GST rate in New Zealand
GST in New Zealand is 15%. One national rate, no regional component, so the tax line on a New Zealand invoice is 15% of the taxable amount wherever the job was.
Checked against Inland Revenue on 2026-09-01
When you have to charge it
Registration becomes compulsory once your turnover reaches $60,000 in any twelve-month period, and you may register voluntarily below that. The decision is not only about the threshold: once registered you charge 15% on your work and you claim GST back on materials, tools and vehicle running costs. A trade business with heavy material spend often registers voluntarily for exactly that reason.
Working back to GST from a price that includes it
New Zealand quotes are usually written GST-inclusive, which is where most of the arithmetic mistakes happen. Going forward is easy: multiply the GST-exclusive amount by the rate. Going backwards is the one people get wrong. You do not take 15% off a GST-inclusive price, because that percentage was calculated on the smaller number. Divide the inclusive price by 1.15 to get the GST-exclusive amount, and the difference is the GST.
Say what you mean on the quote itself. “Plus GST” and “including GST” are 15% apart on the same number, and a client who assumed the wrong one will argue about it at invoice time.
Filing, and what the invoice shows
GST is returned to Inland Revenue on a cycle you choose when you register, and the return asks for the GST you charged and the GST you paid. That is a bookkeeping question rather than a rate question, but it is the reason the invoice itself has to be legible: a tax invoice shows your GST number, the date, what you supplied, and the GST amount. If your invoices carry the number and the date reliably, the return is a summing exercise. If they do not, it is an evening.
Rates and thresholds change by legislation, and this page is a reference, not tax advice. Confirm the current figures on the Inland Revenue GST page before you rely on them, and speak to your accountant about your own situation.
Building an invoice? The free invoice generator lets you type your own tax label and rate, and prints the sheet as a PDF.
Billing somewhere else
Where Zeus comes in
Knowing the rate is the easy part. Remembering what you billed is not.
This page tells you what goes on the tax line. It cannot tell you what you invoiced this client last spring, which jobs are still unpaid, or where the photos from that visit went. Zeus keeps every job against the address it belongs to, on your phone, with or without signal.
Free Plan, no card needed, and it never runs out.
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