editorial direction. The editor sets the topic and structure, runs multi-stage validation on facts, links, and interactive elements, and verifies the output is useful from a business perspective. All claims are checked against official Shopify sources. Details may change — always confirm critical data at shopify.com.
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