- Short answer
- Basic food, eligible medical services and aids, accredited courses, cars for eligible disabled buyers; they count toward A$75,000 turnover.
- Food
- Most basic food and beverages only; confectionery and savoury snacks stay taxable.
- Medical and education
- Each is conditional: a registered practitioner, or a course or institution accredited by a state, territory or the Education Minister.
- Cars
- Only an eligible buyer, and only with a declaration for exemption.
- What the list covers
- Five headings on the ATO's non-resident page; that page's list is not the whole law.
- GST credits
- GST-free is not input-taxed: credits on purchases behind those sales stay claimable.
- Your Shopify admin
- The product categories guide scopes itself to US, EU and UK sales; for Australia, set a manual tax override.
Which sales into Australia the ATO treats as GST-free
The ATO page for non-resident businesses carries five headings, each conditional. It is that page's list, not the whole of the law.
- Food and beverages — most basic items; confectionery and savoury snacks stay taxable.
- Medical services — payable under Medicare, or generally accepted as necessary from a registered practitioner; cosmetic procedures stay taxable.
- Medical aids and appliances — listed in the legislation, designed for people with an illness or disability, not widely used otherwise.
- Education courses and materials — generally, where a state, territory or the Education Minister accredits the course or its institution; materials when the course provider supplies them; not textbooks.
- Cars and certain car parts — an eligible buyer only: a disabled veteran, or a gainfully employed person with a disability, on a declaration for exemption.
Do GST-free sales count toward the A$75,000 threshold?
Yes. The ATO non-resident page lists what leaves GST turnover, input-taxed sales among them; GST-free sales are not on that list. Exports make it explicit: include export sales connected with Australia, even though they are GST-free.
A GST-free line can still carry you to A$75,000 and oblige you to register.
GST-free is not input-taxed, and the difference is money: you can still claim credits for the GST included in the price of purchases behind those sales.
How to set a GST-free product up in Shopify
The automation stops short of this sale. Shopify's product categories guide scopes itself to merchants using Shopify Tax calculations to sell in the United States, European Union, or United Kingdom — a condition on the market you sell into.
No Shopify page we have found maps those ATO categories onto a setting: read on 19 September 2026, the product categories, tax overrides and choose-a-tax-service pages name neither Australia's GST-free list nor its categories.
The documented route is manual: Shopify's own tax services table marks manual tax rate overrides available on every tax service it lists, and overrides exist to handle tax exceptions and exemptions — one can cover a whole collection.
This article was written entirely by AI under human editorial direction. The editor sets the topic and structure, runs multi-stage validation on facts, links, and interactive elements, and verifies the output is useful from a business perspective. All claims are checked against official Shopify sources. Details may change — always confirm critical data at shopify.com.
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