GST answers
Is massage therapy GST-free?
No, not on its own. The ATO says a supply of massage therapy alone is not GST-free, because massage is not one of the health services the GST Act lists. It can be GST-free inside a listed health service, such as physiotherapy, where the practitioner is recognised in that service and the profession treats massage as a standard part of the treatment.
Key facts
- The sentence everything turns on
- A supply of massage therapy alone is not GST-free, because massage is not listed as a health service in the GST Act1
- The list it is missing from
- The GST Act names 21 health services, and the ATO says a service has to be one of them and cannot just be similar to one of them1
- When massage is GST free
- Supplied as part of a listed health service, by a recognised professional in that service who is also trained in massage, where the profession treats it as a standard technique and as necessary for appropriate treatment1
- The ATO's own example
- A remedial massage therapist in the national association for remedial massage therapists may do work similar to a physiotherapist, and remedial massage is still not physiotherapy1
- Who the recipient is
- The recipient of the supply is whoever engages the practitioner, which under a contractor arrangement can be the clinic rather than the patient3
- A fund benefit does not decide it
- Where a third party pays the practitioner on the patient's behalf, the supply is still to the patient and takes the treatment a medical or other health service would carry4
- What the canonical templates post
- All three templates send a private patient line to account 400, Clinical services, private patients, at GST Free Income, from a funding source default rather than a row of its own6
- The confirm note on that account
- The allied health template asks a BAS agent to check which of the practice's services are on the listed-service list, and names unsupervised massage as an outlier needing its own account or an item override6
Massage is not a listed service
A health service that is not a medical service reaches the GST free treatment through one door only. It has to be a service the GST Act names, delivered by a recognised health professional in that named service, and generally accepted in that profession as necessary for appropriate treatment of the person receiving it. Massage therapy is not among the services the Act names, so a standalone remedial or relaxation appointment is taxable where the practice is registered for GST.
If you supply massage therapy alone, it is not GST-free because it is not listed as a health service in the GST Act.1
The same ATO page puts a worked example under its list of services rather than leaving the point abstract. Claire is a remedial massage therapist and belongs to the national association for remedial massage therapists, which is the kind of membership that can make a practitioner recognised where no state law applies. It does not help her here, because the service itself is the thing that has to be on the list.
The services that Claire provides may be similar to those provided by physiotherapists, but remedial massage is not physiotherapy.1
The four conditions that change it
The same ATO page then sets out how massage can be GST free after all. It lists four conditions, and they read together rather than separately, so three of them holding is not enough.
- The massage is supplied as part of a listed health service, physiotherapy being the ATO's own example.
- The practitioner is a recognised professional in that listed health service and is also trained in massage therapy.
- The listed profession considers massage a standard technique or component of treatment for that service.
- The listed profession accepts the massage as necessary for the appropriate treatment of the person receiving it.
The fourth condition has its own ATO page and it is worth reading as a working test rather than a formality. Appropriate treatment means the practitioner uses their professional skills to assess the patient, work out a course of action to preserve, restore or improve wellbeing as far as their training allows, and supply a treatment the profession generally accepts as appropriate for that patient.
Physiotherapy is the example everyone reaches for, and it is not the only door. The natural therapists association tells its own members that massage is GST free where it forms part of a GST free supply of a listed complementary health service, which points a massage therapist at the qualifications they are more likely to hold: acupuncture, naturopathy or herbal medicine, all three of which are on the same list.
The same technique, two invoice lines
This is why a practice can bill what looks like the same hour twice and get two answers. A physiotherapist who uses soft tissue work inside a physiotherapy consult is supplying physiotherapy, and the massage travels with it. A massage therapist in the room next door, booked directly by the same patient for the same technique, is supplying massage therapy, and that line carries GST.
