Stripe New Zealand GST and the NZ$1,000 Limit in QuickBooks

A US business that ships physical products to New Zealand can be registered for GST there, have Stripe Tax switched on, and still collect no GST on any of those orders. Stripe isn't malfunctioning when that happens. It is following its default for goods shipped into New Zealand, and that default is the opposite of what a registered seller needs.

New Zealand has charged GST on low-value imports at the checkout since 1 December 2019. Inland Revenue (IRD) defines a low-value good as "a physical good valued at NZ$1,000 or less, excluding GST." An overseas seller that crosses the registration threshold has to charge 15 percent GST on those sales to consumers and pay it to IRD. Stripe's New Zealand tax guide says it "doesn't calculate GST on sales of imported low-value goods, valued at 1000 NZD or less, to individuals in New Zealand unless you select the option to calculate tax on cross-border goods sales into New Zealand."

This guide covers that setting, how IRD draws the NZ$1,000 line (per item, not per box, which is the reverse of the UK), what reaches QuickBooks for each kind of order, and how the quarterly GST return relates to your liability account. It is bookkeeping guidance, not tax advice. Whether you must register, and how your parcels are declared, are questions for your accountant and your carrier.

Start a free trial to bring Stripe Tax amounts into QuickBooks automatically, so the GST you collect is already in your liability account when the return is due.

The setting that decides whether Stripe charges anything

Stripe's default for goods shipped into New Zealand from abroad is to calculate nothing. Its guide says: "When goods are shipped into New Zealand from abroad, Stripe treats the sale as an export and doesn't calculate tax, unless you choose to calculate tax on cross-border sales of goods into New Zealand through the tax registration settings."

The option lives on the registration itself. Stripe's registration guide says that when you add a standard registration, "you can select the inbound_goods option to collect tax on cross-border sales of goods into the country where you're adding the standard registration."

Compare that with the UK. Stripe's UK guide says it calculates VAT on low-value parcels "if you have a registration in the UK." Adding the registration is enough there. In New Zealand it is not: Stripe's NZ guide names the cross-border option as the condition, so a registration without it leaves your low-value goods sales untaxed.

That gap is expensive in a specific way. IRD's rule doesn't depend on what Stripe calculated. If you are registered, or required to be, GST is due on your sales of low-value goods to consumers. If Stripe charged the customer nothing, you owe the GST anyway, and it comes out of your margin rather than out of the customer's payment.

Check this first: open the New Zealand registration in Stripe Tax and confirm the cross-border goods option is selected. Then look at the first New Zealand order after the change and confirm it carries a GST line.

Who has to register, and what counts toward the threshold

IRD's registration page says sellers need to register when their total supplies of low-value goods to New Zealand consumers "were NZ$60,000 or more in the last 12 months" or "will exceed NZ$60,000 in the next 12 months."

What goes into that total is broader than the goods:

• Low-value goods, valued at NZ$1,000 or less each.
• Online services and digital products.
• Services such as delivery, insurance and your fees. IRD says to "include all amounts charged to New Zealand consumers including delivery, insurance and any other fees."

Two things stay out. "Goods valued at over NZ$1,000 are not included in your total supplies," and you should "not include supplies to New Zealand GST-registered businesses." If you only sell to registered businesses, IRD says you don't need to register at all.

Stripe's threshold monitor tracks a 60,000 NZD threshold for New Zealand, but a monitor's count and IRD's definition are not guaranteed to agree on every line, especially on shipping and on orders over NZ$1,000. Our post on what Stripe's registration threshold monitor counts explains where that kind of gap comes from.

Marketplaces change the picture. IRD says "only 1 entity is required to charge GST on a sale," and if an online marketplace operator is responsible for the GST on a sale, the seller is not. Sales you make through a marketplace that collects GST carry no GST in your Stripe account and add nothing to your liability account.

How the NZ$1,000 is measured

This is the part that differs most from the UK, and it changes how you pack orders.

The threshold is per item. IRD says imported goods are treated as supplied in New Zealand if they "individually have a customs value of NZ$1,000 or less." HMRC's 135 GBP limit works the other way: it applies to the whole consignment, so items in one box are added together. A box holding two NZ$600 items is a low-value supply twice over in New Zealand. The same two items in a box to Britain would be one consignment over the UK limit.

