Do I Need an ABN to Sell on eBay Australia? (2026)
Part of the guide: Do I need to register?
No — not in order to list. No Australian law makes an Australian Business Number a condition of selling on a marketplace. But once what you’re doing amounts to carrying on an enterprise, yes, you need one, and that call belongs to the ATO rather than to eBay.
That’s the whole answer. Everything below is about working out which of those two you actually are, because the same eBay account, with the same listings, can sit on either side of the line depending on how the selling is done.
| ABN and eBay Australia in one line | |
|---|---|
| To open an account or list | No ABN required by Australian tax law |
| Once you’re carrying on an enterprise | Yes — and the ABN is free |
| Who decides | The ATO and the ABR, on the enterprise test — not eBay, and not your sales figure alone |
| Selling your own possessions | Not an enterprise, at any dollar figure |
| What the ABN unlocks | GST registration — you can’t register without one |
| GST turnover trigger | A$75,000, and within 21 days of being required |
| eBay Store subscription | Changes nothing in the tax test |
| Overseas sellers | Where the stock sits when it sells decides everything |
(General information for FY 2026–27, not tax advice for your circumstances. Checked on 25 September 2026 against abr.gov.au on ABN entitlement and ato.gov.au on registering for GST. eBay’s own seller terms are a separate matter and are yours to check — nothing here quotes them.)
1. Do I need an ABN to sell on eBay Australia?
Not to list. Entitlement to an ABN turns on the ABR’s test, which has three grounds: you’re carrying on or starting an enterprise in Australia, you’re making supplies connected with Australia’s indirect tax zone, or you’re a Corporations Act company. If none of those describes you, you don’t need an ABN to sell on eBay — and you’re not entitled to one either.
That last part is the half people skip. The ABR states it plainly: “Not everyone is entitled to an ABN.” And it attaches a warning that has teeth — “You may face prosecution or criminal charges if you apply for an ABN, register for GST and claim GST refunds when you’re not entitled.”
Getting an ABN “just to be safe” is therefore not the harmless bit of admin it looks like. When you apply, you’re asked questions designed to establish whether you’re carrying on an enterprise. And the ABR can review it later: “You may be subject to an ABN entitlement review at any time. If we conduct a review, you’ll be asked to provide evidence that you commenced, or took steps to commence, your business or enterprise from the start date provided in your ABN application.”
An ABN you can’t justify is a liability, not a precaution.
The 47% myth, dealt with early
A lot of eBay sellers have heard that “without an ABN they take 47%”, and worry about their payouts.
That rule is real but it’s somewhere else. Where an Australian business pays more than A$75 (excluding GST) for a supply and the supplier hasn’t quoted an ABN, the payer must withhold 47% of the invoice. It’s a business-to-business rule about invoices. A consumer buying your listing isn’t paying for a supply to their enterprise, so ordinary eBay consumer sales aren’t in it, and your eBay payouts aren’t reduced by it. If you also wholesale to Australian businesses, that’s when it matters — our article on no-ABN withholding covers that side.
2. Where’s the line between a hobby and a business?
The ABR is direct that “there is no single test to determine if you’re carrying on a business”. It lists six features instead, and the question is what they look like taken together.
| The ABR’s indicator | What it looks like on eBay |
|---|---|
| A significant commercial activity, involving commercial sales, of a reasonable size and scale | Volume and continuity — a stocked catalogue rather than a shrinking pile |
| An intention to make a profit, demonstrated by a business plan — “unlike with a hobby” | You buy in order to sell at a margin. This is the sharpest divider of the six |
| The activity is repeated | Weekly or monthly listing cycles, restocking, repeat lines |
| Systematic, organised, business-like, with records kept | Sourcing process, pricing method, stock records, bookkeeping |
| Carried on in a similar way to others in the industry | You operate like the other sellers in your category |
| Relevant knowledge or skill | You know the product, the market and the margins |
Two sellers, side by side
Seller A lists 40 things from the garage over a year — old camera gear, a bike, furniture from a move. It raises A$6,000. Nothing is bought to replace it, there’s no plan, and when the garage is empty the selling stops. That fails every indicator. It isn’t an enterprise, and the A$6,000 doesn’t change that. No ABN needed.
Seller B is the same person eighteen months later, buying pallets of retail returns, testing and photographing them, listing on a weekly cycle, tracking margin by category. It turns over A$90,000 a year. Significant, repeated, systematic, run for profit, done the way others in the trade do it. That’s an enterprise. ABN required — and because turnover is over A$75,000, GST registration too.
“But I sold A$20,000 of my own furniture”
Still not an enterprise. The dollar figure is not one of the six indicators. Selling your own possessions — however valuable, however many, however long it takes — is a private or domestic activity. The ATO puts the exclusions the same way: most activities are enterprises “if they are not: private or domestic; private recreational pursuits; hobbies.”
What matters is whether you acquired the things in order to sell them.
If you cross the line mid-year
People rarely notice the moment. The practical marker is when you start buying stock to resell: that is usually when the profit intention becomes demonstrable, and it’s the date the ABR will ask about if it ever reviews your entitlement. Apply from that date rather than backdating to something convenient or starting from “today” when the trading plainly began months ago.
3. What does an ABN actually get you — and what does it cost?
The ABN itself is free. What it unlocks is GST registration, and standard GST registration is what turns the GST on your stock, freight and platform fees from a cost into a credit.
The sequence is fixed. The ATO: “Before you register, you need to have an Australian business number (ABN).” No ABN, no GST registration — and therefore no input tax credits, whatever you’re paying GST on.
