Phone expenses
You can claim a deduction for the cost of work-related phone calls you make, including calls from mobile phones. You can also claim a deduction for your phone rental if you can show you were on call or you had to call your employer or clients regularly while you were away from your workplace.
If you also used your phone for private purposes, you can only claim that portion of your phone rental costs and calls that relate to your work-related use of the phone - see example 12.
|
If you are reimbursed for part or all of your phone expenses, you cannot claim a deduction for that portion.
|
Keeping records of phone expenses
You may be able to identify your work-related calls individually on your itemised telephone account. If you do not receive itemised accounts, you can make a reasonable estimate of your call costs based on diary records you have kept over a minimum four-week period, together with your relevant telephone accounts.
Example 12
Angelo uses his mobile phone for work purposes. He is on a set plan of $49 a month and rarely exceeds the plan cap.
Angelo receives an itemised account from his phone provider each month by email, which includes details of the individual calls he has made.
At least once a year, Angelo prints out his account and highlights the work-related calls he made. He makes notes on his account for the first month about who he is calling for work - for example, his site manager.
Out of the 300 calls he has made in a four-week period, Angelo works out that 30 (10%) of the individual call expenses billed to him are for work and applies that percentage to his cap amount of $49 a month. The other two months that Angelo reviews are consistent with this.
Since Angelo was only at work for 46 weeks of the year (10.6 months), he calculates his work-related mobile phone expense deduction as follows:
Last Modified: Tuesday, 5 July 2011