Who engaged the practitioner matters as much as what was done. The recipient of the supply is whoever engages the practitioner to provide the service, and the ATO is explicit that this is sometimes a business rather than the patient. A clinic that contracts a therapist to treat the clinic's patients is receiving a supply from that therapist, and the ATO says such a supply is not usually GST free even where the clinic's own supply to the patient is. The contract decides it, which is why what a contractor invoice carries is a separate question from this one.
The neighbouring case is a profession that is not on the list at all. Is exercise physiology GST-free works that one through, and the two pages meet at the same place: a chart of accounts that can hold both treatments at once.
Who pays does not change it
Fund money landing against a massage appointment is the case that trips a practice up, and the benefit does not move the line. Where a third party pays the practitioner on the patient's behalf, the supply is still made to the patient, and it is GST free only if it meets the definition of a medical or other health service on its own terms. Massage supplied alone does not.
The funder mechanics row for a benefit claimed through HICAPS says the same thing from the settlement side: the fund pays on the patient's behalf, so the supply is still to the patient and GST free where it is a listed health service. How a HICAPS benefit settles covers the deposit; the treatment stays with the service.
Insurers and scheme operators sit under a separate rule and it runs the same direction. A service that would be GST free supplied to the patient stays GST free when the practice contracts with an insurer, an operator of a statutory compensation scheme, a compulsory third party scheme operator, or an Australian Government agency. The test starts from the patient's own supply, so a purchase order does not convert a taxable massage into a GST free one. The parties can also agree not to treat the supplies as GST free, which is worth settling before a scheme contract is signed.
Where a massage line lands by default
In a ledger the answer becomes a question about which revenue account the line hits. A standalone massage appointment billed to the patient carries no funder of its own, so it resolves through the private patient default, and that is where the canonical templates are worth looking at closely.
All three agree, and the agreement is the problem. Every template posts a private patient line to account 400, Clinical services, private patients, at the GST Free Income rate, because the default was written for a practice whose private work is a listed health service. A massage line that nobody has told the map about lands there and picks up that rate.
The templates do spell out the categories that override the private default, and the list is short: reports, supervision, training and products, with the plan managed template naming reports and training. Massage is not one of them, and it is not a variation on any of them either, so nothing in the shipped chart catches it.
The second revenue account
The allied health template says this out loud rather than leaving it to be discovered. Account 400 carries a reason naming unsupervised massage as an outlier that needs its own account or an item override, and a note asking a BAS agent to confirm which of the practice's services are on the listed-service list before the default is applied. That note is the fix stated as a question for a person to answer.
Splitting at the account level is what lets a BAS be built from the ledger instead of from memory. It also survives staff turnover, because the decision lives in the chart rather than in whoever raises the invoice. A practice that bills both treatments from one account has to reconstruct the split at quarter end from appointment types, which is the work this page exists to avoid.
What has to be true first
| The appointment | Treatment on the revenue line | What has to hold |
|---|---|---|
| Remedial or relaxation massage booked and billed on its own | Taxable | Massage is not a listed health service, so the other health services door is closed to a line billed on its own |
| Massage inside a physiotherapy consult | GST free as part of the listed service | The practitioner is recognised in physiotherapy and trained in massage, and the profession treats the technique as standard and necessary |
| Massage inside a listed complementary service | GST free as part of that service | The same four conditions, read against acupuncture, naturopathy or herbal medicine |
| A fund benefit paid on the patient's behalf | Follows the supply to the patient | The supply is still to the patient, so it is GST free only where the service itself qualifies |
| An insurer or scheme operator contracts for the service | Follows what the same service to the patient would carry | The service would be GST free supplied to the patient, and the parties have not agreed otherwise |
The deposit side of a mixed week
A week holding both treatments still settles as a handful of bank lines, and none of them says which appointments inside carried GST. A fund settles a day of terminal claims as one amount, and the deposit is the sum of whatever was billed.
The two legs are separate postings and stay that way. A clearing leg posts BAS excluded in every canonical template, because it holds a settlement the practice has already earned and posted as revenue. The tax rate question belongs to the revenue lines underneath, which is where the treatment on this page is decided. How to reconcile a clearing account walks the settlement side on its own.
