Deductions

Your travel must directly relate to your job function for you to be eligible to claim as a deduction. You can claim the cost of transport and incidentals. If your travel involved an overnight stay, you could claim meals.

You cannot claim the self-education expenses where the course you are undertaking does not have a sufficient connection to your current employment.

Items like this that you buy for use in your job can be claimed on your return. However, since the cost of these items is most likely to be more than $300 each, you will not be able to claim the full cost in one year. It will be necessary to spread your claim over the useful life of the items from a method of depreciation. Only the work-related proportion is claimable. You should keep a log of work-related use for a period of at least four weeks for each item to determine the proportion that you can claim.

Part of the line rental costs will be deductible where a taxpayer is required to make calls from home. Installation costs will not be deductible. Call costs would be deductible, and a log of calls must be kept. Mobile phones are claimed in the same way.

IPad will be treated as the equivalent of a laptop. If it is used to produce assessable income, therefore a claim could be made. All claims need to be adjusted to reflect personal & business use proportion, and if the iPad cost more than $300 the work-related proportion will be depreciated over its effective life.

Childcare expenses are not claimable as a tax deduction. Eligible taxpayers may be able to claim the Child Care Tax Rebate through the Family Assistance Office.

You are not allowed to claim the cost of the trip because the main purpose was to have a holiday and attendance at the seminar was incidental to this. You will only be able to claim the additional expenses that you incurred to attend the seminar. These could include the registration fee, travel expenses to the seminar, etc.

If a taxpayer carries on all or part of their employment activities from home and has an office set aside to do the work, then some portion of the running expenses can be deducted. Where a home is a place of business (and is easily identified as such), deductions can be claimed on the following items of expenditure – interest, rent, house insurance, council rates, heating and lighting, depreciation, insurance, repairs, cleaning, pest control, maintenance, decorating,  telephone etc.

No, you will require receipts to substantiate your expenses, even expenses less than $300. also, you must have spent the money, and it must be relevant to your employment to claim.

The tax office will require actual receipts of the expense to claim as credit card transactions will not show the details of the purchase.

You are allowed to claim expenses incurred in replacing, insuring and repairing tools of the trade that you use for earning your income. If the cost of any item is more than $300, then it needs to be depreciated over its effective life.

You generally cannot claim travel between your home and your workplace. There are four different methods for claiming work-related motor vehicle expenses and each have different record-keeping requirements. To ensure that you claim using the most favourable method, it is advisable to keep a log book and all receipts for expenses (e.g. repairs, services, tyres, etc). Your log book should be kept for a minimum of 12 consecutive weeks, and generally, it will be valid for five years unless there are significant changes in your circumstances. It is not necessary that you use the same claim method each year. The choice of method should be made on the basis of which is more favourable to you and which you have the appropriate records for. If you don’t have a current logbook or have not retained all receipts, you will be limited in which method you can choose. You cannot, however, claim any car expenses if your car is salary packaged.

There is no limit on the amount that you can claim each year, provided the expenses are necessarily incurred in earning your income. The expenditure must be work-related and you may need receipts to substantiate the expenditure.

Can claim a deduction for outdoor workers who buy sunscreen lotion, sunglasses and hats for use at work. The claim must be substantiated and apportioned for private use.

Compulsory uniforms are generally deductible, provided they identify you as an employee of that organisation or in a specific occupation. A requirement to simply wear particular colours is not enough to make the clothing deductible. If the clothing is deductible then you may also claim maintenance costs (e.g. laundry, dry cleaning etc).

The total fees you pay to a registered tax agent for preparing your return, amendments, and general handling of all your tax matters are all deductible. You can also claim travel to your tax agent. Your tax agent must be a registered tax agent who can legally receive payment for the preparation of tax returns.

You should need to keep your receipts or documentary evidence for five years from the date of lodgement of your tax return to substantiate your claims.