We have pre-filled your tax return with work-related self-education expense information provided to us. Check for work-related self-education expenses that are not pre-filled and ensure you add them.
Complete this section if you have self-education expenses that are related to your work as an employee and which you incur when you do a course to get a formal qualification from a school, college, university or other place of education.
To claim a deduction, you must have met one of the following conditions when you incurred the expense:
- the course maintained or improved a skill or specific knowledge required for your work activities at that time
- you could show that the course was leading to, or was likely to lead to, increased income from your work activities at that time
- other circumstances existed which established a direct connection between the course and your work activities at that time.
You cannot claim a deduction for self-education expenses for a course that:
- relates only in a general way to your current employment or profession, or
- will enable you to get new employment.
You cannot claim any deductions against government assistance payments, including Austudy, ABSTUDY and Youth allowance.
You also cannot claim contributions you made under the Higher Education Contribution Scheme Higher Education Loan Program (HECS-HELP), or repayments under the Higher Education Loan Program (HELP), the Student Financial Supplement Scheme (SFSS) or the Trade Support Loan Program (TSL).
Examples of expenses you can claim are:
- textbooks
- stationery
- student union fees, student services and amenities fees
- the decline in value of your computer
- certain course fees.
Depreciation and capital allowances tool
You can use the Depreciation and capital allowances tool to work out any deductible decline in value.
The tool can be accessed when you add your self-education expenses and
- Category type is 'Decline in value', or
- Category type is 'Car expenses' and Calculation method is 'Logbook'.
Want to know what work-related expenses you may be entitled to claim?
We provide information and useful videos to help you understand what you may be able to claim at Deductions you can claim.
Completing this section
- For each work-related self-education expense that has not been pre-filled in your tax return, select Add.
- Select the condition that best describes your circumstances at the time you incurred the expenses.
- Select the Category type and enter your description.
- For General expenses, Decline in value, Repair expenses and Non-deductible expenses enter your amount, or use the Depreciation and capital allowances tool to calculate your decline in value amount.
- For Car expenses select the calculation method you wish to use.
- If you select the cents per kilometre method enter the number of business kilometres you travelled.
- If you select the logbook method enter the information into the corresponding fields. myTax will calculate the total car expenses.
- If you have calculated the decline in value of your car, enter the amount without any reduction for personal use. myTax will multiply the decline in value you enter by the percentage of business use.
- If you used the Depreciation and capital allowances tool to work out the decline in value, the calculated amount will automatically exclude the personal use percentage.
- Select Save.
We will work out the total amount you can claim for your work-related self-education expenses from the information you provide. In working out what you can claim, certain costs are reduced by $250. For more information see Work related self-education expenses.
- Select Save and continue.
Notes:
- you may want to work out your car expenses using different methods to see which gives you the largest deduction and then save the one that does
- if you used the Depreciation and capital allowances tool, fields containing information from the tool cannot be directly adjusted in myTax. To make any adjustments to this information, or to add new assets to the tool, select the 'Work it out' link.