GST on Shopify Fees and Subscriptions in Australia: What Carries It, What Doesn't (2026)

Shopify takes money from you in two places: the monthly bill for the plan, and a slice of every order before the payout lands. GST behaves differently in each. The subscription carries 10% GST until you put a GST-registered ABN on file, and then it doesn’t. The Shopify Payments processing fee has 10% GST built in whether or not your ABN is on file, and the only way to get that back is to claim it. For a store based outside Australia, neither applies. Two settings sort all of it, and for a small store they’re worth about A$580 a year.

Fee	GST?	What to do
Shopify subscription (Basic, Grow, Advanced, Plus)	10% if your store is based in Australia, unless a GST-registered ABN is on file	Add your ABN in Settings > Billing once you’re registered
Shipping labels bought through Shopify	Same as the subscription	Same
Shopify Payments processing fees (the % + 30¢ per order)	10% GST included in every fee, ABN or not	Claim it back at 1B, from the monthly invoice in Documents
Third-party transaction fees (2%, 1%, 0.6%, 0.2%)	Land on the Shopify bill	Read the GST line on the bill after adding your ABN
Apps, themes, domains	Land on the Shopify bill	Same
Any of the above, store based outside Australia	No Australian GST	Nothing to claim; your GST question is the sales

(General information for FY 2026–27, not tax advice for your circumstances. Shopify’s published rules and the ATO’s were checked on 15 September 2026; Shopify can change its billing at any time, so read your own bill.)

1. Is there GST on Shopify fees in Australia?

Yes, but not on every fee in the same way. If your store is based in Australia, Shopify charges 10% GST on the subscription and on shipping labels, and stops charging it on invoices issued after you add your ABN and confirm you’re GST-registered. Shopify Payments processing fees are different: Shopify says “GST at the current rate of 10% is included in all Shopify Payments processing fees”, with no ABN exemption. If your store is based outside Australia, Shopify doesn’t charge Australian GST on either.

The reason the two fees behave differently is where each one sits.

The subscription is on your Shopify bill. Shopify treats it as a digital service sold to an Australian customer, and Australian GST law says an overseas supplier doesn’t charge GST to a customer who is a GST-registered business and has said so. The ABN setting is how you say so.
Shopify Payments fees never appear on the bill. They’re “deducted from your payouts rather than billed on your Shopify bill”, and Shopify Payments in Australia is only offered to businesses registered here with an Australian bank account. It’s a domestic supply to a domestic business, so the 10% stays in the fee and comes back, if at all, as a GST credit on your BAS.

Everything else on the bill (third-party transaction fees, app subscriptions, themes, domains) travels with the bill. Shopify’s Australian page only names the subscription and shipping labels, so the practical rule is: after your ABN is on file, read the GST line on the next bill.

2. Does the Shopify subscription have GST?

Yes, 10%, if your store is based in Australia, and no once your ABN is on file. Shopify’s own wording: “If your store is based in Australia, then you’re subject to a 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) on your Shopify subscription and any shipping labels. However, you don’t have to pay this GST if you register for Australian GST and add your Australian Business Number (ABN) to your Shopify store.”

On the Basic plan paid monthly (A$56 a month on Shopify’s Australian pricing page) that’s A$5.60 a month, A$67.20 a year. On the yearly rate (A$42 a month) it’s A$50.40 a year. Small, but it’s the same A$5.60 every month for as long as the store runs.

How to switch it off. From your Shopify admin: Settings > Billing > Billing profile. In the Tax registration section, click “Yes, I’m GST registered”, enter your ABN and click Add ABN.

Three things about the setting are worth knowing before you touch it.

It isn’t retroactive. “This GST exemption only applies to invoices issued after you add your ABN to your account. It doesn’t apply to any invoices that are pending or unpaid at the time you register your ABN.” Add the ABN the day the registration comes through, not at year end.
An ABN alone isn’t enough. The button says “Yes, I’m GST registered” because that is the test. The ATO’s rule for overseas suppliers of digital services is that a business that gives its ABN and states it is registered for GST shouldn’t be charged; a business that isn’t registered “will need to pay GST on the purchase”. Many stores have an ABN and no GST registration. For them the 10% is correct, and it’s a cost, because only a registered business can claim GST credits.
Don’t tick the box if you aren’t registered. The ATO is explicit: “Penalties can apply if you provide false information to a supplier, such as quoting an ABN when you are not GST-registered.”

