On a New Zealand GoCushy account, selling to buyers outside New Zealand starts disabled. You turn it on deliberately. Here is the reasoning, because on the face of it that looks like a product being unhelpful.
The moment you sell to someone overseas, your GST treatment changes — an exported service is generally zero-rated rather than carrying 15%. And depending on where the buyer is, you may pick up obligations in their country too.
Neither of those is a disaster. Both are decisions. Our objection is to them happening because a toggle was on when you signed up.
Most software resolves this by enabling everything and calling it flexibility. That is fine when the setting controls a colour. It is less fine when the setting silently changes what you owe.
The failure mode is quiet. Nothing breaks, no error appears, and you find out months later while reconciling a return — at which point the sales are done and the treatment is whatever it was.
A default that cannot hurt you should be on. A default that changes your tax position should be a decision with a date attached.
Buyers outside New Zealand are zero-rated, and the evidence supporting that — their declared country, the network origin of the checkout — is captured against each order and kept. Domestic sales are unaffected.
It takes about ten seconds, and there is a short explanation on the screen where you do it. That explanation is the entire point of the feature.
There is a version of this product that turns everything on, looks more capable in a comparison table, and occasionally lands a merchant with a tax position they did not know they had taken.
We would rather be the one that made you click something.
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