Is an ABN the Same as a GST Number in Australia? What Amazon Asks For (2026)

No — and the cleaner answer is that Australia doesn’t have a separate GST number at all. The ABN is the identifier; registering for GST issues no new number, it just switches a status on against the ABN you already have. That status — publicly visible on ABN Lookup — is exactly what Amazon checks before it stops adding 10% to your seller fees.

One disambiguation up front, because half the people searching this phrase mean something else: India’s GSTIN, New Zealand’s GST number and the UK’s VAT number are separate national systems. This article is about Australia.

	The short version
ABN	The 11-digit identifier from the ABR — free, one for life, needed for business in Australia
GST registration	A status recorded against your ABN — no new number is issued
How anyone checks	ABN Lookup shows “Goods & Services Tax (GST): registered from …”
What Amazon asks for	An ABN its lookup check confirms is GST-registered
Without it	Fees are quoted “(excl. GST)” — the 10% goes on top
When mandatory	May be required at A$75,000 of GST turnover, within 21 days — ABN first
The one real “GST number”	The ARN — simplified registration for overseas sellers, no ABN attached

(General information for FY 2026–27, not tax advice for your circumstances. Simplified registration checked on 27 October 2026 against ato.gov.au; GST registration mechanics and the ABR’s entitlement grounds checked 12 October 2026; the Amazon fee treatment reflects Amazon’s published pricing read 7 September 2026 and the fee invoices we see as a registered tax agent — your own fee invoice is the authority for your account.)

1. Is an ABN the same as a GST number in Australia?

No. The ABN is an 11-digit identifier issued by the Australian Business Register — free, and yours for life once you’re entitled to it. GST registration is a separate step that issues no number of its own: it is recorded against your existing ABN. After you register, ABN Lookup — the public register anyone can search — shows a line under your ABN reading “Goods & Services Tax (GST): registered from” a date. That line is the whole of your “GST number”.

So the two things people conflate are really an identifier and a status:

• The ABN answers who you are to the ATO, to other businesses, and to platforms. You’re entitled to one if you’re carrying on or starting an enterprise in Australia, making supplies connected with Australia, or you’re a Corporations Act company — and the ABR is explicit that not everyone is entitled.
• GST registration answers whether you collect GST. It can exist only on top of an ABN — the ATO’s own registration page says plainly that you need an ABN before you register.

There is one genuine, separate GST number in the Australian system — the ARN, or ATO reference number, which overseas sellers get under simplified registration instead of an ABN. It has its own section below, because for Amazon sellers shipping in from overseas it’s often the right answer.

And if what you were actually searching for is the GST number you need to sell on Amazon India — that’s the GSTIN, a different country’s system entirely, and nothing on this page applies to it.

2. What does Amazon actually ask for — and what happens to your fees without it?

One thing: an ABN that Amazon’s automated check against ABN Lookup confirms is registered for GST. With that on file in Seller Central’s tax settings, Amazon stops adding 10% GST to your seller fees. Without it, the 10% goes on top of every fee — because Amazon publishes its Australian selling fees “(excl. GST)”. On the standard 15% referral rate, that’s an effective 16.5%; the Professional plan’s A$49.95 a month becomes A$54.95.

The mechanism is a 2017 rule about inbound services: a non-resident supplier’s services to an Australian business registered for GST aren’t treated as connected with Australia, so no GST is charged — but only where the registration is real and declared. Telling Amazon you’re GST-registered when you aren’t is providing false information to a supplier, and penalties apply. If you’re not registered, the fee GST you pay isn’t lost entirely — it’s deductible as part of the fee cost in your income tax return — but it isn’t a GST credit you can claim back.

Take Dan, selling phone accessories from Brisbane, A$52,000 of turnover in his first year. He has an ABN — he’s plainly in business — but he’s under the GST threshold and hasn’t registered. Amazon’s check finds the ABN isn’t GST-registered, so roughly A$780 of GST lands on his ~A$7,800 of referral and subscription fees for the year. Legal, and deductible — just a real cost of staying unregistered.

Selling from overseas? Your fees split differently — and this is a point we see settled on real client invoices rather than in any help page. For a non-resident seller outside Australia:

• Referral, subscription and advertising fees carry no GST. They’re services supplied to you alone, outside Australia.
• FBA fulfilment lines — inventory storage, pick & pack, shipping chargeback — carry 10% GST whether or not you’re registered, because they’re provided to goods and recipients inside Australia. On one representative monthly invoice: A$398.03 of FBA fees, A$39.74 of GST, every fulfilment line taxed.

Your own fee invoice is the authority for your account — the split is printed line by line. If you’re standard-registered (section 5), that fulfilment-fee GST becomes claimable.