The threshold excludes shipping, but the GST doesn't. IRD says the NZ$1,000 "is based on the customs value of the good. This means shipping and insurance costs are excluded when determining if GST needs to be charged." Once a sale is in scope, though, IRD says "the amount of GST required to be returned is 15% of the value of the supply," and the value of the supply includes what you charge for delivery. IRD's own worked example has a customer paying NZ$23 for a fascinator and NZ$11.50 for shipping, both GST-inclusive. The seller returns NZ$4.50, which "includes the NZ$1.50 of GST included in the shipping fee." For GST-inclusive prices, IRD's fraction is 3/23.

Foreign-currency prices have to be converted to test the line. IRD's currency conversion guidance says to "use the customs value in New Zealand dollars to work out if you need to charge GST." You may use one of several rate sources, including the spot rate at the time of supply, the New Zealand Customs Service rate or a central bank rate, but you must use it consistently, and if you update it on a schedule, IRD says the updates must be "no more than 30 calendar days apart." IRD is blunt about gaming it: "If you change the exchange rate you use with the purpose of affecting whether goods are low value goods, you will not have used the rate consistently."

High-value goods have an opt-in of their own. IRD lets an overseas business choose to charge GST on goods over NZ$1,000 sold to consumers, with a condition: "To charge GST, 75% or more of the total value of the goods must be individually valued at NZ$1,000 or less." You have to tell IRD you are making that choice. Without it, IRD says items over NZ$1,000 have "GST and customs duties charged at the border by the New Zealand Customs Service."

Some goods are outside the rules whatever their value. IRD lists alcohol and tobacco, where tax and duties "are applied at the border regardless of value," and certain fine metals.

A worked quarter: five orders

Take a Colorado outdoor gear shop that passed the NZ$60,000 threshold and registered for GST with IRD. It has added the registration in Stripe Tax with the cross-border goods option selected. It prices its New Zealand store in New Zealand dollars and charges GST on top of its prices.

1. A rain jacket to Auckland, NZ$400 plus NZ$20 shipping. The jacket is under NZ$1,000, so it is a low-value good. GST is 15 percent of the whole supply: 15 percent of NZ$420 is NZ$63. The order should carry a GST line. Check that Stripe taxed the shipping charge as well as the jacket, because IRD counts it.
2. A tent to Wellington, NZ$1,200. Over the line. Unless the shop has opted to charge GST on high-value goods, GST and any duty are collected at the border, not by the shop. This order should carry no GST in Stripe. Stripe's guide doesn't say how it values an individual item once the cross-border option is on, so look at the taxability_reason on your first over-NZ$1,000 order to confirm what it did.
3. A NZ$700 tent and a NZ$600 sleeping bag to Christchurch, in one box. The box is worth NZ$1,300, but each item is under NZ$1,000, so both are low-value goods and GST of NZ$195 is due at the point of sale. Stripe's guide doesn't say how it treats a multi-item order like this one, so check that both lines were taxed. This is also the parcel most likely to be taxed twice. IRD says GST may be charged again at the border when "a single parcel valued over NZ$1,000 contains items that individually have a customs value of NZ$1,000 or less" and the customs documents don't show the GST already charged.
4. A climbing harness to a Dunedin guiding company, NZ$300. The customer gave its New Zealand GST number. IRD says GST "does not generally apply to sales of low value imported goods made to New Zealand GST-registered businesses for business use," and that you can presume a customer is a consumer unless it has given you its GST number or New Zealand Business Number. Stripe's guide says no tax is charged to business customers who provide their GST number, in the paragraph about services. Check that Stripe treated this goods sale the same way: our guide to Stripe customer tax IDs covers how the number gets onto the customer.
5. A pair of boots priced at US$560, from the shop's US-dollar checkout. To test the line, the shop converts at its chosen rate. IRD's formula divides the foreign amount by the rate in units of foreign currency per New Zealand dollar. At an illustrative 0.58, US$560 is NZ$965.52, a low-value good, and GST is due. At 0.55 the same boots would be NZ$1,018.18 and over the line. That is exactly why IRD insists the rate source and its update schedule stay fixed.

Orders 1 and 5 are the normal low-value case. Order 2 is the normal high-value case, and order 4 is the normal business case. Order 3 is the one to handle in your shipping process rather than in your books. IRD says the supplier should "provide tax information on customs documents" and tell the transporter or customs broker "whether GST has been paid at the point of sale" and "the name and GST number of the business responsible for returning GST." Penalties may apply if you don't.