When GST registration is required
You must register once your business has a GST turnover of A$75,000 or more, or when you start a new business and expect to reach the threshold in the first year. Other triggers exist — A$150,000 for non-profits, taxi and ride-sourcing at any turnover, and claiming fuel tax credits — but for eBay sellers the A$75,000 line is the one.
Two timing rules matter more than sellers expect:
- “Once you are required to register for GST, you need to do so within 21 days.” Not at the end of the quarter, and not when your accountant next gets in touch.
- “If you choose to register, generally you must stay registered for at least 12 months.” Voluntary registration is a twelve-month commitment, not a switch you flick when it suits.
Note the threshold isn’t indexed, so it may change by announcement rather than drifting with inflation — confirm the current figure before you rely on it.
The two sides of registering
What you gain. Input tax credits on creditable acquisitions — the GST inside your cost of goods, your inbound freight, your packaging, your subscriptions and your platform fees. For a seller with real stock purchases, this is the whole reason the registration exists.
What you take on. You charge GST within your prices, which on a consumer marketplace usually means absorbing it rather than adding it, since buyers compare the displayed price. You lodge a BAS on your cycle, you keep records that support every credit, and you stay in the system for at least a year.
That trade is why voluntary registration below the threshold is a real decision rather than an obvious one. A seller buying stock at scale and still under A$75,000 can be better off registered. A seller with low input costs — flipping items bought privately with no GST inside them — usually isn’t, because there are few credits to recover and the GST sits in prices that can’t easily be raised.
4. Do you need one for an eBay Store?
No. An eBay Store is a pricing plan. It is not a legal status, and subscribing to one doesn’t create a tax obligation or remove one.
The question comes up constantly, and the reason is correlation rather than cause. People who pay for a store subscription are usually the people listing continuously, holding stock and running to a margin — which is to say, people who already meet the enterprise test through what they’re doing. The store didn’t put them there. Their operation did.
It runs the other way too. A casual seller who buys a store for the listing allowance during one big clear-out has not acquired an obligation. The test looks at the activity: is it significant, repeated, systematic, profit-directed, run like others in the trade?
So the honest answer to “do I need an ABN for an eBay Store” is: work out whether you’re carrying on an enterprise, and ignore the subscription entirely when you do it. If the answer is yes, you needed the ABN with or without the store.
5. What changes if you’re selling into Australia from overseas?
One fact decides it: where your stock sits at the moment it sells.
Stock already in Australia
Goods sitting in an Australian warehouse or 3PL when they sell are not imports. They’re ordinary domestic supplies made by you, in Australia. That puts you on the second ABR entitlement ground — making supplies connected with Australia’s indirect tax zone — so you are entitled to an ABN, and generally you need one, with standard GST registration behind it.
Standard, specifically. Simplified GST registration, the lighter path built for overseas sellers, is not available to a non-resident that imports and warehouses goods in Australia, and it can’t claim input tax credits at all. If you’re paying GST at the border on inbound stock, simplified registration means never getting it back.
Goods posted from overseas
Where you ship directly to Australian consumers and the goods have a customs value of A$1,000 or less, the low value imported goods rules apply: eBay, as the operator of the electronic distribution platform, is treated as the supplier and collects the GST. Those sales count toward eBay’s turnover, not yours — which means they generally don’t push you toward the A$75,000 threshold, and for a seller doing nothing else there may be no Australian registration at all.
Our article on whether eBay charges GST in Australia covers that mechanism from the platform side.
The mixed model, which is most people
Most overseas sellers end up running both: some stock held locally for fast delivery, some items posted direct. Map each channel separately rather than applying one answer to the whole account. The locally held stock is yours to account for; the direct-shipped low-value parcels are eBay’s. Sellers who apply the platform’s treatment across everything end up under-reporting their domestic sales; sellers who apply their own treatment across everything end up collecting GST twice on the same goods.
One practical note if you’re applying from overseas: the ATO flags that non-residents face different proof-of-identity requirements. That evidence, not the online form, is what decides whether the application succeeds — see our article on certified identity documents for non-resident ABN applications.
Where it’s worth getting help
If you’re clearly one thing or the other, this is a ten-minute job you can do yourself. A genuine hobby seller needs nothing and should apply for nothing. A clear trader applies for the free ABN, and registers for GST when turnover reaches the threshold.
The middle is where it’s worth a professional view:
- Has the side hustle already crossed the line — and from when? The start date on an ABN application is a statement you may be asked to evidence. Getting it approximately right is worth more than getting it quickly.
- Should you register for GST before the threshold? It depends on how much GST sits inside your costs, and on whether your prices can carry it.
- What if the crossing was a while ago? Registering late is a fixable problem, but the fix involves working out what should have been reported and when.
- Overseas, with stock moving between the two models? The channel mapping, the registration type and the import GST credit all have to line up, and the wrong registration type is only discovered when you try to claim.
That’s the difference between doing it and doing it right the first time: a seller who registers with the wrong registration type discovers it at the first bulk import, when the border GST turns out not to be recoverable.
If you’d like that looked at properly, our initial assessment form scopes it in about twelve questions — what you sell, where you get it, where it’s stored — without needing a meeting.
FY 2026–27. General information, not tax advice for your circumstances. Whether you are carrying on an enterprise depends on your own facts taken together. Rules quoted are the published ABR and ATO settings as at 25 September 2026; the A$75,000 GST registration turnover threshold is not indexed — confirm the current figure. eBay’s own seller requirements are separate from the tax position and are yours to check with the platform.
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