GST answers
GST on non-listed NDIS supports
Not automatically. A scheme funded support that is not one of the listed health services is GST free only where four things hold together: a plan in effect, the support named in that plan, a written agreement, and coverage by one of the two tables in the NDIS supports determination. Otherwise the line is taxable and the claim carries the taxable code.
Key facts
- What scheme funding does not do
- A supply to a participant is GST free only where all four requirements in the ATO's guidance are met, and being funded by the scheme is not one of them1
- Why a listed service skips the test
- A listed health service performed by a recognised professional as appropriate treatment of the patient is GST free under the health services rules whoever funds it, so the four requirements are only reached by the supports the list leaves out2
- The fourth requirement
- The supply has to be covered by one of the two tables in the GST free supply NDIS supports determination, which applies to supplies made on or after 1 July 2021 and before 1 July 20271
- What a table 2 support needs as well
- A support listed in table 2 is covered only where it is also listed in the care determination, the residential care determination or the health services determination1
- The column the claim file asks for
- GSTCode is a required column on a bulk payment request and takes P1 for tax claimable at 10 percent, P2 for GST free, or P5 for GST out of scope4
- What the canonical templates post
- The NDIS provider template posts a plan managed non-listed support to account 404 at GST on Income, while the other two templates reach their plan managed default at GST Free Income6
- Where a subcontractor sits
- A subcontractor engaged by a provider is supplying that provider rather than the participant, so the NDIS provision is not reached and the invoice is taxable where the general rules are met1
- The error the advisers report seeing
- Treating a whole job as GST free because the client is a participant is described as a compliance error the ATO sees regularly in activity statement lodgements7
Funding is not the test
The scheme paying for a support does not settle its GST treatment. The ATO sets out four requirements for a supply to a participant, and being funded by the scheme is not one of them. What settles it is the kind of supply: whether the service is one of the health services the GST Act lists, and where it is not, whether all four requirements hold at once.
That is why one practice can hold both treatments in the same week. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychology, speech pathology, podiatry, dietary services and social work are listed health services, so a session delivered as appropriate treatment of the patient by a recognised professional is GST free whoever funds it, without the NDIS requirements being reached at all. Is NDIS income GST free takes that route. This page is about everything the list leaves out.
Which supports sit outside the list
A health service that is not a medical service is GST free only where it is one of the listed services, is performed by a recognised health professional in that listed service or by their assistant under the conditions the ATO sets, and is generally accepted in that profession as necessary for the appropriate treatment of the recipient of the supply. The ATO is blunt about the first limb: a service has to be one of the listed services and cannot just be similar to one.
- Support work and assistance with daily personal activities.
- Exercise physiology, which is not on the list even though its neighbours in a clinic corridor are.
- Therapy assistant time billed in the assistant's own right rather than under a supervising professional.
- Group and capacity building programs that are not a listed health service, such as a life skills or community access group.
- Provider travel and non face to face time claimed against a non listed support.
- Report writing, which the research reads two ways depending on who asks for the report and whether it sits inside a therapy support.
The scheme funds all of these regularly and none is a listed health service in its own right, so each has to clear the four requirements or carry GST. Two of them narrow. A group session of a listed service delivered by the recognised professional stays on the listed service test, and travel takes the route of the support it is billed against. Travel, cancellation claims and report writing each have their own page, because the claim type changes the reasoning too.
The four requirements, read in order
- The participant has a plan in effect, approved by the agency under section 37 of the NDIS Act.
- The supply is of reasonable and necessary supports specified in the statement of supports in that plan. Supplies beyond a quantity the plan specifies fall outside the exemption.
- There is a written agreement with the participant or another person, identifying the participant and stating that the supply is of supports specified in the plan. It may be a single document or a combination of documents.
- The supply is covered by one of the two tables in the GST free supply NDIS supports determination.
The first three are about the participant and the paperwork, and a practice can put each of them on file once. What a written service agreement has to say covers the third on its own. The fourth is about the support itself, and it is the limb that turns a confident yes into a no after the other three have been ticked.
