This is general information, not tax advice. GST is genuinely complicated, and the right answer depends on your circumstances — particularly if you also use the property yourself, or own it through a trust or company. Talk to your accountant before acting on any of it.

The old position

Short-stay accommodation has always been a taxable activity for GST purposes, unlike long-term residential rent, which is exempt. If your turnover crossed the registration threshold, you registered and returned GST like any other business.

In practice a great many hosts sat below the threshold, and GST never entered the picture.

What changed in April 2024

From 1 April 2024, the marketplace rules moved the obligation onto the platform. Airbnb, Booking.com and similar marketplaces now collect GST on the accommodation they facilitate and return it to Inland Revenue directly — regardless of whether the underlying host is registered.

This was a structural change. GST is now collected on essentially every short-stay booking in New Zealand.

The flat-rate credit

Hosts who are not GST registered receive a flat-rate credit of 8.5%, passed back by the platform. The logic is rough compensation for the GST on your own costs — cleaning, consumables, power — which you cannot claim back because you are not registered.

You do not apply for it and you do not file anything for it. It arrives as part of what the platform pays you.

If you are GST registered

The treatment changes. The platform still collects and returns the GST, but you zero-rate the supply in your own return rather than receiving the flat-rate credit. In exchange you claim GST back on your actual costs, which for a property with meaningful expenses can be better than a flat 8.5%.

Which position suits you depends on your cost base, and on whether you are registered for other activities anyway. This is exactly the question to put to your accountant.

The $60,000 threshold

You must register for GST if your turnover from taxable activity exceeds $60,000 in any twelve-month period, or if you expect it to. Short-stay accommodation income counts toward this. Long-term residential rent does not.

Note the wording: it is not a calendar or tax year, it is any rolling twelve months. A strong summer can take you across the line mid-year.

The trap worth understanding

When a property enters the GST net there can be a deemed supply — broadly, you may be treated as having brought the property into the GST base, with consequences when you later sell it or take it back out.

This is the part that catches people. An owner registers because their short-stay income crossed the threshold, claims GST back, and some years later sells — and finds GST is payable on the sale price. On an Auckland property that is not a small number.

It is not a reason to avoid registering. It is a reason to understand the position before you do, rather than after.

Before you register: ask your accountant specifically what happens when you eventually sell, and what happens if you stop short-stay letting. Those two answers should inform the decision, not just this year's numbers.

What this means practically

If you are under the threshold and staying there, the flat-rate credit handles it and there is little for you to do. If you are approaching $60,000, that is the point to get advice — before you cross it, not after.

We are not accountants and we do not give tax advice. What we do is give you clean monthly statements showing gross revenue, platform fees and our fee as separate lines, so whoever prepares your return has what they need without reconstructing it from platform exports.