GST treatment on quotes and invoices

Watt Electrical Australia is registered for GST. All quotes and invoices are prepared ex GST at the line-item level, with GST applied as a single line at the quote total. This is the legally required treatment under the A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999.

Rate

Standard GST rate: 10% of the net (ex-GST) total.

Application rules

• All line items (materials at marked-up price, labor, travel, handling) are recorded ex GST.
• The net subtotal is summed first.
• GST is computed as exactly 10% of the net subtotal, rounded to the nearest cent.
• The gross total is the net subtotal plus the GST amount.

Items outside GST

Standard electrical services supplied in Australia are taxable supplies. There are no GST-free items in normal operations.

Edge cases where GST is not applied on a line item:

• Work exported outside Australia (not applicable to WEA's territory; flagged here for completeness).
• Pass-through statutory fees collected on behalf of an authority (e.g., network connection fees charged by a DNSP). These are itemised separately and marked "pass-through, no GST applied" on the quote. Our service component for coordinating the pass-through is itself taxable at 10%.

Quote presentation

Quotes must show the net total, the GST amount, and the gross total distinctly. It is not acceptable to roll GST into line-item prices — clients are entitled to see the GST component separately for their own accounting.

Client without an ABN

If a quote is issued to a client without an ABN, GST still applies at 10%. The quote does not change in substance; the client simply cannot claim an input tax credit.

Record-keeping

All quotes and invoices retain the GST breakdown for at least five years per ATO record-keeping requirements. The quote number and the downstream invoice number are linked in the accounting system so a compliance query can be answered by producing one document pair.