Two tables, not one
The determination applies to supplies made on or after 1 July 2021 and before 1 July 2027, and it holds two tables that work differently. A support in the first table satisfies the fourth requirement on its own. A support in the second satisfies it only where it is also listed in one of three other determinations.
| Table | What it covers | What else has to hold |
|---|---|---|
| Table 1 | Nine supports, among them specialist disability accommodation, household tasks, assistance with and training in travel or transport arrangements excluding taxi fares, interpreting and translation, and management of funding in a plan | Nothing further. Listing here satisfies the fourth requirement |
| Table 2 | Five supports: assistance with daily personal activities, specialised assessment and development of daily living and life skills, assistive equipment for general tasks and leisure, behavioural support and therapeutic supports, and home modifications | The support has to be listed as well in the care determination, the residential care determination or the health services determination |
A scheme funded allied health support that is not a listed health service commonly lands in the second table, under behavioural support and therapeutic supports. That is where the answer usually turns, because the second listing is a real test rather than a formality.
Where the second listing fails
The ATO's guidance carries a worked example on exactly this point. A participant has a plan specifying fortnightly exercise physiology, attends a clinic rather than a hospital, and has a written agreement in place. The first three requirements are met and the fourth is not.
Under Table 2, item 4 lists behavioural and therapeutic supports which includes exercise physiology, but this service is not covered by one of the 3 other determinations unless it is supplied in a residential care facility.1
The setting decides it, and a clinic is not a residential care facility. Is exercise physiology GST free walks that profession's own answer, including the Medicare route that reopens it. The point worth carrying to every other support the list leaves out is the shape of the reasoning: a place in the second table, on its own, is not coverage.
The code on the claim, not just the answer
A decision that stops at taxable or GST free is half the job, because the claim file asks for it in its own vocabulary. A bulk payment request has sixteen columns in a fixed order, and one of them is GSTCode. It is a required column and it takes three values.
| Treatment on the revenue line | GSTCode on the claim | What has to hold |
|---|---|---|
| Taxable | P1, tax claimable at 10 percent | The support is not a listed health service and the four requirements do not all hold |
| GST free | P2, GST free | Either the service is a listed health service delivered as appropriate treatment, or all four requirements hold |
| Out of scope | P5, GST out of scope | The provider guide records the value without naming the cases it covers, so this one is a question for the practice's adviser |
The unit price column matters alongside it. The guide describes it as the price per unit sold or the hourly price of the service, and the pricing arrangements make that price limit GST inclusive where GST applies, so a taxable support billed at the limit carries the GST inside the claimed amount. Are NDIS price limits GST inclusive runs that arithmetic. This page stops at the code.
What the canonical templates post
In the ledger the answer becomes a chart of accounts question, and the three canonical templates do not agree on this key. The NDIS provider template holds an explicit row for a plan managed non-listed support and posts it to account 404 at GST on Income. The other two hold no row for that pair, so each falls back to its plan managed default and posts the same support at GST Free Income.
That disagreement is the warning worth taking away. A map whose plan managed default was written for listed supports will post a non-listed support at the GST free rate, quietly, on every invoice it touches. The fix is a category row rather than a different tax rate: one revenue account for the supports that clear the test and one for the supports that do not.
The template that spells the row out also carries a confirm note against it, and the note runs the other way. It asks a practice not to move a non-listed support to GST free without checking, per support item, that a written agreement exists and that the specific support is covered by the determination's tables.
Subcontracting is a different supply
The forums disagree loudest here, and the ATO's own example settles the shape of it. A provider engaged by a participant supplies the participant, and the four requirements are asked of that supply. A subcontractor engaged by that provider supplies the provider, not the participant, so the NDIS provision is not reached and the subcontractor's invoice is taxable where the general rules are met.
The listed service side reaches the same place from another direction. The recipient of a supply is whoever engages the practitioner, and the ATO states that supplies by a health practitioner to another business are not usually GST free. Practitioner to practice and practice to participant are two supplies, and they can carry two treatments.
The two legs of a deposit
A plan manager or the agency settles many claims in one bank line, and that line says nothing about which supports inside it carried GST. The treatment sits on the revenue lines underneath, one per claim, and that is where everything above is decided.
The clearing leg the settlement passes through is a separate posting with its own tax type. Every canonical template posts that leg BAS excluded, because the money has already been earned and reported on the revenue lines beneath it. How NDIS plan managed payments land in Xero walks the deposit itself.
