Your GST return is due 28 August. Here is the ten-minute version.

When is the June–July return due?

For most two-monthly filers, the return covering June and July is due on 28 August. If every sale already carries a correct tax invoice with the GST split out, preparing the sales side takes minutes: total sales, GST collected on domestic sales, zero-rated exports, and then your expenses.

The common two-monthly cycle has periods ending on the last day of the odd months — January, March, May, July, September and November. June and July form one period, that period closed on 31 July, and the ordinary rule is that the return and the payment are due on the 28th of the month after the period ends. That is where 28 August comes from.

Two dates break the pattern, and neither is this one. The period ending 31 March is due on 7 May, and the period ending 30 November is due on 15 January — both pushed out so they do not land on top of year-end and the summer break. Every other period follows the 28th-of-the-following-month rule.

Not everyone files two-monthly. Monthly and six-monthly cycles exist too — monthly mostly suits larger businesses that prefer regular smaller payments, six-monthly suits smaller ones. If you are not certain which cycle you are on, your myIR account says so under GST, and your accountant will know without looking.

What does the sales side of the return need?

Three numbers, and all of them come out of your invoices. Total sales for the period. The GST you collected on domestic sales. And any zero-rated exports — sales to buyers outside New Zealand — kept separate, because they go in their own box on the return.

Refunds are netted off. A sale in June that you refunded in July sits inside the same period as its refund, so the two cancel out. A refund that lands in a later period becomes an adjustment in that later period, not a reason to reopen this one.

Exports need one thing beyond the number itself: evidence that the buyer genuinely was overseas. For digital products that is the residency evidence collected at checkout — billing country, card country. If the checkout captures it at the moment of sale, you never have to reconstruct it months later. What gocushy records on each tax invoice is listed in the docs.

The expenses side is yours. gocushy only sees your sales, so the GST on what you bought — software, contractors, the accountant — comes from your own records, the way it always has.

Where do the numbers come from?

For New Zealand accounts, the gocushy dashboard shows sales split by GST period: total sales, GST collected on domestic sales, and zero-rated exports, for the period that just closed and the one currently running.

Merchants on the NZ plan also get the same numbers by email a week before each period closes. The point of the email is timing. The numbers arrive while there is still a week to fix anything that looks wrong — a refund that has not been processed, a sale sitting against the wrong product — rather than after the period is sealed and the fix becomes an adjustment.

To be clear about the limit: gocushy does not file the return. The numbers are for you or your accountant to carry into myIR. Nothing is sent to Inland Revenue on your behalf.

The ten-minute version

1. Confirm your cycle in myIR. If you file two-monthly on the common cycle, the June–July return is the one due 28 August.
2. Open your period totals — total sales, GST collected on domestic sales, zero-rated exports, refunds already netted.
3. Carry those three figures into the sales side of the return.
4. Add your expense claims from your own records.
5. File and pay by 28 August.

If assembling those numbers takes longer than ten minutes, the fix is usually upstream: invoices that carry the GST split from the moment of sale, so the return is a copy-out rather than a reconstruction. That is the part a checkout can do for you.

General information about how GoCushy behaves, not tax advice — your accountant knows your circumstances and we do not.