If your stock sits in an Australian Amazon FBA warehouse, you are the supplier for GST purposes: Amazon is not treated as the supplier and does not discharge your GST liability. Register for GST within 21 days of your turnover reaching $75,000, actual or projected. Import GST of 10 per cent applies to stock you bring in, and the deferred GST scheme can move that cost off your cash flow. Records must be kept for 5 years.
The most expensive sentence in Australian ecommerce is "Amazon handles the GST for me." It is true in exactly one situation, and it is not the one most Amazon FBA Australia sellers are in. Fulfilment by Amazon means you send stock to Amazon's Australian fulfilment centres and Amazon stores, picks, packs and ships it for a fee. The stock is still yours, the sales are still yours, and so are the tax obligations.
Online sales reached 12.7 per cent of total Australian retailing, in original terms, in the ABS's final Retail Trade release, with seasonally adjusted online sales up 13 per cent year on year against total retail growth of 4.9 per cent. Marketplace selling is where much of that growth lives, and page one of Google will teach you how to launch. This guide covers what those launch guides skip: GST registration, imported stock, hobby-versus-business rules and the bookkeeping that keeps a store audit-ready. It is the Amazon companion to our Xero and Shopify setup guide, and part of the work we do for ecommerce clients year-round.
Generally no. A marketplace is treated as the supplier and collects GST only for low value imported goods, worth A$1,000 or less, shipped to Australian consumers from overseas. Goods already located in Australia when sold, including stock in an Australian FBA warehouse, follow the normal GST rules: the seller is the supplier and accounts for any GST.
The rule comes from the electronic distribution platform provisions in Division 84 of the GST Act, extended to goods on 1 July 2018. Under them, the platform operator is responsible for GST on sales of low value imported goods made through it to consumers. Law Companion Ruling LCR 2018/2 and the ATO's guidance for merchants are equally clear on the flip side: goods located in Australia when sold are not low value imported goods, so the platform is not treated as the supplier and does not discharge the seller's GST liability on ordinary domestic FBA sales.
An FBA seller's inventory sits in Australia by definition. That single fact means taxable domestic FBA sales remain your responsibility for GST purposes: they belong on your BAS, not Amazon's. The sellers who discover this in year two, after the ATO data-matches marketplace sales, face catch-up GST out of margins that were never priced to include it.
Registration is required within 21 days of GST turnover reaching $75,000, measured two ways: actual turnover over the past 12 months, or projected turnover for the current month and the next 11 months. A realistic forecast built on actual orders, growth and seasonality can meet the projected test months before the actual test, and the clock starts at the earlier of the two.
The ATO's registration guidance sets out both tests and the 21-day deadline; the tests themselves sit in sections 188-10 and 188-20 of the GST Act 1999, with the registration requirement in section 23-5. The projected test is the one that catches marketplace sellers: a forecast built on actual orders, growth, seasonality and your other circumstances can indicate turnover above $75,000 for the current month and next 11 months well before actual sales get there. A single strong month annualised does not by itself establish the result, but a well-founded forecast does, and the obligation follows it. You need an ABN to register, and once registered you charge GST on taxable sales, claim credits on business purchases, and lodge a BAS.
Registering also changes your pricing arithmetic overnight: one-eleventh of each taxable sale becomes GST. Whether to register early, before the threshold forces it, is a genuine planning decision, weighing import GST credits and fee credits against the price impact. That timing question is standard scope in our BAS and IAS lodgement service.
Imported stock attracts GST of 10 per cent of its value at the border: customs value plus duty, international transport and insurance. It is payable whether or not the importer is GST-registered, but only an importer that is registered, or required to be registered, can claim it back as an input tax credit. Eligible businesses can defer it to their monthly BAS instead of paying at the border.
The mechanics are in the ATO's guidance on GST and imported goods, and the credit itself comes from section 15-5 of the GST Act: an importation is creditable only where the importer is registered, or required to be registered, and brings the goods in for a creditable purpose. GST paid at the border while unregistered is generally not recoverable later, which makes registration timing a real money decision for importers. Keep the import declaration, because the credit claim depends on documentation showing the goods were imported and GST was paid or deferred.
The deferred GST scheme is the cash-flow lever most FBA sellers have never heard of. Instead of funding 10 per cent of every shipment at the border and waiting until the next BAS to get it back, deferral moves the GST into the monthly BAS, where the deferred amount and the corresponding input tax credit generally offset in the same statement where the importation is fully creditable. The conditions: apply to the ATO, lodge activity statements monthly and electronically, and keep a clean lodgement history. Quarterly lodgers must switch to monthly before applying, which is a real trade-off worth modelling, not a formality.
