Why a sale to an offshore buyer is treated differently, exactly what Inland Revenue asks you to be able to show, and why this is switched off until you decide otherwise.
A service supplied to someone who is not a New Zealand resident, and who is outside New Zealand when you supply it, is an exported service. Exported services are zero-rated — you charge no GST.
Zero-rated is not the same as exempt. A zero-rated supply is still a taxable supply, taxed at a rate of zero, which means you keep the ability to claim GST on your costs. Coding an export as exempt quietly writes off the GST on everything you buy to produce it.
Here is the guidance in full, from Inland Revenue’s page on zero-rated supplies, under Providing remote services to non-residents:
“To zero-rate the services, you need to be able to show that your customer is not a New Zealand resident. You can use your current systems or processes to confirm your customer’s residency, or you can use any 2 of the following pieces of evidence”.
Read the framing carefully, because it is commonly restated more strictly than it is written. It says you can use your existing systems, or you can use any two from the list. That is an accommodation offering a safe harbour, not a demand for two documents.
The first two items on that list exist for a few seconds during checkout and are then usually discarded. GoCushy keeps them on the order for the life of the order.
It cannot be reconstructed afterwards. You cannot return to an order from two years ago and work out whether that buyer was in Auckland or Adelaide. Whatever was stored is what you have.
It lives at Dashboard → Settings → Business & support, and it is off until you turn it on. While it is off, GoCushy refuses an order whose buyer states a country other than yours — at the point the order is created, not on the page, where a hidden field could be edited.
Two consequences worth knowing before you rely on it:
It is also inert until you have set your own tax country, because until then there is no “overseas” for it to mean.
Selling outside New Zealand changes your GST treatment, and depending on what and where you sell it can create registration obligations in the buyer’s country. Several jurisdictions tax digital sales to their residents from the first dollar.
Every other checkout enables everything and calls it flexibility. We think a setting that changes your tax position should be a decision you made, on a day you chose, rather than something you discover inside a return. Dashboard → Settings → Business & support.
This is not a common source of trouble, and we are not going to imply otherwise. In public New Zealand discussions you will find practitioners reporting thirteen and twenty years of zero-rated exporting without ever being asked to substantiate it.
The argument for keeping the record is not fear. It is that the cheapest moment to keep it is the moment it exists, and that moment is very short.
General information about how GoCushy behaves, correct as at 19 August 2026. It is not tax advice about your circumstances — your accountant knows those and we do not.
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