What reaches QuickBooks for each order

For a United States QuickBooks company, Acodei's documented tax method is the Tax Product. You create a non-inventory product, such as "Sales Tax," mapped to a liability account, and choose it in Acodei's Stripe Tax settings. The documentation lists Stripe Tax enabled with Stripe Invoice or Stripe Checkout as the requirement. All Stripe Tax amounts on a sale are rolled into a single line on the QuickBooks invoice or sales receipt, and you use Stripe's tax reports to file and pay from the liability account. Acodei's documentation notes that QuickBooks' own Sales Tax Center doesn't let third parties create official tax rates for US companies, which is why the product approach is the one that works there.

Two consequences follow for the five orders:

• Orders 1, 3 and 5 reach QuickBooks with the sale and a tax line for the GST Stripe calculated. That GST lands in the same liability account as any US state sales tax you collect through Stripe Tax.
• Orders 2 and 4 reach QuickBooks as sales with no tax. Nothing goes to the liability account, and the sale is still revenue.

With the Tax Product method, Acodei carries the tax Stripe calculated. If the cross-border option was off, every one of these orders arrives with no GST on it, and the books will faithfully show a liability account with no New Zealand GST in it. The sync is accurate in that case. The problem is upstream, in the Stripe setting, and the GST you owe for that period has no matching balance.

The liability account also mixes authorities and calendars. US state sales tax follows each state's filing period, and New Zealand GST follows the quarterly return. The balance on any given day is a blend, and only Stripe's reports can split it.

When GST is charged twice

If the box in order 3 is stopped at the border and the customer pays GST again, IRD's double-charge guidance expects you to put it right. It says the customer can ask for a refund if they give you a declaration or evidence that they paid GST at the border. "Once you have reimbursed the customer for the GST you charged, you will not need to pay GST on that sale to Inland Revenue. If you have already paid GST on that sale, you can make an adjustment to reduce the GST payable in your next GST return."

In Stripe, that reimbursement is a partial refund of the tax. How it reaches QuickBooks depends on how you issue it. Acodei's documentation says a refund made through a credit note carries the line-level tax breakdown. A refund made on the payment alone, without an item breakdown, may not tell Acodei how much of it was tax, and the documentation says that case can need a manual adjustment in QuickBooks. For an invoice, issue a credit note against the tax. For a Checkout payment with no invoice, a credit note isn't available, so be ready to adjust the liability account by hand, and keep the customer's evidence with the entry.

IRD lists one more source of double taxation: goods priced in a foreign currency where "the exchange rate used by the supplier differs from that used by the New Zealand Customs Service." Items valued close to NZ$1,000 are where that bites, so treat orders near the line with the same care as order 3.

Receipts and the GST number

IRD requires a receipt whenever you charge a consumer GST on some or all of the goods in a transaction, because the customer can use it to show Customs that GST was already paid. IRD says the receipt must include your name and GST number, the date of the supply, the issue date if different, a description of the goods, the price paid and the GST included (which "may be expressed in a foreign currency"), and a list of which goods had GST charged.

Your own registration number on Stripe invoices is a separate setting from the registration that makes Stripe Tax collect. Our guide to your own tax ID on Stripe invoices explains where it lives, which number prints, and why it can't be added to invoices already issued. Check one New Zealand receipt against IRD's list before you rely on it.

Filing the quarterly GST return from Stripe's data

IRD says that once registered under these rules, you "file GST returns quarterly." If you start storing stock in New Zealand and distributing it from there, IRD says you will need to change to monthly, 2-monthly or 6-monthly filing, because those sales fall under the ordinary rules instead.

Each quarter, the return needs the GST on your New Zealand sales for the period. Stripe's tax reports are the source. The itemized export breaks each line item out by jurisdiction, includes a taxability_reason column, and includes non-taxable transactions unless you exclude them when you export. That makes orders like 2 and 4 visible with no tax, alongside the reason Stripe gave. The glossary entry on the Stripe taxability reason explains what each value means. Before you build the return, confirm your over-NZ$1,000 orders and business sales are labeled the way you expect.

