GST answers
Are NDIS price limits GST-inclusive?
Where a support carries GST, yes. The price limit is a ceiling on a tax inclusive amount, so the tax comes out of the limit rather than sitting on top of it. A support that carries no GST keeps the whole limit. The same limit claimed on the taxable code leaves one eleventh of it as tax, so the revenue line is smaller.
Key facts
- What the ceiling sits on
- Where GST applies to a support, the price limit for that support item is inclusive of GST7
- What the claim file carries
- One unit price column, the price per unit sold or the hourly price of the service, and the portal pays no more than the maximum catalogue price for the item6
- The code beside it
- The tax code column takes P1 for tax claimable at ten per cent, P2 for a supply with no tax, or P5 for a supply out of scope6
- What that costs at the same limit
- A taxable support claimed at the limit leaves one eleventh of the limit as tax, so the practice keeps less revenue than the same limit claimed on the code with no tax7
- The route that does not look at the funder
- A listed health service, performed by a recognised health professional in that service and generally accepted in that profession as necessary for the appropriate treatment of the recipient, carries no tax, and none of those three conditions turns on who is paying2
- The route built for the scheme
- A supply to a participant carries no tax where all four requirements are met: a plan in effect, the support specified in the plan's statement of supports, a written agreement, and coverage by one of the tables in the 2021 determination1
- Which supports carry tax
- A support the determination does not cover is taxable even with a plan and a written agreement in place, which the ATO illustrates with exercise physiology delivered at a clinic rather than in residential care1
- What the plan managed template posts
- The NDIS provider template holds its own row for a plan managed non-listed support and posts it to account 404 at GST on Income3
- Why a mix is the risk
- The ATO's own note is that a practice making both taxable and GST free supplies may need to review its accounting systems to get the treatment right1
What a price limit covers
A price limit is a maximum, and the question is what the maximum is a maximum of. It is the whole amount a provider may charge for the support item, tax and all. So where the support carries tax, the tax is inside the limit. A provider cannot charge the limit and then add tax to it, and the participant's plan is not asked for more than the limit because of tax.
That is the sentence most pages stop at, and on its own it sounds harmless. It is not. Two providers can bill the same support item at the same limit, on the same day, and end the month with different revenue, because one of them was making a taxable supply and the other was not. The gap is not a rounding. It is one eleventh of everything they claimed on that item.
The claim field that carries the rule
The rule is the pricing document's: where GST applies, the price limit is inclusive of GST. A bulk payment request has a unit price column and a tax code column, and the portal guide says what each one holds.
- The unit price column takes the price per unit sold or the hourly price of the service, in dollars and cents, and the portal pays no more than the item's catalogue price.
- The tax code column takes P1 where tax is claimable at ten per cent, P2 where the supply carries no tax, or P5 where the supply is out of scope.
- No other field on the row adds tax to the unit price. There is no second amount field, which is the whole point: the ceiling and the amount the participant's plan is charged are the same number.
So the tax code is not a labelling decision. It decides how much of the same unit price the practice keeps. A provider who claims every line on the code with no tax has understated tax on the one line that is different, by an amount the limit they claimed at fixes.
What one eleventh costs at the same limit
The plate works a round number rather than a limit, because no limit is printed here and the arithmetic does not depend on it. Take any limit. Claimed on the code with no tax, all of it is revenue. Claimed on the taxable code, one eleventh of it is tax the practice holds for the activity statement and the rest is revenue. The strip is drawn from the module that does that division for the product, so the rounding on the page is the rounding in the ledger.
Read across a year this is not a curiosity. A practice with a small taxable NDIS line, priced at the limit like everything else, is running that line at a lower margin than the rest of its work and usually does not know it. The pricing decision and the tax decision were made by different people at different times, and the claim itself does not bring them together.
Which code a support takes
This page does not settle that question for a given support item, and it is worth being honest about why: the answer turns on the support, not on the funder. Two routes carry most of an allied health practice's work to a supply with no tax, and the ATO names further routes for particular cases.