Why an ABN removes the GST at all. Since 1 July 2017 overseas suppliers of services and digital products have had to charge Australian GST to Australian consumers. The same rules deliberately leave GST-registered businesses out: the ATO says the law “ensures that if your business is registered for GST you will be in the same net GST position when purchasing imported services, digital products and low value imported goods as if you purchased them in Australia”, and that “overseas suppliers are not unnecessarily drawn into the Australian GST system”. You’d only have to pay GST yourself under the reverse charge if you couldn’t have claimed a full credit anyway, for example on private use. A subscription for a business storefront is a business cost, so for a registered store the answer is simply: no GST, nothing to claim, nothing to reverse-charge.

3. Do Shopify transaction fees have GST?

“Transaction fee” means two different charges on Shopify, and they carry GST differently. Shopify Payments processing fees (the percentage plus 30¢ taken out of each order) include 10% GST in every fee, ABN or not: Shopify’s statement is “In Australia, GST at the current rate of 10% is included in all Shopify Payments processing fees.” Third-party transaction fees, the 2%, 1%, 0.6% or 0.2% Shopify charges when you use another payment provider, are billed on your Shopify bill and follow the bill.

	Shopify Payments processing fee	Third-party transaction fee
When	You use Shopify Payments	You use another gateway (Stripe, PayPal, Afterpay direct, etc.)
How much	From 1.75% + 30¢ per domestic online card payment on Basic; lower rates on Grow, Advanced and Plus; international cards from 3.5% + 30¢	2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced, 0.2% on Plus, on top of the gateway’s own fee
Where it’s taken	Out of the payout before it reaches your bank	On the monthly Shopify bill
GST	10% included in every fee, no ABN exemption	Carried on the bill; check the GST line after your ABN is on file
Evidence	Monthly invoice under Settings > Payments > View payouts > Documents	The Shopify bill

Two points that trip merchants up.

The 10% is inside the fee, not on top of it. A A$470 month of processing fees is A$427.27 of fee and A$42.73 of GST. To find the GST in any Shopify Payments figure, divide by 11.
Adding your ABN doesn’t remove it. Merchants who’ve watched the subscription GST disappear expect the processing-fee GST to follow, and it doesn’t. That isn’t Shopify getting it wrong. It’s the difference between an overseas digital subscription (no GST to a registered business) and a payment service supplied inside Australia (GST, then a credit).

The other gateway’s own fee is that provider’s business: some carry GST, some don’t, and the provider’s tax invoice tells you which.

4. Can you claim the GST on Shopify fees back?

Yes, if you hold standard GST registration and the fees are for your business. The GST inside Shopify Payments processing fees, and any GST still showing on your Shopify bill, goes in at 1B on your BAS as a GST credit. If you aren’t registered, none of it comes back, so the honest total cost of Shopify for an unregistered store is 10% higher than the price list.

The ATO’s conditions for a credit are that you’re registered for GST, the purchase is for your business, the price included GST, and “you have a tax invoice from your supplier (for purchases more than A$82.50)”. A month of Shopify Payments fees clears A$82.50 on almost any live store, so the document matters.

Where the evidence is.

Shopify Payments fees: Settings > Payments > View payouts > Documents. Shopify generates one invoice per month on the 5th of the following month (June’s arrives on 5 July), and “each invoice includes the total GST paid on transaction fees for all orders made in your store that month”. Only the store owner can see this section. It runs on UTC, so a transaction late on the last day of a Melbourne month can land in the next invoice.
The alternative: View payouts > Transactions > Export gives a CSV with a GST column; sum it. This one uses your store’s time zone.
The Shopify bill for the subscription, apps, third-party transaction fees and labels: Settings

Billing > Bills.

