Ecommerce business expenses in New Zealand: GST on imported goods and platform fees

A New Zealand online seller lives at the border. Stock arrives from offshore, platform fees are billed from abroad, and the GST treatment of both is where the books most often slip. New Zealand draws its import line at NZ$1,000, and which side a consignment lands on decides whether the offshore supplier or the Customs service collects the GST. All figures below are sourced from Inland Revenue guidance in the Sources section.

GST on imported goods: the NZ$1,000 line

Since 1 December 2019, offshore suppliers charge GST on low-value imported goods, which are physical goods valued at NZ$1,000 or less excluding GST ^[1] . For consignments above NZ$1,000, the New Zealand Customs Service collects GST and any duties at the border instead ^[1] .

Offshore suppliers must register once their supplies to New Zealand reach NZ$60,000 in a 12-month period ^[1] . For a domestic seller importing bulk stock, most commercial consignments exceed NZ$1,000, so Customs-collected GST is the everyday case.

Claiming the GST back

A GST-registered seller recovers the GST on imported stock used in its taxable activity. Where Customs collects the GST at the border, you claim it using the Customs import entry, not the overseas supplier’s invoice ^[1] . Where an offshore supplier charged GST at point of sale on a low-value parcel, keep that evidence so the GST is not charged a second time ^[1] . As elsewhere, the supplier invoice is the cost of goods and the GST claim attaches to the Customs document.

Marketplace and payment-processor fees

Selling and processing fees (Trade Me, Shopify, Stripe, PayPal) are operating expenses, not cost of goods sold. If the platform is registered for New Zealand GST, its fees include GST you can claim; if the fee is an imported service from an unregistered offshore supplier, the reverse charge under section 8(4B) can apply for some businesses. The invoice shows the supplier’s GST status.

Cost of goods versus operating expenses

Cost of goods sold is the purchase price of stock plus inbound freight and import duty. Marketplace fees, advertising, subscriptions, and packaging consumables are operating expenses. The distinction blurs when stock and fees both arrive as foreign-currency charges, yet it is exactly what reliable gross-margin reporting needs.

Foreign-currency records

Because so much of an online seller’s spend is in US dollars, yuan, or euros, the conversion to New Zealand dollars is a recurring task. GST returns are prepared in NZD, so each foreign-currency invoice has to be converted to a NZD amount on a consistent basis, and the converted figure is what flows into the return. Recording the original currency and the converted value side by side keeps the audit trail intact if Inland Revenue ever asks how a figure was reached.

Where ExpenseFlow fits

Ecommerce produces a steady flow of cross-border invoices in several currencies. ExpenseFlow captures each receipt and supplier invoice, extracts the line detail and the currency, and syncs the transaction into Xero or QuickBooks Online with the source image attached for the seven-year record-keeping window. Its cross-border checks flag a purchase from an offshore supplier that has not charged New Zealand GST, so it is recorded as a foreign-currency cost rather than wrongly treated as carrying a claimable credit, and they point you to the Customs import entry as the document the GST claim should hang off. It does not calculate import GST, file your GST return, or split cost of goods from operating expenses: those stay with you or your accountant. What it removes is the manual keying and currency handling behind a high-volume online ledger.

Common mistakes

• Claiming import GST from the overseas supplier’s invoice instead of the Customs import entry ^[1] .
• Paying GST twice, at sale and again at the border, by not keeping evidence that an offshore supplier already charged it ^[1] .
• Assuming every overseas platform fee carries claimable GST when an imported service may fall under section 8(4B).
• Leaving GST registration until after turnover has passed NZ$60,000 ^[2] .