Individual Tax Return Tips #2 – Maximise Your Car Travel Claims

Individual Tax Return Tips #2 – Maximise your car travel claims 

Claiming your car for work related travel is one of the most common and easiest tax deductions for individuals.  Normally claiming car travel from home to work is a personal cost and not tax deductible – unless you are carrying bulky tools and equipment (and can’t store them safely at work), or you are travelling to different work places.

The two methods to claim your car are:

Claim up to a maximum of 5000 kilometres per car per year – and claim at 66 cents per kilometre.  This is usually suited to people who travel now and again for work to another work place, for meetings away from their normal workplace, for professional development, to clients, etc.  You just need to write down what trips you did over the year, how far and when to find out your total kilometres over the year

Claim a percentage of your total car costs of fuel, depreciation, finance interest, registration, services, insurances, etc.  A 12 week car log book is required for this method where you record work travel details, which determines what % you can claim of your total car costs for the year.  This method is more suited to trades people, sales people, or people who have to travel a lot to client’s premises.

By Pat Hoey