Check that whatever you download reads as a tax invoice: the ATO wants the supplier’s identity and ABN, the date, a description, and the GST amount or the words “Total price includes GST”. Note the ATO’s own caveat for the subscription side: “A supplier is not required to provide a tax invoice for sales of imported services, digital products and low value imported goods.” That’s another reason the ABN setting is the right fix for the subscription. Once it’s on file there’s no GST on it, so there’s nothing to document.

Worked, for a A$20,000-a-month store on Basic. Four hundred domestic online orders at 1.75% + 30¢: A$350 + A$120 = A$470 of processing fees a month. GST inside: A$470 ÷ 11 = A$42.73 a month, A$512.76 a year at 1B. Add the A$67.20 a year of subscription GST that the ABN setting switches off, and the two settings are worth about A$580 a year. At A$100,000 a month in 2,000 orders, the processing-fee GST alone is A$213.64 a month, about A$2,560 a year.

The period. On a cash basis the credit goes in the BAS for the period you paid; on accruals, the period the invoice was issued or you paid, but not before you hold the tax invoice. Missed one? A credit can still be claimed within four years. And if Shopify charged GST on a subscription invoice before your ABN was on file, the ATO’s guidance is to seek the refund from the supplier, not to claim it on the BAS unless you hold a valid tax invoice showing the supplier’s ABN.

5. What if your Shopify store is based outside Australia?

Then Shopify doesn’t charge you Australian GST on the subscription, you almost certainly aren’t on Shopify Payments Australia, and there is nothing to claim. Shopify bills according to where the store is based, and its Australian GST page opens with “If your store is based in Australia”. A store registered to a US, UK, Chinese or Singapore address gets that country’s tax treatment on its bill, not ours.

The processing-fee side follows the same logic. Shopify Payments in Australia requires a bank account “with a bank in Australia in AUD currency”, a sole trader who lives in Australia, or a company or partnership registered in Australia with an Australian business address. An overseas seller without an Australian entity runs Shopify Payments in its home country, or a third-party gateway, and those fees carry the home country’s rules.

So for an overseas seller the fees are the easy part. The Australian GST question is on the sales: Shopify is not a marketplace and does not collect or remit GST on your Australian orders for you. If your Australian sales may reach A$75,000 of GST turnover in a rolling twelve months (the threshold isn’t indexed, so confirm the current figure), registration is your call to make and your BAS to lodge. Who collects it is covered in Does Shopify collect GST for Australian orders?, and registration in GST registration for non-resident sellers.

If you do set up an Australian entity, an Australian bank account and Shopify Payments Australia, you’ve become an Australian-based store for Shopify’s purposes, and sections 2 to 4 apply to you in full: ABN into the billing profile on day one, and the monthly Documents invoice into every BAS.

Two settings, once

You can do all of this yourself. Register for GST, paste the ABN into Settings > Billing, download the Documents PDF on the 6th of each month, divide by 11, and enter it at 1B. None of it is hard.

What goes wrong is timing and habit. The ABN goes in months after registration and the subscription GST for those months is gone, because Shopify won’t refund invoices already issued. The Documents PDF gets downloaded for three months and then doesn’t, and the credit sits unclaimed until someone notices. Or the box gets ticked by a store that has an ABN but was never registered, which the ATO treats as false information to a supplier.

A registered agent makes it boring: the ABN goes into the billing profile the day the registration is issued, the Shopify Payments invoice is pulled into every BAS with the rest of your inputs, and for an overseas seller the bigger question, whether an Australian entity and Shopify Payments Australia are worth having at all, gets answered once, with the numbers, instead of by accident. Right the first time, and then never thought about again.

General information only, current for FY 2026–27 and checked against Shopify’s Help Center and ATO guidance on 15 September 2026. Not tax advice for your circumstances. Shopify’s plan prices, processing rates and billing practices are Shopify’s and change from time to time; read your own bill and the Documents section of your admin. The A$75,000 GST registration threshold is not indexed; confirm the current figure. Epic Tax is a registered tax agent that sets up GST registration and BAS lodgment for Shopify stores in Australia and overseas.