2.81 Million: How Many AU Small Businesses Charge GST [2026 Data]

Australia had 2,814,778 actively trading, GST-registered businesses as of 30 June 2026, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits release. That sounds like most of the country’s business population until you compare it to the 9,020,389 ABNs actually on issue: only about 1 in 3 ABN holders is currently registered to charge GST. Here is the full 2026 picture, by trend, industry and business size.

How many businesses are registered for GST in Australia right now?

2,814,778, as of 30 June 2026, according to the ABS’s Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits release, published 18 August 2026. That is the count of actively trading businesses the ABS could confirm are remitting GST during the year, and it is effectively the same population BillyPaid and other sources cite when they report “the number of Australian businesses,” since the ABS’s own scoping rules exclude any ABN holder without an active GST role from the count in the first place. The figure is up 85,130 from 2,729,648 a year earlier, a gain of 3.1%, and it is the fifth consecutive year the total has grown.

That growth came almost entirely from new entries outpacing exits, not from existing businesses somehow becoming more likely to charge GST. 460,461 businesses entered the ABS’s count in 2025-26 against 375,331 exits, a churn rate that shows how much turnover sits underneath a headline figure that, on its face, looks like slow and steady growth.

Figure 1: Roughly 1 in 3 Australian ABN holders is actively registered to charge GST. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Counts of Australian Businesses, methodology, June 2026.

How has the number of GST-registered businesses changed over time?

Steadily upward. The ABS’s industry-division data cube lets the count be tracked year by year: 2,539,724 businesses in June 2022, rising to 2,589,873 in June 2023, 2,662,998 in June 2024, 2,729,648 in June 2025, and 2,814,778 in June 2026, a 10.8% increase over the four-year span. The pace of growth has been accelerating, not flattening: net additions ran from 50,149 in 2022-23 up to 85,130 in 2025-26, driven almost entirely by non-employing businesses, which accounted for 97.6% of the year’s net new registrations. Employing businesses grew too, up 0.2% in 2025-26, the first net increase in that category since 2021-22, even after 28,127 existing businesses shed their last employee and dropped back to non-employing during the year.

Figure 2: Australia’s GST-registered business count has grown every year since June 2022. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits, June 2022 to June 2026.

What share of all ABN holders are actually registered for GST?

About a third. The ABS’s own reconciliation of the Australian Business Register, published in its Counts of Australian Businesses methodology, shows 9,020,389 non-canceled ABNs on issue at 30 June 2026. Of those, 3,026,941, 33.6%, carry an active GST role and are confirmed trading in goods and services. The remaining 5,993,998, 66.4%, either have no active GST role at all or are classified as long-term non-remitters, meaning they have not lodged a business activity statement or have reported zero dollars for five consecutive quarters. Businesses in that second group are not considered actively trading and are excluded from the ABS’s headline business count, even though some of them may still be operating below the radar.

The gap between the ABS’s final published business count (2,814,778) and the raw active-GST-role figure (3,026,941) is mostly a scoping difference, not a registration one: the ABS additionally strips out government bodies and other non-market-sector entities before publishing its headline figure. Neither the ABS nor the ATO breaks the 5,993,998 non-GST-active ABNs down further, so it is not possible to say precisely how many are genuine small businesses trading below the $75,000 registration threshold versus dormant or non-trading ABN holders.

Population (30 June 2026)	Count	Share of ABNs
Active GST role, trading in goods and services	3,026,941	33.6%
ABS headline GST-registered business count	2,814,778	31.2%
No active GST role or long-term non-remitter	5,993,998	66.4%
Total non-canceled ABNs on issue	9,020,389	100.0%

Figure 3: Roughly two in three of Australia’s ABN holders currently have no active GST registration. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Counts of Australian Businesses, methodology, June 2026.

Which industries have the most GST-registered businesses?

Construction, and it is not close. The ABS’s industry-division data cube counted 478,651 GST-registered businesses in construction at 30 June 2026, 17.0% of the national total, well ahead of professional, scientific and technical services (366,289, 13.0%) and rental, hiring and real estate services (319,717, 11.4%). Rounding out the top eight: transport, postal and warehousing (261,109), health care and social assistance (227,702), agriculture, forestry and fishing (170,185), retail trade (156,143), and financial and insurance services (139,417). Health care posted the fastest annual growth of any division, up 6.7% in 2025-26, while agriculture was the only division to shrink, down 0.5%. Construction’s scale mirrors how slowly the trades get paid: a large, fragmented population of GST-registered sole traders and small firms, most of them issuing their own tax invoices, chasing payment on jobs completed weeks or months earlier.

Figure 4: Construction has more GST-registered businesses than any other Australian industry. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits, June 2026.

Are most GST-registered businesses actually small businesses?

