GST for tutors in Australia: do you need to register?

The first time a parent asks you for a “tax invoice”, you’re in for a rabbit hole. Schools don’t charge GST on tuition fees, so it’s natural to assume tutoring is GST-free too. It isn’t. That assumption is wrong in a way that matters. Ask in any tutoring Facebook group and you’ll hear it stated confidently.

Before the detail, a caveat that isn’t boilerplate this time: I’m a tutor who reads ATO rulings, not an accountant. This is general information, current as of June 2026, not tax advice. Before you change what you charge or lodge anything, confirm it with your accountant or the ATO.

Tutoring is taxable, not GST-free

The GST Act makes the supply of an “education course” GST-free. That’s section 38-85, and it covers primary, secondary, tertiary and accredited courses delivered by the recognised provider. It’s why a school doesn’t add GST to its fees. Tutors hear “education is GST-free” and reasonably assume they’re covered. The ATO disagrees, in writing.

Ruling GSTR 2000/30 works through the exact scenario with a music teacher giving private lessons to school students. The lessons aren’t delivered by the supplier of an education course, so they aren’t part of the curriculum, so (paragraph 58) if the teacher is registered, “the supply of the private music lessons is a taxable supply and is subject to GST”. The ruling adds that it makes no difference whether the lesson happens in a school building or the teacher’s own studio. The same logic catches maths tutoring at your kitchen table and English tutoring over a video call.

This wasn’t an oversight. The Treasury committee that shaped the GST said plainly that private tuition sits outside the recognised sector, and that the Government’s intention was to tax things like private sports tuition and private ballet and music lessons that aren’t curriculum-related. Private tutoring was deliberately left taxable.

So why doesn’t the tutor down the road charge GST? Because she isn’t registered. An unregistered business doesn’t charge GST on anything. Most tutors who don’t add 10% are correct not to, but for the unglamorous reason that they’re under the registration threshold, not because tutoring enjoys an exemption. The whole question collapses into one number: your turnover.

One real exception, and a common misreading

The misreading first: working “through a school” doesn’t make your lessons GST-free. When a school engages a registered tutor, the GST-free education course is the school’s onward supply to its students. The tutor’s own supply to the school stays taxable (same ruling, paragraph 47), so a registered tutor invoices the school with GST and the school claims it back as an input credit. The exemption never reduces what the tutor charges. And if you’re unregistered, you charge no GST anyway, school or no school.

The real exception is the GST-free “special education course”: a program designed specifically for children with disabilities, per public ruling GSTR 2002/1. The design of the program is what counts. Teaching a student who happens to have a disability doesn’t qualify, so if you think it might apply to you, it’s an accountant conversation rather than a blog-post conversation.

The $75,000 threshold, and what counts toward it

Registration becomes mandatory when your GST turnover reaches $75,000, and you must register within 21 days of becoming aware that it will go over, not after it already has. Two details trip people up. It’s turnover, not profit: gross fees before you deduct the laptop, the textbooks and the petrol. And it’s a rolling 12-month view, looking backwards and projecting forwards, not a neat July-to-June figure you can settle at tax time.

Concretely: LearnMate’s 2025 platform figures put the average Years 11–12 rate at $66 an hour. At that rate, $75,000 is about 1,140 teaching hours: 22 hours a week, every week of the year, no holidays. Most solo tutors doing one-on-one work sit comfortably under the line. Group classes change the arithmetic fast: six students at $40 each is $240 an hour, and ten group hours a week at that rate is over $115,000 across 48 teaching weeks. If you run groups, or you teach a packed VCE/HSC exam-season load, you’re much closer to the threshold than your hourly rate makes it feel.

You can also register voluntarily below $75,000. A few tutors do, to claim GST credits on a big equipment year or because they invoice businesses. But voluntary registration brings the full set of obligations — charging GST, lodging activity statements — and your clients are mostly parents who can’t claim the GST back, so for most solo tutors it’s extra admin for no gain.

What actually changes the day you register

You charge 10% on every lesson. Either your $66 lesson becomes $72.60 and families wear the rise, or you hold your price and absorb it — divide by 11 to find the GST inside a price, so a $66 lesson now carries $6 of GST and leaves you $60. Because parents can’t claim GST credits the way a business can, passing it on is a genuine price increase to them and absorbing it is a genuine pay cut to you. There is no clever third option, only a pricing decision worth making deliberately rather than discovering on your first BAS.

You lodge a BAS. For most small businesses that’s quarterly: the GST you collected, minus GST credits on what you bought for the business, remit the difference. The credits side is real — once registered, the GST in your software subscriptions, your laptop and your printing comes back to you.

And your invoices become tax invoices, which is its own rule, worth its own section.

The $82.50 rule

Once registered, you must provide a tax invoice for any taxable sale over $82.50 including GST, and within 28 days whenever a customer asks, whatever the amount. At tutoring rates almost everything qualifies: two $66 lessons on one monthly invoice is $132, well past the line. Per business.gov.au, a valid tax invoice needs:

• the words “tax invoice” — usually as the document heading;
• your business name and ABN, and the date of issue;
• a description of what you sold, with quantity and price — “4 × chemistry lesson, 60 min”, not just “tutoring”;
• the amount of GST payable, shown as its own line, not buried in the total;
• the buyer’s identity or ABN for sales over $1,000 — a term invoice covering two siblings clears $1,000 faster than you’d think.

The mirror rule catches the unregistered: if you are not registered for GST, you must not put “tax invoice” on your invoices at all. Plenty of generic templates print it by default. A plain “invoice” heading with no GST line is the correct document, and quietly the more professional one.

How lessonu handles it

Same disclosure as our software comparison: we’re biased, we built it. But GST is precisely the kind of local plumbing lessonu was designed around, so here’s the specific behaviour rather than a brochure claim.

GST is one toggle in your invoice settings. Switch “Include GST” on and every invoice you issue from then on carries an itemised GST line at 10% (the rate is editable), and the heading changes from INVOICE to TAX INVOICE, with your business name and ABN where the ATO expects them. Invoices are AUD-formatted with subtotal, GST and total split out; tutors across the Tasman get the same in NZD at 15%.

The detail I care most about is the boring one: invoices keep the identity they were issued with. Register in March and your February invoices stay plain invoices, exactly as you sent them — an issued invoice is a record of a moment, not a live view of your settings. lessonu also watches your rolling 12-month revenue and warns you on the dashboard once you’re within $15,000 of the threshold, then flags the 21-day registration clock if you cross it.

The honest gap that matters at BAS time: there’s no Xero or MYOB sync yet, so you or your accountant work from a CSV export — clean columns, but still an import step. The fuller list of where we’re behind lives in the comparison post linked above. Pricing is flat A$29/month for a solo tutor, with a 1% fee on card payments only — bank transfer and cash settle for $0, which matters when every dollar of turnover now counts toward a threshold.

What I’d actually do

Track your gross fees on a rolling 12 months, not by financial year. If you’re one-on-one and under roughly $60,000, relax — nothing here is urgent, and you don’t charge GST because you’re not registered, full stop. If you run group classes, or you’ve just raised your rates, do the multiplication this week and book the accountant conversation before the 21-day clock books it for you.

If you’d rather have software watch the threshold and format the tax invoices, start a 14-day free trial — no card required — flip the GST toggle, and issue one test invoice to yourself to see exactly what parents will receive.