Work-related car expenses are expenses you incurred as an employee for a car you:
- owned
- leased, or
- hired under a hire-purchase agreement.
For more information, see You need to know.
What can you claim?
You can claim car expenses you incurred in performing your employment duties in 2017–18.
You can also claim the cost of using your car to travel directly between two separate places of employment when you have a second job, providing one of the places is not your home.
You cannot claim for the normal trip between home and work, unless:
- you use your car to carry bulky tools or equipment (such as an extension ladder or cello) which your employer requires you to use for work and cannot leave at work
- your home is a base for employment (you were required to start work at home and travelled to a workplace to continue work for the same employer), or
- you have shifting places of employment (you regularly work at more than one place each day).
See Car and travel expenses for information about:
- what expenses you claim as car expenses (at this section)
- what expenses you claim as travel expenses (at Work-related travel expenses)
- some examples of trips you can and cannot claim.
Want to know what work-related expenses you may be entitled to claim?
We provide information to help you understand what you may be able to claim at Deductions you can claim.
Methods
If your claim for work-related car expenses is 5,000 business kilometres or less, you can choose one of the following methods to work out your work-related car expenses:
To claim work-related car expenses over 5,000 business kilometres, you must use the logbook method.
If you qualify to use both methods, you can use whichever method gives you the largest deduction or is most convenient.
Both methods require you to know or estimate your business kilometres. Business kilometres are the kilometres you travelled in the car in the course of earning assessable income (includes work-related activities).
Depreciation and capital allowances tool
You can use the Depreciation and capital allowances tool to work out the total decline in value deduction. The tool can be accessed when you add your work-related car expenses and Calculation method is 'Logbook'.
The following video shows you how to use the Depreciation and capital allowances tool.
Completing this section
You may need:
- written evidence for your car expenses (receipts, invoices or diary entries)
- your car logbook and odometer records.
We have pre-filled your tax return with work-related car expense information provided to us. Check for work-related car expenses that are not pre-filled and ensure you add them.
- For each work-related car that has not been pre-filled in your tax return, select Add and enter the description of the car (for example, make/model).
- 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 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. To display results from the tool you must select the logbook method.
- Select Save.
- Select Save and continue.
Notes:
- You may want to work out your deduction using both 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 Work it out.