WooCommerce GST setup is not one setting. It is four that have to agree: how prices are entered, how tax is calculated, which class each product sits in, and how shipping is treated. Get one wrong and the store still takes orders. It just quietly reports the wrong number, and you find out at BAS time. We set up and repair GST in WooCommerce for Australian stores so the checkout and the reports tell the same story.
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Australian consumers expect to see the price they pay, which means entering prices inclusive of tax. That single choice changes how WooCommerce stores every price, how it rounds, and what your reports mean. Switching it later on a store with existing products is not a toggle: it silently reinterprets every price already in the catalogue.
Six settings decide whether GST is right, and most of them live under WooCommerce > Settings > Tax. Prices entered with tax: yes, for a GST-inclusive catalogue. Calculate tax based on: normally the customer shipping address, not the shop base address. Shipping tax class: usually based on cart items. Rounding: rounding at subtotal level rather than per line, chosen to match how your accounting software calculates. Display prices in the shop and in the cart: including tax. Then the standard rates table itself: country AU, a 10% rate named GST, priority 1, compound off and shipping ticked. Taxes also have to be enabled under the general settings, which is surprisingly often the thing that is off.
Adding a 10% standard rate is the part everyone gets right. What breaks is everything around it: whether the rate applies to shipping, whether it compounds, which customer address the calculation is based on, and what happens for a customer outside Australia who should not be charged GST at all.
Basic food, many health and medical products and exports are GST-free. In WooCommerce they belong in their own tax class with a 0% rate scoped to Australia, applied per product, rather than left in the standard class or switched to a tax status of none. A dedicated class keeps GST-free sales identifiable in reports and in the export to your accounting software, which is what your accountant needs when total sales and GST-free sales are reported separately. Which of your products are actually GST-free is a question for your accountant; configuring the store to match their answer is ours.
WooCommerce taxes the shipping charge using the shipping tax class setting, and with it set to follow cart items it does not split shipping across a mixed cart. If any item in the cart is in the standard class, the whole shipping charge is taxed at the standard rate; a cart containing only GST-free goods takes the GST-free treatment. For most stores that is acceptable. If yours sells a lot of mixed carts and your accountant wants shipping apportioned instead, that needs custom handling, and it is worth agreeing the rule with them before anything is built.
The same handful turn up again and again. A GST rate row with the country left blank, so it applies to every customer in the world. The 10% rate entered under the reduced-rate class instead of the standard one, so most products carry no tax at all. Prices typed ex-GST while the store is set to treat them as inclusive, so customers are charged the ex-GST figure and the business quietly absorbs the GST on every sale. Tax calculated on the shop base address, so overseas orders are charged GST. Rounding per line in WooCommerce and per invoice in the accounting software, producing one-cent differences on hundreds of orders. And refunds entered as a single amount rather than against the order lines, which records money going back without reversing the GST in it.
The test of a GST setup is not the checkout, it is whether your quarterly figures match. We check the tax report against the order data, look for orders that recorded tax at a rate no longer configured, and make sure refunds and partial refunds reverse the GST correctly, which is where a surprising number of stores quietly drift.
If the configuration has been wrong for several quarters, changing it going forward is straightforward; the historical orders are the real question. We can produce a corrected report of what was actually collected versus what should have been, so your accountant has something to work from rather than a guess. Once the setup is right, a monthly website care plan keeps updates and backups looked after, so a plugin update does not quietly undo it.
It can, and that is exactly why it is worth doing carefully. If prices were entered exclusive of tax but displayed as though inclusive, correcting the configuration will move the displayed price. We work out the intended retail price first, then configure to produce it, rather than changing settings and seeing what happens.
Exports are generally GST-free, but WooCommerce will happily charge GST to an overseas address if the tax rate is not scoped to Australia. This is one of the most common misconfigurations we see, and it is invisible until an international customer complains or your BAS looks odd.
A full review and correction starts at $249 AUD for a standard catalogue, quoted up front. You get the corrected configuration plus a written explanation of what was wrong, which is usually what your accountant actually wants.
For physical goods we normally set it to the shipping address, because that is where the goods are supplied and it is what separates a domestic sale from an export. Stores that only sell downloads often use the billing address instead. If you sell both kinds of product, confirm the approach with your accountant before we change it.
Not on its own. The standard order emails are not tax invoices. A PDF invoice plugin can produce one, provided it is set up to show the words tax invoice, your business name and ABN, the date, what was sold and the GST included. Customers can ask for a tax invoice for larger purchases, so it is better to generate one automatically than to write them by hand when asked.
No. WooCommerce records the tax collected on each order and can report it by rate and by period. Your BAS is lodged through your accounting software, your accountant or the ATO. The job on our side is making sure the WooCommerce figures reach your books correctly, which is where an accounting integration such as MYOB comes in.
With GST-inclusive prices, a coupon reduces the price the customer pays and WooCommerce works the GST out again on the discounted amount, so the tax on the order goes down along with the price. Where it goes wrong is a discount plugin that calculates differently from WooCommerce core, so we test every discount type you use against the tax report.
Tell us what is happening and we will come back with a fixed quote and a timeline, usually within one business day.
Get in touchSet up GST in WooCommerce correctly: inclusive pricing, GST-free classes, shipping tax, rounding and refunds that reconcile at BAS time. Fixed-price review.
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