Plenty of sellers below the registration threshold add GST to their prices anyway, on the theory that it is the safe option. It is not. It collects money that is not a tax and puts a line on the receipt that nothing supports.
No. If you are not GST-registered you must not charge GST — there is no tax to collect. Charging it anyway is worse than not charging it: the money is not GST, you cannot issue a valid tax invoice for it, and your buyer cannot claim it back.
The instinct behind the mistake is easy to see. GST sits inside almost every price in New Zealand, so charging it feels like the default and not charging it feels like the exception you would have to defend. It is the other way around. GST is collected by registered sellers on behalf of Inland Revenue. If you are not registered, there is nobody you are collecting for — a GST line on your receipt describes a transfer to Inland Revenue that is never going to happen.
Three things, in increasing order of unpleasantness.
First, the money is mislabelled. Whatever you added is just price — you keep it — but the receipt says it is tax. If a buyer asks about it, or asks for the tax invoice that normally sits behind a GST line, you have nothing to show them.
Second, the invoice problem. Only a registered seller can issue a valid tax invoice. A business buyer who is GST-registered will take your receipt, claim the GST back in their own return, and have that claim fail — because there was no taxable supply and no valid invoice behind it. That is not a private awkwardness between the two of you; it surfaces in their books, with your name attached.
Third, Inland Revenue can hold you to it. Show GST on an invoice while unregistered and IRD can require you to account for that amount anyway. That is the worst of both worlds: a registered seller’s obligations, applied to money you priced like margin.
Simpler than the alternative. Your price is the price. Sell a NZ$50 print and the buyer pays NZ$50, you keep NZ$50, and the receipt records exactly that — the product, the amount, the date. No GST line, no “including GST” wording, no tax invoice, because none of those things would be true. A receipt is still fine, and your buyer is entitled to one; it just should not mention a tax that was never charged.
This stays your choice until your turnover passes NZ$60,000 in any rolling 12 months, at which point registration stops being optional. The threshold has non-obvious edges — it is a rolling window, not a calendar year — and we have covered how it actually works in the registration threshold post.
Sometimes, and it is a genuine trade rather than a free upgrade. Voluntary registration lets you claim back the GST on your business costs — the laptop, the software subscriptions, the registered contractor’s invoices. If you are spending heavily to get started while revenue is still small, those credits are real money.
The other side of the trade is that registration commits you to filing returns, on schedule, every period, including the periods where nothing happened. It also means adding GST to your domestic prices, which either raises what your buyers pay or comes out of your margin. Whether the credits outweigh the filing depends on numbers we cannot see from here, so it is the right question to put to an accountant with your actual costs in hand. What registering changes inside your checkout is documented in our GST guide.
GoCushy behaves correctly in both states, which matters mostly because many tools quietly assume the registered one. If you are not registered, receipts stay clean: the product, the price, and no GST line for you to explain away later. If and when you register, you enter your GST number once, and from then on 15% is applied on domestic sales with compliant tax invoices. Moving between the two states is a settings change, not a rebuild of your products.
The limits are worth stating plainly. GoCushy is the checkout: it does not file your returns, it does not watch your turnover for you, and it does not decide when you should register. That is between you, your sales figures, and your accountant.
If you sell online in New Zealand and want the receipts right in either state, the trial is enough time to check that claim against your own products.
Start your 30-day trialTell us what's happening and we'll email you back. A real person reads every message.
We'll reply to . If it's urgent you can also email support@gocushy.com.