3. When does GST registration become mandatory for an Amazon seller?

At A$75,000 of GST turnover it may be required — and once you’re required, you have 21 days to register. The ABN has to exist first. The threshold isn’t indexed, so it doesn’t creep up each year, and there are two ways to hit it: your current turnover (this month plus the previous 11) reaches A$75,000, or your projected turnover (this month plus the next 11) reasonably will. A new business expecting to cross in its first year is in from the start.

What counts toward the A$75,000 is where Amazon sellers get surprised, in both directions:

• It’s your whole GST turnover, not your Amazon turnover. An Australian seller’s eBay, Shopify and market-stall sales all stack into the same figure.
• For an overseas seller, sales where Amazon remits the GST as the platform don’t count. Low value imported goods — customs value A$1,000 or less, shipped from overseas to Australian consumers — are treated as Amazon’s supplies, and the ATO is explicit that platform-remitted sales stay out of your registration turnover.
• Sales of stock warehoused in Australia do count. The goods are here when they sell, so they’re your supplies connected with Australia — and they pull you toward standard registration (section 5).

Dan again, year two: wholesale orders lift his projected turnover to A$90,000. He may now need to register, within 21 days of forming that expectation — on the ABN he already has. No new number appears anywhere: ABN Lookup simply starts showing his GST line, Amazon’s next check finds it, and the 10% on his fees stops. The other side of the ledger starts too: 1/11 of every sale now goes to the ATO through his BAS, with credits back on his business inputs.

4. Is GST registration mandatory just to sell on Amazon Australia?

No. Amazon doesn’t require GST registration to open a seller account or to list, and no Australian law makes registration a condition of selling on a marketplace. Below A$75,000 of turnover, registration is your choice.

Whether the choice is worth making early is a numbers question, and for most consumer-facing sellers the answer is no:

• Registering voluntarily locks you in for at least 12 months.
• 1/11 of every sale goes to the ATO — out of prices your buyers compare with everyone else’s.
• Credits come back on inputs — stock, fees, packaging — which helps most when your inputs are heavy relative to sales.
• Stopping the 10% on Amazon fees is rarely reason enough on its own. Unregistered, that fee GST is still deductible as a cost; registering to save it means handing over 1/11 of revenue to reclaim a much smaller number.

The honest framing: under the threshold, stay out unless your input credits genuinely outweigh the GST you’d owe on sales — then register once, deliberately, when the numbers or the law say so.

5. Overseas seller: ARN or ABN — which “GST number” do you actually need?

Where your stock sits when it sells decides this. Three doors:

Door one — you sell only through Amazon, shipping parcels of A$1,000 or less from overseas. Amazon is the supplier for GST purposes: it collects at checkout and remits, and those sales don’t count toward your turnover. Many sellers in this position need no Australian number at all.

Door two — you also sell direct to Australian consumers from overseas (your own site), in imported goods at A$1,000 or less or digital products. Those are your supplies, and once they may reach A$75,000 projected, registration is on you. This is what simplified GST registration is for, and it’s where the ARN lives: the ATO issues an ATO reference number instead of an ABN. It’s deliberately light — you register online, you don’t have to prove your identity, you lodge and pay quarterly. The trade-offs are hard ones: as a limited registration entity you’re not entitled to an ABN, you can’t claim GST credits on anything, and you can’t issue tax invoices. Fast in, light to run, nothing back.

Door three — your stock is in an Australian warehouse (FBA Sydney, a 3PL). The goods are in Australia when they sell, so they’re your supplies connected with Australia — which is both your ABN entitlement ground and the reason simplified registration is no longer available for those sales. The path is the ABN, then standard GST registration once turnover may reach A$75,000 — and standard registration is where the money comes back: the import GST you paid bringing the stock in becomes a credit, and so does the 10% on your FBA fulfilment fees.

Mei, selling homewares from Shenzhen, walks through all three in two years: Amazon-only parcels (no number), then her own site (simplified, an ARN, quarterly returns), then A$20,000 of stock into FBA Sydney — at which point she applies for the ABN on the supplies-connected ground, registers standard, and claims back the ~A$2,000 of import GST the move cost her.

The free path is all of this done yourself: the ABN application through the ABR, simplified registration through the ATO’s online services for non-residents, standard registration on the ABN. Where a registered agent earns its fee is picking the right door the first time — a simplified registration unwound into a standard one, or an ABN application knocked back for claiming the wrong entitlement ground, costs months of back-and-forth with two regulators. We do this right-first-time for overseas sellers every week: what Amazon’s fee GST looks like line by line, how a non-resident actually gets an ABN, and the complete GST guide for non-resident Amazon sellers are the next reads if you’re mapping your own setup.

---

This is general information for FY 2026–27, not advice on your circumstances. The A$75,000 GST threshold is not indexed, but confirm the current figure before acting. Amazon’s tax settings and fee treatment are as published by Amazon and shown on seller invoices; your own account’s invoices govern.