What Ledger Map does with it
Ledger Map holds one standing map for the practice, approved before anything syncs. A massage line resolves through that map to an account and a tax rate, so the second revenue account and the item override live in one place and the treatment is settled once rather than invoice by invoice.
Nothing here is a treatment the product picked. The account and the rate come from the canonical template the practice starts from, the template's own reason travels with the row, and the confirm note on account 400 arrives as a question with the options laid out rather than as a silent posting. Each deposit is then posted as one balanced document set, leaving one exact match in the bank feed for a person to accept. How it works shows the map and the approval step.
Questions
Is remedial massage GST-free?
Not when it is supplied on its own. The ATO's worked example is a remedial massage therapist who belongs to the national association for remedial massage therapists: her work may resemble a physiotherapist's, and remedial massage is still not physiotherapy. It can be GST free inside a listed health service, but only where all four of the ATO's conditions hold at once.
What services are GST free?
The GST Act lists services rather than professions. The listed health services are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander health, acupuncture, audiology or audiometry, chiropody, chiropractic, dental, dietary, herbal medicine, naturopathy, nursing, occupational therapy, optometry, osteopathy, paramedical, pharmacy, psychology, physiotherapy, podiatry, speech pathology, speech therapy and social work. Medical services sit under their own provision. A service has to be one of the listed services and cannot just be similar to one.
Which health professionals can supply GST free services?
A recognised health professional is someone registered, permitted or approved under a state or territory law to provide the listed health service. Where no such law exists, it is a member of a professional association that relates to that listed service and has the same registration requirements nationally. Being recognised in one listed service does not carry across to a service that is not on the list.
Does a health fund rebate make a massage GST free?
No. Where a fund pays the practitioner on the patient's behalf, the supply is still made to the patient, so it takes whatever treatment that service would carry anyway. A benefit paid under an extras policy is a matter between the patient and the fund, and it says nothing about the GST Act. The service itself still has to be a listed health service, or part of one.
Is myotherapy GST-free?
The sources read for this page do not settle it, so it sits in the open questions below rather than in an answer. Myotherapy is not named on the ATO's list of health services, and whether a particular practitioner's supply reaches a listed service turns on what that practitioner is recognised in and what the listed profession accepts. A practice with myotherapy income is better served asking its own adviser than reading a general page.
Sources
Open questions
- Myotherapy is not named on the ATO's list of health services and the sources read here do not settle whether a myotherapist's supply reaches a listed service. No myotherapy claim or figure appears above.
- Whether massage supplied to an NDIS participant can be GST free under s38-38 was not researched for this page. It turns on the supports determination rather than on the listed health services, and it belongs to the NDIS supports pages.
- The ATO's conditions for an assistant's time sit on the same page as the massage conditions, and they turn on the assistant working under a recognised professional in a listed service. That question belongs to the allied health assistants page rather than to this answer.
- Supervision, NDIS report writing and gift vouchers each change the supply rather than the technique, and the research leaves all three open. They belong to the pages that own them rather than to this answer.
- The natural therapists association's page carries no last updated date, so it is cited as secondary and no fact above rests on it alone.
- The WorkSafe Victoria remedial massage fee schedule appeared in the search results read for this page but was not opened, so no scheme fee or GST handling from it is printed here.
- The four ATO pages cited refuse automated fetches and were read through a signed-in browser on 3 Sep 2026. Each carries the last updated date it prints, and a reader checking the wording will need to open them the same way.
- GST and health: other health services
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
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- GST and health: appropriate treatment
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
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- GST and health: recipient of the supply
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
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- GST and health: supply of services through a third party
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
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- Allied health, revenue by funding source, the canonical template
Ledger Map. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026.
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Review
Last reviewed 3 Sep 2026 by Shane
General information for Australian allied health practices, not tax advice. Confirm a treatment with your BAS agent or accountant before you post it.
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