Two settings screens cause more headaches for new Australian store owners than anything else in Shopify: taxes and shipping. Get them wrong and you’ll either eat 10% out of every sale you make or quietly overcharge customers at checkout, and you usually won’t find out until your accountant asks a pointed question in July. This guide walks through Shopify shipping and GST in Australia the way we set it up for our clients: what to switch on, what to leave alone, and the handful of decisions that actually affect your margin. It’s general information rather than tax advice, so run your final setup past your accountant before you launch.
Do You Actually Need to Charge GST?
You must register for GST once your turnover hits $75,000 in any rolling 12-month period. That’s turnover, not profit, and it’s a rolling figure rather than a financial-year one, so a strong Christmas can tip you over in February even if the previous July was quiet.
Below $75,000 registration is optional. Plenty of new store owners register voluntarily anyway, because once you’re registered you can claim GST credits on business expenses: your Shopify subscription, apps, Google Ads spend, packaging, the lot. Whether that beats the 10% you’ll start charging depends on your margins and how much you’re spending to grow. If you’re pre-revenue and buying inventory and advertising heavily, voluntary registration often works in your favour. If you’re a low-cost service or digital seller with minimal expenses, it usually doesn’t.
One thing to decide early: registering later means repricing your entire catalogue or absorbing the 10%. Switching a $50 product to $55 six months in is a harder conversation with customers than starting at $55. If you’re still costing out the build, our breakdown of what a Shopify store costs in Australia covers where GST sits in the numbers.
Turning On GST in Your Shopify Tax Settings
Head to Settings → Taxes and duties → Australia. Set the country tax rate to 10%. In the region list underneath, leave every state and territory at 0%. Australian GST is federal, so the states inherit the country rate. Adding 10% at both levels is the single most common setup error we see, and it silently charges 20% at checkout.
Then check your product tax settings. Most physical goods are taxable, but GST-free items exist: basic food, most medical and health products, and some educational course material. If you sell any of these, untick Charge tax on this product on those specific products rather than trying to solve it with a tax override at the store level.
For a full walkthrough of the tax screens as Shopify has them laid out, Shopify Australia keeps its own help documentation current, and it’s worth reading alongside this.
GST-Inclusive Pricing: What Australian Shoppers Expect
Australian consumer law requires displayed prices to include GST. In practice that means your product price is the price: a $55 item is $55 at checkout, made up of $50 plus $5 GST.
In Shopify, turn on All prices include tax under your tax settings. Shopify then works backwards from your listed price to calculate the GST component for your reporting, rather than adding 10% on top at checkout. If you’ve imported a product catalogue from a US-based supplier or theme demo, this setting is frequently off by default, which is how stores end up showing $50 on the product page and $55 at checkout. That mismatch is one of the more reliable ways to lose a sale in the final step.
Set it once, then place a $1 test order and check the confirmation email shows the tax component broken out. Two minutes of testing saves a lot of reconciliation later.
Add Your ABN So Shopify Stops Charging You GST
This one’s easy money and most store owners miss it. Go to Settings → Billing → Billing profile → Tax registration, confirm you’re GST registered, and enter your ABN. From your next invoice onward, Shopify stops charging GST on your subscription, transaction fees and Shopify-billed apps.
If you’re already registered and haven’t done this, you’ve been paying 10% on top of your platform costs unnecessarily. On a $200-a-month stack that’s $240 a year.
Setting Up Shopify Shipping Zones and Profiles for Australia
Shopify’s shipping model has two layers, and understanding the difference saves a lot of frustration.
Shipping zones are geographic: Australia, New Zealand, rest of world. Shipping profiles are product-based, a way to give certain products their own rates. Most stores need one general profile. You need a second profile when some products behave differently: bulky furniture, cold-chain goods, or a heavy trade item that would bankrupt you under a flat national rate.
A Sensible Starting Structure
For a typical Australian store selling parcels under 5 kg, this covers it:
- Zone 1 (Australia): your main rates, split by order value or weight
- Zone 2 (New Zealand): flat rate, GST-free (an export)
- Zone 3 (rest of world): flat rate or disabled until you’re ready
Add a separate profile only when a product genuinely breaks your standard rates. Two well-configured profiles beat six you can’t remember the logic behind. If you’re setting the store up from scratch, work through our full Shopify setup guide for Australian businesses first and come back to shipping once your products are loaded.
Don’t Forget Remote and Regional Postcodes
Shipping to Broken Hill costs meaningfully more than shipping across Brisbane. If you’re using flat rates and you sell anything heavy, either build a regional rate band or accept that remote orders will run at a loss. Carrier-calculated rates handle this automatically, which is often reason enough to use them.
Choosing Your Shipping Rates
You have four practical options, and the right one depends on how variable your products are.
| Rate type | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Flat rate (e.g. $9.95) | Consistent product sizes and weights | You lose money on heavy or remote orders |
| Carrier-calculated (live rates) | Mixed catalogues, heavy items | Rates can surprise customers at checkout |
| Free over a threshold | Almost every store, as a top tier | Needs a threshold that protects margin |
| Free shipping on everything | High-margin, low-weight products | Cost is buried in your product price |
Unexpected shipping cost at checkout remains the leading cause of cart abandonment, so the question isn’t whether to offer free shipping but where to set the bar. A common approach for Australian stores is free shipping over $75 or $99, chosen to sit just above the average order value so it nudges customers to add one more item.