What Ledger Map does with it
Ledger Map holds one standing map for the practice, approved before anything syncs. A non-listed support resolves through that map to an account and a tax rate, so the decision is made once and reviewed as a whole rather than invoice by invoice.
The product does not pick a treatment. The account and the rate come from the canonical template the practice starts from, the template's own reason travels with the row, and a line the map cannot resolve becomes a question with the options laid out. 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
Do I charge GST on NDIS services?
It depends on the support, not on who funds it. A listed health service delivered as appropriate treatment of the patient is GST free under the health services rules. A support that is not a listed health service is GST free only where a plan is in effect, the support is named in the statement of supports, a written agreement is in place, and the support is covered by the determination. Where any of those is missing, the supply is taxable.
What services are exempt from GST in Australia?
In health, the GST Act treats medical services and a defined list of other health services as GST free, and the ATO adds that a service has to be one of the listed services rather than similar to one. Outside that list a supply is GST free only where another provision reaches it, which for scheme funded disability supports means the four requirements on this page.
Is NDIS support work GST free?
Not by default. Support work is not a listed health service, so the answer turns on the four requirements and on where the support sits in the determination's tables. Assistance with daily personal activities is a support the ATO's own page places in the second table while its worked example places it in the first, so confirm the item with your adviser rather than reading one paragraph.
Do I charge GST when I subcontract to another NDIS provider?
The ATO's example says a subcontractor's supply is to the provider that engaged it rather than to the participant, so the NDIS provision is not reached and the invoice is taxable where the general rules are met. The provider's own supply to the participant can still be GST free. Two supplies, two answers, and the forums often collapse them into one.
Which code goes in the GSTCode column?
The bulk payment request takes P1 for tax claimable at 10 percent, P2 for GST free, and P5 for GST out of scope. A taxable non-listed support goes out as P1, and the matching invoice line has to carry the GST on Income rate in Xero, or the claim and the ledger will disagree at activity statement time.
Sources
Open questions
- Whether a specific support falls in the first table, the second table, or outside both is a per item question. This page states the structure and leaves the item to the practice and its adviser.
- The ATO's plan manager example describes assistance with daily personal activities as covered by item 1 in table 1, while the same page lists that support among the table 2 items. The discrepancy is stated here rather than resolved, and no fact on this page rests on which reading is right.
- NDIS report writing is recorded in the research as a grey area, read two ways: a report funded in the plan as part of a therapy support is arguably one of the reasonable and necessary supports and follows the therapy, while a report written for a school, an insurer or a court is a supply to that third party and taxable. Neither reading is settled here.
- Therapy assistant time is read two ways in the research as well. Where the work is billed in the recognised professional's name under the direct supervision conditions the ATO sets, it forms part of that professional's service. Where the assistant bills in their own right, the work is not a listed health service and is left to the four requirements and the determination's tables, which the ATO's own example reads narrowly.
- Supervision sold to another practitioner is read two ways: one adviser in the research treats supervision as a service to the supervisee rather than a health service, so taxable, while an ATO interpretative decision is recorded as reaching the opposite result on a supervision of interns fact pattern. This page settles neither, and no fact on it rests on either reading.
- The determination applies to supplies made on or after 1 July 2021 and before 1 July 2027. What replaces it, if anything, was not established for this page.
- ndis.gov.au blocks automated fetches, so the claim file facts are taken from the module in this repository that records the June 2025 provider guide rather than from a fetch made for this page, and the agency citation is marked secondary.
- The three ATO pages cited refuse automated fetches and were read through a signed-in browser on 3 Sep 2026. A reader checking the wording will need to open them the same way.
- No BAS agent has signed this page. It carries no BAS agent note and stays a draft until one is added.
- GST and health: National Disability Insurance Scheme
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 13 Jun 2024.
primary
- GST and health: other health services
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- GST and health: recipient of the supply
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
primary
- Bulk payment requests, self help guide for providers
National Disability Insurance Agency. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated Jun 2025.
secondary
- NDIS pricing arrangements and price limits 2025-26, version 1.1
National Disability Insurance Agency. Retrieved 4 Sep 2026. Source updated 14 Oct 2025.
primary
- Providing GST-free supplies to NDIS participants
RSM Australia. Retrieved 4 Sep 2026. Source updated 30 Jul 2026.
secondary
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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