The parts nobody writes about because they are not exciting: what your invoice has to say, what a zero-rated export needs behind it, and what actually happens between a click and your bank account.
The most-asked GST question in New Zealand, answered from Inland Revenue’s own page — including the sentence that most summaries quietly rewrite into something stricter than the rule actually is.
Two tax codes that both charge nothing, and only one keeps your input credits. It is the single most common expensive mistake in New Zealand bookkeeping for anyone selling offshore.
A field-by-field read of what a Stripe charge actually holds. The evidence for a zero-rated export is not missing exactly — it is somewhere you cannot get to from your accounts.
Selling a course to someone in Sydney is a zero-rated export. Showing that it was, two years later, depends on evidence that existed for about four seconds during checkout — and most carts never kept it.
Your buyer asks for an invoice and you send a receipt. They are not the same document, and if your buyer is GST registered the difference decides whether they can claim anything back.
Every other checkout turns everything on and calls it flexibility. We think a setting that quietly changes your tax treatment should be a decision, not a default.
Quoting in US dollars costs you three separate things, and only one of them is the exchange rate. The other two are quieter and you pay them on every sale.
Between the card being charged and the money reaching your bank, it sits in somebody's balance. Which one is invisible from the checkout page and matters enormously on one particular day.
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