On carriers: Australia Post is now the backbone of domestic Shopify shipping for most Australian sellers, particularly for rural and regional addresses where courier networks thin out. The local carrier landscape shifted in early 2026, so check which carriers are currently available for label purchasing in your Shopify admin rather than relying on an older guide. Shopify Shipping discounts on retail rates are worth having if your volume justifies it.
Does GST Apply to Shipping? Yes
Freight charged to an Australian customer is subject to GST at 10%, the same as the goods. So your $9.95 shipping charge is GST-inclusive: $9.05 plus 90c of GST.
In Shopify, this is controlled by Charge tax on shipping rates in your tax settings. Turn it on for Australian orders. If it’s off, you’re absorbing the GST on every shipping charge you collect, and the shortfall only shows up when you lodge your BAS.
The one exception worth knowing: if the goods themselves are GST-free, the freight for those goods generally is too.
Selling Overseas: GST-Free Exports and Import Duties
Goods you export from Australia are generally GST-free, provided they leave within 60 days. Shopify handles this correctly once your tax settings are configured, because tax is applied per zone, so your New Zealand and international zones simply won’t add GST.
If you’re shipping to New Zealand, be aware their GST rules can require you to register and collect NZ GST once you cross their low-value goods threshold. Same story for the UK and EU. Don’t assume Australian settings cover you the moment international orders start scaling; it’s a separate registration in each market.
You can also enable duties and import taxes at checkout so international customers see the landed cost upfront instead of getting an unpleasant surprise from a courier a fortnight later. That transparency reduces refused deliveries, which are far more expensive than the duty itself.
A Real Example
A Gold Coast homewares client came to us doing about $18,000 a month with a suspiciously thin margin. Three problems, all in settings: prices weren’t marked GST-inclusive so they were absorbing 10% on every order, tax on shipping was switched off, and a flat $12 national rate meant every WA order lost money.
We turned on inclusive pricing, enabled tax on shipping rates, split the domestic zone into metro and regional bands, and set free shipping at $120 against an average order value of $94. Average order value moved to $108 within six weeks and the margin problem resolved itself. Nothing was rebuilt — it was four settings and a threshold that made sense for their numbers.
The Bottom Line
GST setup is a one-off job you should do properly before your first sale: 10% at country level only, states at zero, inclusive pricing on, tax on shipping on, and your ABN in your billing profile. Shipping is the ongoing decision — start with a flat rate plus a free-shipping threshold above your average order value, then move to carrier-calculated rates as your catalogue gets more varied.
If you’d rather have someone configure it and test it against real orders, our team handles Shopify store setup end to end, and we build Shopify stores for Australian retailers from scratch when a theme won’t cut it. Once the store is trading, Shopify SEO and Google Ads are where the volume comes from, and if your wider site needs work too, that’s what our Gold Coast web design and search marketing teams do. Already have a store that’s been running on default settings for a while? A one-hour audit usually pays for itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to charge GST on my Shopify store in Australia?
You must charge GST once your turnover exceeds $75,000 in any rolling 12-month period. Below that threshold, GST registration is optional. Many new store owners register voluntarily so they can claim GST credits on business expenses like their Shopify subscription, apps and advertising, though this only pays off if those expenses are significant.
How do I set up GST in Shopify?
Go to Settings → Taxes and duties → Australia and set the country tax rate to 10%, leaving each state and territory at 0%. Australian GST is federal, so states inherit the country rate. Entering 10% at both levels charges customers 20%. Then enable “All prices include tax” so displayed prices are GST-inclusive as Australian law requires.
Does GST apply to shipping charges in Australia?
Yes. Freight charged to Australian customers attracts GST at 10%, the same rate as the goods being shipped. A $9.95 shipping charge is therefore $9.05 plus 90c GST. Enable “Charge tax on shipping rates” in your Shopify tax settings, otherwise you’ll absorb that GST yourself and find the shortfall at BAS time.
Should Shopify prices include GST in Australia?
Yes. Australian consumer law requires advertised prices to include GST, so a product listed at $55 must cost $55 at checkout. Turn on “All prices include tax” in Shopify’s tax settings, which makes Shopify calculate the GST component out of your listed price rather than adding 10% on top at checkout.
How do I stop Shopify charging me GST on my subscription?
Add your ABN under Settings → Billing → Billing profile → Tax registration and confirm you’re GST registered. From the next invoice onward, Shopify won’t charge GST on your subscription, transaction fees or Shopify-billed apps. On a $200 monthly platform spend, that’s roughly $240 saved each year.
What’s the best shipping rate structure for an Australian Shopify store?
Most Australian stores do well with a flat domestic rate around $9.95–$12.95 plus free shipping above a threshold set just over their average order value, commonly $75–$120. Carrier-calculated rates suit stores with mixed weights or bulky items, since they price remote and regional deliveries accurately instead of at a loss.
Do I charge GST on international orders from my Shopify store?
No. Goods exported from Australia are generally GST-free provided they leave the country within 60 days. Shopify applies tax per shipping zone, so international zones won’t add GST once settings are correct. Note that destination countries may require their own tax registration once sales there exceed local thresholds.