Yes, almost all of them. Of the 2,729,648 businesses registered for GST as of 30 June 2025, 2,656,469, 97.3%, had fewer than 20 employees, the ABS’s own definition of a small business, according to data compiled by the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. Broken down further, 1,735,470 (63.6%) were self-employed with no staff at all, 688,870 (25.2%) employed between one and four people, and 232,129 (8.5%) employed between five and 19. Medium businesses (20-199 employees) made up just 2.5% of the total and large businesses (200 or more) only 0.2%. In other words, whatever picture Australia’s GST system looks like from the outside, from the inside it is overwhelmingly a system built around solo operators and micro-teams issuing tax invoices for jobs, retainers and one-off sales, not large corporates, and it is exactly that population whose cash flow is most exposed when a client pays a GST-inclusive invoice late.

Figure 5: Nearly all of Australia’s GST-registered businesses are small by employee count. Source: Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, based on ABS Counts of Australian Business, Table 13, August 2025.

How many businesses register for GST voluntarily, below the threshold?

This is the one number Australia’s tax and statistics agencies do not publish, and it is worth being upfront about that gap rather than guessing at a figure. GST registration becomes mandatory once a business’s current or projected turnover reaches $75,000 a year ($150,000 for non-profits), according to the ATO, and taxi, limousine and ride-sourcing drivers must register regardless of turnover. Below that line, registration is optional, and plenty of small operators choose to register anyway, since it lets them claim GST credits on business purchases and often makes it easier to trade with other GST-registered businesses. Neither the ATO nor the ABS separately reports how many of the 2.81 million currently registered businesses sit above versus below the mandatory threshold.

The closest public data point comes from a related question: how many businesses would stay registered if the threshold moved. A Parliamentary Budget Office costing, commissioned in April 2025 to model a proposed rise in the mandatory threshold to $250,000, estimated that around 95% of businesses in the affected range that receive a net GST refund would remain voluntarily registered even if they no longer had to be, along with roughly 80% of those with net GST to pay. That points to a GST system many small businesses value even when it is optional, but it is a forward-looking policy estimate tied to a proposal that has not been adopted, not a measurement of today’s actual voluntary registration rate.

The Bottom Line

Australia’s GST-registered business count keeps climbing, 2.81 million as of June 2026 and rising for a fifth straight year, but that headline number obscures how selective GST registration actually is across the wider economy. Only about 1 in 3 ABN holders currently charges GST, and the businesses that do skew overwhelmingly small: 97.3% employ fewer than 20 people, and construction alone accounts for nearly one in six of them. For a sole trader or small operator approaching the $75,000 threshold, or already past it, the practical takeaway is the same either way: every invoice needs GST calculated and itemized correctly from day one of registration, since retroactive fixes after a late registration bring backdated liability and ATO penalties. Building that habit with an invoice generator that itemizes GST automatically removes one of the more common ways new registrants get their first few tax invoices wrong.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Australian businesses charge GST in 2026? 2,814,778 businesses were actively trading and registered for GST in Australia as of 30 June 2026, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits release. That is up 85,130 from 2,729,648 a year earlier, a gain of 3.1%, and the fifth straight year of growth in the GST-registered business count.

What share of ABN holders in Australia are registered for GST? About 1 in 3. The ABS’s own reconciliation of the Australian Business Register shows 3,026,941 of the 9,020,389 non-canceled ABNs on issue at 30 June 2026, 33.6%, carry an active GST role and are trading in goods and services. The remaining 5,993,998 ABNs, 66.4%, either have no active GST role or are classified as long-term non-remitters and are not currently charging GST.

Which industries have the most GST-registered businesses in Australia? Construction, by a wide margin. It counted 478,651 GST-registered businesses at 30 June 2026, 17.0% of the national total, ahead of professional, scientific and technical services (366,289) and rental, hiring and real estate services (319,717), according to the ABS’s industry-division data cube for the same release.

Do small businesses in Australia have to register for GST? Only once turnover reaches $75,000 a year, current or projected, according to the Australian Taxation Office. Below that line registration is voluntary, except for taxi, limousine and ride-sourcing drivers, who must register regardless of turnover. Once registered, 97.3% of Australia’s GST-registered businesses had fewer than 20 employees as of 30 June 2025, based on ABS data compiled by the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman.

Sources and References

1. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits, June 2022 to June 2026, headline business counts, industry and employment-size breakdowns, released 18 August 2026.
2. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits methodology, ABN-to-business-count reconciliation table and long-term non-remitter definition.
3. Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman: Number of Small Businesses in Australia, employment-size split of GST-registered businesses, based on ABS Table 13, August 2025.
4. Australian Taxation Office: Registering for GST, registration threshold and requirements.
5. Parliamentary Budget Office: GST Threshold Change costing, April 2025, modeled voluntary-registration retention if the mandatory threshold rose to $250,000.

Note: All figures verified as of October 2026.