Does Amazon collect GST for me on Australian sales?

Only on some sales — and almost certainly not the ones that matter to you. Amazon collects and remits GST on low value goods shipped from overseas to Australian consumers. The moment your stock sits in an Australian fulfilment centre, every sale from it is your own supply, connected with Australia — it counts towards your own registration threshold, and once you are registered or required to be, you charge the GST, you report it, you remit it. Amazon has no visibility into any of it.

“Amazon collects GST for me” is the single most common and most costly misconception among non-resident sellers into Australia. Here is precisely where the line sits.

(General information only, current at August 2026. Confirm your own position before acting.)

The rule in one table

Whether Amazon is liable turns on where the goods were when you sold them — not on which website took the order.

How the sale happened	Connected with Australia?	Who remits the GST
Sold from Australian stock (FBA or 3PL)	Yes — always	You, on your own BAS
Dispatched from overseas, goods A$1,000 or less each, via the marketplace	Yes	Amazon, as the platform operator
Dispatched from overseas, over A$1,000, customer imports	Generally no	Collected at the border from the importer
Dispatched from overseas, you import (DDP-style)	Yes	You
Sold through your own website, any value	Depends on the movement of goods	You

The two provisions doing the work

Section 9-25(1) of the GST Act. A supply of goods is connected with Australia if the goods are delivered, or made available, to the recipient in Australia. Stock in an Australian fulfilment centre is in Australia when the customer buys it. Every one of those sales is a connected supply of yours.

Subdivision 84-C and section 84-81. For low value imported goods — goods with a customs value of A$1,000 or less each, shipped from overseas to Australian consumers — the operator of the electronic distribution platform is treated as the supplier. The sale counts towards Amazon’s turnover, and Amazon remits. This regime has applied since 1 July 2018 and is explained in the ATO’s rulings LCR 2018/1 and LCR 2018/2.

Read together, the boundary is clean: the platform deeming rule covers only the low value offshore leg. Once the goods are already in Australia, section 9-25(1) applies, the low-value rules are irrelevant, and the supply is yours.

Why this costs so much

An FBA seller reading their Amazon reports sees GST line items and concludes it is handled. It is not, and three things follow.

Your registration threshold is running. Sales from Australian stock count towards your own GST turnover. Once your Australian-connected turnover reaches A$75,000 — measured over the current month plus the past 11, or the current month plus the next 11, whichever gets there first — you are required to register, and section 25-1 gives you 21 days to apply.

You are not collecting output GST you owe. Once you are registered — or were required to be — every domestic FBA sale carries a GST liability that you have been treating as Amazon’s. That liability does not disappear because you did not notice it.

You are not recovering border GST either. If you import stock, you are paying 10% at the Australian border. On A$300,000 of imports a year that is roughly A$30,000 — recoverable only if you hold standard GST registration and are the importer of record. A seller who believes Amazon handles their GST is generally not registered, and so recovers none of it.

The arithmetic usually runs in your favour once you look at it. For an importing seller, registration is frequently self-funding: the credits recovered exceed the cost of complying.

The opposite mistake: charging twice

Mixed-channel sellers make the reverse error. They discover the obligation, then apply GST across the whole account — including the offshore low-value sales where Amazon is already remitting. That is tax collected twice on the same supply.

There is rarely one GST answer that covers a whole business. Map your channels individually: your own website, each marketplace, each fulfilment path. Sellers with a mix routinely find one leg handled correctly and every other leg exposed.

The question Amazon cannot answer for you

Amazon knows what it sold and how it shipped. It does not know your total Australian-connected turnover across all channels, it does not know your import values, and it cannot lodge your BAS. The obligation to work out whether you must register — and then to charge, report and remit correctly — is entirely self-assessed.

That is not a gap in Amazon’s service. It is how the GST system is built: the deeming rule in Subdivision 84-C solves a specific problem (offshore consumer parcels) and does not purport to solve yours.

What to do next

Pull your Australian marketplace reports and split them three ways: sales fulfilled from Australian stock, offshore dispatches of goods at A$1,000 or less each, and offshore dispatches above that. Add your own-website sales. The first group is the one that determines your registration position — and it is the group most sellers have never separated out.

Then add up what you have paid in GST at the border over the last twelve months. That figure is what non-registration has cost you.

Our free 2-minute GST registration check walks the first question. If you already know the answer is yes and want the registration and BAS cycle run properly, that is AusTax Bridge.

General information only, current at August 2026. It does not take your circumstances into account. GST outcomes for non-residents turn on the specific facts of your supply chain and sales channels, and rates and rules can change. Confirm your position with a registered tax agent before acting.