Sorry everyone, Im an ass. BFO confirmed I was wrong. It probably explains why I absolutely hate using the advanced pdf part of NetSuite. From BFO support:

The Report Generator does not render out HTML. It renders PDF, which can

also be converted to a variety of bitmap image formats.

It also does not take HTML as input. It uses a proprietary XML format

which closely resembles a subset of HTML and CSS 2.1. We are actively

working on a new version that take actual HTML/XHTML or indeed any XML

with full CSS3 stylesheet support and can render out to PDF or SVG.

All the layout is performed by our own proprietary code.