Electricians - claiming work-related expenses

Keeping records of your daily travel expenses

Car expenses

The records you need to keep and how you work out your claim will depend on whether the vehicle you use is considered to be a car and whether you own or lease it. Your vehicle is considered not to be a car if it is any of the following:

a utility, truck or panel van with a carrying capacity of one tonne or more
a vehicle with a carrying capacity of nine or more passengers
a motorcycle.

If your vehicle is not a car, see Vehicles other than cars.

Methods of working out your car expenses

The deduction you can claim must be worked out using one of four methods. The records you must keep will depend on:

the estimated amount of business kilometres you travelled for the income year
which method you use for claiming car expenses.

For more information on methods of working out deductions for your car expenses, refer to Work-related car expenses.

The following two methods are those most commonly used by electricians.

The logbook method

To work out your deduction using the logbook method, you must keep:

a logbook
odometer records, and
receipts and other written evidence for all your car expenses. You can use your odometer readings to estimate your fuel and oil costs instead of keeping receipts.

The cents per kilometre method

When working out your deduction using the cents per kilometre method:

you don't need receipts or other written evidence but we may ask you to show how you worked out your estimate of business kilometres. For example

by using a diary of work-related travel
by basing your costs on a regular pattern of travel

you can claim only up to the first 5,000 business kilometres you travel.

Car expenses are claimed at item D1 Work-related car expenses on your tax return.

To help you work out deductions for your car expenses, use our Work-related car expenses calculator.

Sections within Work-related daily travel expenses

Last Modified: Tuesday, 29 June 2010