GST on NDIS report writing

A practice writing a report for an NDIS participant is doing one of two things, and the tax answer follows which one. It can be documentation the plan funds as part of a therapy support. It can be a report somebody else asked for: a school, a court, a tribunal, an insurer, a support coordinator's employer. On the invoice the two look identical.

This project's research records the split as a grey area rather than a settled answer, and the three canonical templates behind Ledger Map say as much in their own notes. So this page sets out both readings, what each turns on, and where the line lands.

If Medicare, NDIS, Workers Compensation or private health insurance pays you, then it is as if the patient paid you.¹⁰

That shorthand is right about treatment, and it is the reasoning that misfires here. It works because the funder stands in for the patient. A report a third party commissioned is different: that party wanted the document, and that party is the one being supplied.

The ATO states the report test in two lines on its medical services page, about a medical report a medical practitioner supplies. Such a report is GST free where a Medicare benefit is payable for it, or where it is an ordinary and natural part of the performance of the GST free medical service. The two worked examples underneath point in opposite directions.

The report by Dr Green to City Insure is not GST-free because: a Medicare benefit is not payable for the report; City Insure is the recipient of the supply; the report is not a natural part of the performance of the GST-free medical service that Dr Green supplies to Annabelle.²

The pathology service and the written conclusions are GST-free because they are a natural part of the performance of the GST-free medical service. It does not matter that a Medicare benefit is not payable.²

The second example rarely gets quoted. A written document, sent to somebody who was not the patient, stayed GST free because the patient had engaged the practitioner and the writing was part of performing the service. That is close to the shape of plan funded documentation, which is why the second reading survives. It is not the same fact pattern though: both examples are about medical practitioners, a different part of the law from the NDIS test. The medico-legal reports page works the general case, and reports to a compensation insurer the settled one.

There is a second door, and a listed profession can try it whether or not the NDIS test is met. A service that is not a medical service is GST free where three conditions hold: it is a listed health service, it is performed by a recognised health professional in that service, and the profession generally accepts it as necessary for the appropriate treatment of the recipient of the supply.

Psychology, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, dietary, podiatry and social work are all on that list, so those professions have two routes to try. The third condition carries the same catch: the ATO says the recipient of the supply is not always the patient, and in some cases it is another business. A report a school commissioned fails that condition on the same facts that let the therapy pass it. The non-listed supports page covers what happens when neither door opens.

A tax rule only helps once a line lands somewhere. Ledger Map resolves every revenue line through a standing map built from a canonical template, and on this key the three templates agree: one account code, one Xero tax rate, and no fallback.

Read that agreement carefully, because it is narrower than it looks. The templates agree on where a report line goes and what rate it carries. Each also carries a note against that row asking for a decision the template declines to make.

Confirm per report whether it is plan-funded therapy documentation or third-party work.⁷

The account name on the NDIS template says it in fewer words: reports, assessments and progress notes for third parties. It is the third party part that earns the taxable rate, not the word report.

The two errors cost in opposite directions, which is why the question is worth deciding rather than defaulting. Coding a taxable report GST free understates GST on sales, and a shortfall can be assessed with penalties and interest. Going back for the difference is awkward, because the money came from a plan balance since spent.

Coding plan funded documentation taxable costs the practice directly. The unit price on a bulk payment request is paid up to the price limit for the support item, and that limit is GST inclusive where GST applies, so the GST comes out of the limit rather than sitting on top of it. The price limits page works that arithmetic.

Neither error is usually a decision. Both are a mapping rule written once, applied to every report after it, and invisible until somebody reads an activity statement closely.