One more point on fees and suppliers: check the contracting entity and the tax invoice for each charge. Amazon's Australian seller pricing quotes selling and FBA fees exclusive of GST, so GST is generally added to fees billed locally and is creditable once you are registered. Genuinely offshore B2B services are different: those charges generally should not include Australian GST once you provide your ABN and state you are GST-registered. Claim credits only where a tax invoice actually shows GST; check the invoices rather than assuming either way.
Priya launches a kitchenware brand on amazon.com.au in October 2026 as a sole trader with an ABN. Because her whole model runs on imported stock, she registers for GST voluntarily from launch rather than waiting for the threshold.
The decision that mattered most was made before launch, not in June: registering ahead of the first import kept the $4,400 creditable and her pricing, invoices and credits clean from day one, instead of unwinding nine months of marketplace settlements later.
We set up GST registration, deferred GST and the bookkeeping behind your settlement reports, before Q4 makes it urgent.
Contact UsAn activity is a business when it is carried on in a business-like manner: intention to profit, repetition, planning, records and scale all point the same way. A business declares its income and deducts its costs. Genuine hobby receipts are generally not business income, but the hobby label does not make every receipt tax-free, and repeated marketplace selling at a margin rarely stays a hobby for long.
The ATO's business indicators are a multi-factor test, and importing branded stock to resell through FBA ticks most factors from day one. Even outside a business, particular receipts can still be assessable, including profits from isolated commercial transactions. Treating a trading operation as a hobby does not avoid tax; it just means the income surfaces later, through data matching, without the deductions that proper records would have supported.
Losses have their own gatekeeper. If your Amazon business loses money while you earn a salary, the non-commercial loss rules in Division 35 of ITAA 1997 decide whether the loss offsets your other income now or is deferred. Broadly, you must satisfy the $250,000 income requirement in section 35-10(2E), which counts taxable income, reportable fringe benefits, reportable super contributions and net investment losses, and the business must pass a test such as the $20,000 assessable income test. Launch-year sellers commonly fail all four tests and are surprised the loss carries forward instead of reducing this year's tax. Structure and timing can change that outcome, which is a conversation for our small business accounting team before year end, not after.
Amazon pays sellers in netted settlements: sales, less referral fees, less FBA fees, less refunds, deposited as a single amount. Booking that deposit as "sales" understates both revenue and expenses, distorts GST, and makes margins unreadable. The settlement report needs to be split into its components in your accounting file, every fortnight, all year. In our experience with ecommerce clients, this is the single most common cleanup job we inherit, and by far the cheapest one to prevent; it is bread-and-butter work in our bookkeeping service.
Three rules keep the file honest. First, the trading stock rules in Division 70 of ITAA 1997: a 30 June stocktake, including stock sitting in FBA warehouses, with the movement between opening and closing stock adjusting assessable income under section 70-35. An eligible small or medium business can choose not to account for the movement where the estimated difference between opening and closing stock is $5,000 or less (section 328-285). Second, record keeping: five years, in English, unaltered, covering settlement reports, import declarations and supplier invoices. Third, deadlines: BAS dates arrive quarterly or monthly regardless of how busy Black Friday was; they are all mapped in our ATO due dates guide, and our tax compliance service exists to make them a non-event.
GST registration timing, deferred GST and marketplace bookkeeping, set up once and done properly.
Book a MeetingDisclaimer: The information provided in this article is general in nature and does not constitute specific tax, legal, or financial advice. Thresholds and rules are stated as at September 2026 and change over time. We recommend seeking professional advice tailored to your individual circumstances. 42 Advisory is a CPA firm and Registered Tax Agent.
Yes. Amazon operates Fulfilment by Amazon locally: you send stock to its Australian fulfilment centres and it handles storage, packing, delivery and returns for a fee. From a tax perspective you remain the owner of the stock and the supplier of the goods, with the GST and income tax obligations that follow.
If you are carrying on a business, you are entitled to an ABN and will need one to register for GST. Providing your ABN and GST registration status to genuinely overseas suppliers also stops Australian GST being wrongly added to their charges. Sellers operating as a genuine hobby have no ABN entitlement, but repeated marketplace trading rarely stays a hobby.
GST applies to taxable sales of goods located in Australia, which covers most FBA sales. Some products are GST-free, such as certain foods, and exports can be GST-free where the requirements are met. One-eleventh of each taxable sale is GST, reported on your BAS for the period of the sale.
Check the contracting entity and the tax invoice for each fee. Amazon's Australian seller pricing quotes selling and FBA fees exclusive of GST, so GST is generally added to locally billed fees and is creditable for registered sellers. Genuinely offshore B2B services may correctly exclude GST once you provide your ABN and registration status; where no GST was charged, there is no credit to claim.
Online retail keeps growing faster than total retail in ABS data, but profitability is seller-specific: it depends on product margins after referral and fulfilment fees, import costs, returns and advertising. The sellers who know their true margin per unit, GST and fees included, are the ones who scale; the accounting is not overhead, it is the scoreboard.