TABLE OF CONTENTS

• D1 & D2 Car and Travel Expense
  • Itinerant work
  • Travel between home and work and between workplaces
• D4 Education and study deduction
  • Eligibility to claim

D1 & D2 Car and Travel Expense

• If your travel is partly private, you can only claim the work‑related part. 
• You can only use one of the methods to calculate your deduction for car expenses. 
• If you claim car expenses for more than one car, you can choose to use a different method to calculate your expenses for each car. 
• If you claim a work-related car expense using the cents per kilometre or logbook method, you can’t claim any further deductions in the same tax return for the same car. 
• If you use someone else’s car for work-related purposes, you can only claim a deduction for actual expenses, such as fuel, in the work-related travel expense section of your tax return. Cars owned or leased by someone else may include a spouse, family member or employer. However, if you can show there is a family or private arrangement that made you the owner or lessee (even if you are not the registered owner) you can calculate your car expenses using either the logbook or cents per kilometre method. 
• A vehicle is not considered a car if it is a motorcycle or a vehicle that: 
  • has a carrying capacity of one tonne or more, such as a ute, truck or van 
  • can transport nine passengers or more, such as a minivan. 
• For these vehicles, you can only claim a deduction for actual expenses you incur when you travel for work (such as fuel). Claim your deduction as a work-related travel expense in your tax return. We recommend keeping a logbook for these vehicles as an easy way to show how you calculated your workrelated use of the vehicle. You must also keep records of all of your actual expenses.

Itinerant work

Last modified: 15 Jun 2020 QC 31983

The following factors may indicate you do itinerant work:

• Travel is a fundamental part of your work, as the very nature of your work, not just because it is convenient to you or your employer.
• You have a 'web' of work places you travel to, throughout the day.
• You continually travel from one work site to another.
• Your home is a base of operations – if you start work at home and can't complete it until you attend your work site.
• You are often uncertain of the location of your work site.
• Your employer provides an allowance in recognition of your need to travel continually between different work sites and you use this allowance to pay for your travel

Travel between home and work and between workplaces

Last modified: 15 Jun 2020 QC 31983

Trips between home and work are generally considered private travel. In some circumstances, you can claim a deduction for travel between home and work, as well as for some travel between two workplaces.

If your travel was partly private, you can only claim what you incurred in the course of performing your work duties.

In limited circumstances you can claim the cost of trips between home and work, where: 

• see list below, OR
• you were required to carry bulky tools or equipment for work and all of the following conditions were met:
  • The tools or equipment were essential for you to perform your employment duties and you didn’t carry them merely as a matter of choice. e.g. employer requires you to use for work
  • The tools or equipment were bulky – meaning that because of their size and weight they were awkward to transport and could only be transported conveniently by the use of a motor vehicle. 
  • There was no secure storage for the items at the workplace (e.g. cello, extension ladder).

D4 Education and study deduction

Last modified: 15 Jun 2020 QC 16918

Eligibility to claim

Your current employment and the course you undertake must have sufficient connection for your self-education expenses to qualify as a work-related tax deduction. If a study course is too general in terms of your current income-earning activities, the necessary connection between the self-education expense and your income-earning activity does not exist.

A tax deduction for your self-education expenses related to your work as an employee is available if you work and study at the same time and can satisfy any of these conditions:

• you are upgrading your qualifications for your current employment – for example, upgrading from a Bachelor qualification to a Masters qualification
• you are improving specific skills or knowledge used in your current employment – for example, a course that will allow you to operate more machinery at work
• you are employed as a trainee and you are undertaking a course that forms part of that traineeship – for example, an overseas trained person employed as an intern while doing a bridging course
• you can show that at the time you were working and studying, your course led, or was likely to lead, to an increase in employment income – for example, a teacher who will automatically get a pay increase as a result of completing the course.