Then check the currency. IRD says you "will need to convert your sales of low-value goods to NZ customers into NZ dollars for each return you file," and lets you use the rate at the time of supply, the rate on the last day of the taxable period, or the rate on the date you file (or the due date, if you file late). Stripe says that when the currency you price in differs from the filing currency, it "converts amounts using available exchange rates at the time of the transaction." If you price your New Zealand store in New Zealand dollars, the GST figures are already in the filing currency. If you charge New Zealand customers in US dollars, confirm with your accountant that Stripe's conversion fits the method you use on the return.

The other side of the currency question is in your books. A United States QuickBooks company carries its liability in dollars, but you pay IRD in New Zealand dollars. When you pay a quarter's GST, clear the liability account by the amount you carried for that quarter's sales. Post any difference between that and what the payment actually cost in dollars to the account your accountant uses for currency gains and losses, not back to tax. Our Stripe multicurrency guide explains why QuickBooks and Stripe disagree about exchange rates in the first place.

If you also ship to Europe or Britain, the IOSS guide and the UK 135 GBP guide cover the same questions there, including how to keep carrier and broker bills for border charges out of the tax liability account.

What to set up once, and what to check every quarter

Once:

• Confirm the New Zealand registration in Stripe Tax has the cross-border goods option selected, and that a test order carries GST.
• Write down the per-item NZ$1,000 rule for your fulfillment team: shipping is excluded from the test, items are valued one by one, and a box over NZ$1,000 needs the GST information on its customs documents.
• Pick one exchange-rate source and an update schedule no more than 30 days apart, and record them.
• Check a New Zealand receipt against IRD's list, including your GST number.
• Decide, with your accountant, which account takes currency differences on GST payments.
• Make sure whoever closes your books knows the liability account holds both US sales tax and New Zealand GST.

Every quarter:

• Export the period's New Zealand transactions from Stripe Tax for the GST return.
• Sort them by taxability_reason and confirm over-NZ$1,000 orders and business sales are labeled as you expect.
• Record any GST refunded for double taxation, with the customer's evidence and the matching adjustment.
• Record the GST payment against the liability account at the carried amount, with the difference to currency gain or loss.

For the two reports used above, see the glossary entries on the itemized export and the summarized export.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Stripe charge New Zealand GST on goods shipped from the US?

Only if you select the cross-border goods option on your New Zealand registration. Stripe says it "doesn't calculate GST on sales of imported low-value goods, valued at 1000 NZD or less, to individuals in New Zealand unless you select the option to calculate tax on cross-border goods sales into New Zealand." Otherwise it treats goods shipped in from abroad as an export.

Is the NZ$1,000 limit per order or per item?

Per item. IRD treats imported goods as supplied in New Zealand if they "individually have a customs value of NZ$1,000 or less." A box worth more than NZ$1,000 can still hold several low-value goods, each of which needs GST at the point of sale. The UK's 135 GBP limit, by contrast, applies to the whole consignment.

Does shipping count toward the NZ$1,000?

Not toward the threshold. IRD bases the NZ$1,000 on customs value, which excludes shipping and insurance. Once the goods are in scope, though, GST is 15 percent of the value of the supply, and IRD's own example includes GST on the shipping fee.

When does a US business need to register for New Zealand GST?

IRD says when total supplies of low-value goods and other taxable sales to New Zealand consumers were NZ$60,000 or more in the last 12 months, or will exceed NZ$60,000 in the next 12. Delivery and other fees count. Goods over NZ$1,000 and sales to New Zealand GST-registered businesses don't.

How often is the GST return due?

IRD says businesses registered under these rules file GST returns quarterly. A business that stores goods in New Zealand and sells them from there moves to monthly, 2-monthly or 6-monthly filing under the ordinary rules.

What happens if my customer is charged GST again at the border?

IRD says the customer can ask you for a refund with evidence they paid at the border. Once you reimburse them, you don't pay GST on that sale. If you already paid it, you reduce the GST payable on your next return. To prevent it, put the GST information on the customs documents and give your carrier your GST number.

One line, measured item by item

New Zealand's low-value rule rewards two pieces of setup and punishes their absence. Stripe charges nothing on goods shipped in from abroad until you select the cross-border option on your registration, and IRD expects the GST whether Stripe collected it or not. Once that is on, read every order the way IRD does: item by item, shipping out of the test and into the tax, at an exchange rate you never change to suit the answer. Do that, and the liability account will tie to the quarterly return.

Start a free trial to sync Stripe Tax into QuickBooks automatically, so the quarterly New Zealand GST tie-out starts from a complete liability account.