The first route is the list in the GST Act. A service that is one of the listed health services, performed by a recognised health professional in that service and generally accepted in that profession as necessary for the appropriate treatment of the recipient, carries no tax. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, psychology, speech pathology and social work sit on that list, and none of the three conditions turns on who is paying, so therapy hours usually take this route without the participant's plan entering into it.
The second route is the one built for the scheme, and it has four requirements that all have to hold at once: the plan in effect, the support named in the plan's statement of supports, a written agreement, and coverage by one of the two tables in the determination the ATO points to. The determination applies to supplies made on or after 1 July 2021 and before 1 July 2027. Non-listed NDIS supports works through that test, and the written agreement page covers the written agreement requirement.
The ATO's worked example is the one to hold on to, because it is the shape of the trap: exercise physiology for a participant with a plan and a written agreement, delivered at a clinic, is still taxable, since the therapeutic supports table reaches it only where the service is also covered by one of the other determinations, which for that item means a residential care setting. Is exercise physiology GST-free? carries that example in full.
The same example names routes outside both of these. The ATO says that supply can be GST free, regardless of whether it is made to a participant, where a Medicare benefit is payable for it or where it is part of GST free hospital treatment. Two routes are the ones to check first, not the only ones there are.
What the canonical templates post on each side
The three canonical templates do not agree on this key, and the disagreement is instructive rather than a defect. The template written for an NDIS provider carries an explicit row for a non-listed support and posts it to its own account at the taxable rate. The two general templates carry no such row, so the same support falls through to their plan managed default, which is the GST free account each template puts plan managed work on.
In practice that means a mapping without a non-listed category row will post a taxable support at the GST free rate, quietly, on every invoice, and the deposit will still reconcile. The tax rate is the thing that was wrong, and a reconciled bank feed does not show it.
The two lines, side by side
| Claimed as | Tax code on the request | Revenue account in the plan managed template | Xero tax rate | What the practice keeps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A listed health service | P2 | 403, plan managed listed supports | GST Free Income | The whole unit price |
| A support that reaches neither the listed service route nor all four requirements | P1 | 404, plan managed non-listed supports | GST on Income | The unit price less one eleventh |
The second row is the plan managed template's default for its non-listed category, not the answer for every support off the list. Table 1 of the determination covers specialist disability accommodation, household tasks, travel assistance, interpreting and plan management, none of them a listed health service.
On the activity statement the two lines part company as well. Both amounts sit in total sales. Only the taxable line puts anything in the tax on sales label, and that is the one eleventh. A practice that codes its whole NDIS income one way is either understating that label or overstating it, and both take an amendment to fix once the statement is lodged.
The pricing decision hiding inside the tax answer
A provider charging at the limit cannot pass the tax on as well, so the tax is a cost of delivering that support at that price. That is a real commercial fact and it belongs in front of whoever sets the practice's service mix, not only in front of the bookkeeper.
It also explains a pattern worth naming. A practice reading its NDIS revenue by support item, without the tax code beside it, sees two identically priced lines as equally profitable. They are not, and the difference is stable rather than noisy. Putting the tax rate next to the support item in the practice's own reporting makes the gap visible.
Whether a plan manager changes the answer
One recurring worry is whether invoicing a plan manager makes the practice's supply a supply to the plan manager, taxable like any business to business service. The ATO addresses it directly: under normal circumstances, supports are supplied to the participant, not to the plan manager, and its worked example has the plan manager paying through the portal with the supply to the participant still carrying no tax.
So on the ATO's own reading the management arrangement changes who sends the money and when, and leaves the tax code on the claim where it was. How plan managed money arrives covers the payment side. The plan manager's own fee for managing the plan is a separate supply on its own terms.
What lands in the bank, and what it hides
The money does not arrive line by line. It arrives as one payment covering many claims, sometimes short paid where the agency paid at the limit rather than at the amount invoiced. The deposit does not say which lines were taxable, so the reconciliation has no tax code to check against.
