If you use your own car for work-related travel (excluding travel between home and work), you may be able to claim a deduction for your car expenses. The deductions can be claimed using “cents per kilometre” method or “logbook” method.
You can claim deductions for work-related car expenses if you use your car to:
- Perform your work duties
- Attend work-related meetings and conferences away from your regular place of work
- Travel directly between two separate places of employment if neither of the places is your home
- Travel from your regular workplace to an alternative workplace and back to your regular workplace
- Perform itinerant work – meaning you had shifting places of employment (e.g. you regularly worked at more than one site each day before returning home).
In some cases, you may be able to claim the costs of travel between home and work, where:
- You carry bulky tools or equipment that your employer requires you to use for work and there is no secure storage available at work
- Your home was a base of employment (that is, you were required to start your work at home and travel to a workplace to continue your work for the same employer)
- You had shifting places of employment (that is, you regularly worked at more than one site each day before returning home)
Cents per kilometre method
- You can claim a maximum of 5,000 work-related kilometres per car using this method
- You can claim 68 cents per kilometre for the 2019–20 financial year (72 cents per kilometre from 1 July 2020)
- The cents per kilometre rate includes the car’s decline in value, registration, insurance as well as maintenance, repairs and fuel costs. You cannot add these expenses on top of the rate when calculating your deduction
- You need to be able to show how you worked out your work‑related kilometres (for example, by producing diary records of work-related trips
- You will also need to have evidence that you own the car
Logbook method
- Your claim is based on the work-related percentage of expenses for the car
- Expenses you can claim include running costs and decline in value
- You cannot claim capital costs, such as the purchase price of your car, the principal on any money borrowed to buy it and any improvement costs (for example, adding paint protection and tinted windows)
- To work out your work-related percentage, you need a logbook and the odometer readings for the start and end of the logbook period. Your logbook needs to show a continuous period of 12 weeks
- You can claim actual expenses you incur for fuel and oil costs using your receipts or you can calculate these expenses based on odometer records that show readings from the start and the end of the period you used the car during the year
- You need written evidence for all other car expenses, including evidence that you own the car and odometer readings at the start and end of the period you used the car during the year