Ledger Map does not fix that by guessing. It applies the practice's approved map: the revenue leg takes the account and the tax rate the map gives that funding source and support category, and the settlement leg posts against the clearing account at the BAS excluded rate the templates use for it. Each deposit gets one balanced document set, and one exact match is left in the bank feed for a person to confirm. See how it works for the shape of that.
When to check this again
The tax inclusive rule has been stable, and the pricing schedule around it is not: limits change on their own cycle, and the determination behind the four requirements has an end date written into it. The two ATO pages behind this answer each print their own last updated date in the sources below.
The practical habit is to re-read the limit for the support item when the schedule changes, and to re-check the tax code only when the support itself changes. Those are different events, and treating them as one is how a practice ends up carrying an old code against a new limit.
Questions
Does the NDIS price guide include GST?
Where a support carries GST, yes: the published limit is the ceiling on a tax inclusive amount, so the tax is inside it. Where a support carries no GST the question does not arise, because the limit is simply the price.
Do you pay GST on NDIS supports?
It depends on the support, not on the fact that the NDIS is paying. A listed health service delivered as appropriate treatment carries no GST, and none of the conditions for that turns on who is paying. A support that meets all four of the ATO's requirements for a supply to a participant carries none either. A support that reaches neither route is an ordinary taxable supply, and the ATO's exercise physiology clinic example is the one to test yours against.
Can I charge the price limit and add GST on top?
No. The limit is the maximum for the support item including any tax, and the claim itself has one amount field for the tax inclusive unit price. Where the support is taxable, the tax comes out of the limit, so the practice keeps one eleventh less on that line than on a line that carries no tax.
Does invoicing a plan manager change the GST treatment?
Under normal circumstances it does not. The ATO's position is that supports are supplied to the participant rather than to the plan manager, and its worked example keeps the supply free of GST with the plan manager paying through the portal. What changes is who pays and when.
What are the NDIS pricing schedules for 2026 and 2027?
This page does not restate them. A limit belongs to one support item and moves on the agency's own cycle, so printing one here would date the page rather than help you. Read the current limit for your support item from the agency's pricing arrangements, then apply the arithmetic above to it.
Sources
Open questions
- No price limit appears on this page. The pricing arrangements were read for the GST rule rather than for a schedule of limits, so the strip works a round unit price and that figure is not a limit.
- Whether a particular support item is a listed health service or needs the four requirements is decided per support item, with the practice's own adviser. This page does not close the grey areas the corpus leaves open, and each has two readings the sources do not settle. Supervision of another clinician can be read as part of the listed service the supervisee delivers, or as a separate service to that clinician rather than to a patient. NDIS report writing can be read as part of the therapy support it belongs to, or as a separate deliverable to whoever asked for it. Therapy assistant time can be read as part of the recognised professional's own service where the ATO's supervision conditions are met, or as the assistant's own service where they are not. The pages that own those questions carry them.
- The bulk payment request rules here come from the June 2025 edition of the portal guide, read through an archived capture because the agency blocks automated fetches. A later edition may change a column rule, so check the guide's edition date before relying on the field names.
- The two ATO pages cited refuse automated fetches and were read through a signed-in browser on 3 Sep 2026, each carrying the last updated date it prints. A reader checking the wording will need to open them the same way.
- The two routes this page works are the ones an allied health practice meets most often. They are not a closed list: the ATO's own exercise physiology example names a Medicare benefit and GST free hospital treatment as further routes, and this page does not work either of them.
- GST and health: National Disability Insurance Scheme
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 13 Jun 2024.
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- GST and health: other health services
Australian Taxation Office. Retrieved 3 Sep 2026. Source updated 12 Jun 2024.
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- Bulk payment requests, self help guide for providers, myplace provider portal, June 2025 edition
National Disability Insurance Agency. Retrieved 1 Oct 2025. Source updated June 2025.
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- NDIS pricing arrangements and price limits 2025-26, version 1.1, read through an Internet Archive capture
National Disability Insurance Agency. Retrieved 4 Sep 2026. Source updated 14 Oct 2025.
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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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