Case G81

Judges:
JL Burke Ch
CF Fairleigh QC

Court:
No. 1 Board of Review

Judgment date: 12 December 1975.

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J.L. Burke (Chairman): During the year of income ended 30 June 1974 the taxpayer was employed full-time as a member of the sales staff of a large departmental store. She is claiming a deduction of $85 expended during the year on the purchase of three black dresses and a cardigan for wear at work and $56 being the cost of having the garments dry cleaned.

2. The written house rules issued to the taxpayer by her employer required her, as a member of the sales staff, to wear a ``Black dress or suit - not sleeveless and knee length - with no coloured trimmings; no jewellery, with the exception of a single string of white pearls and small pearl earrings. Black shoes''.

3. The taxpayer conformed with the house rules so far as dress was concerned; she wore the ``store'' attire to and from work to avoid the inconvenience of changing before and after her hours of duty. Her duties in the air-conditioned store included inspection of stock on arrival in the storeroom, pricing and display of merchandise, attending to customers and, as section head, staff supervision.

4. The main burden of the taxpayer's case was that, although the frocks she wore were not, in truth, uniforms, the black colour was so unfashionable it was not practicable to wear them other than when travelling to and from work and when on duty. In her view they represented distinctive ``shop assistant's'' garb.

5. An almost identical issue came before Board No. 2 in
14 C.T.B.R. (N.S.) Case 2. I say almost identical because the facts in the decided reference were, if anything, more in favour of the taxpayer in that it was her custom to change from street frock to her working dress on arrival at the store where she worked. The majority of the Board decided, and in my opinion correctly so, that the black frocks did not satisfy the ``necessary and peculiar'' test adopted by this Board (as then constituted) in
8 T.B.R.D. Case H61.

6. The other angle put forward by the taxpayer was that the nature of her duties subjected her clothing to an excessive degree of wear and tear including deterioration and discoloration attributable to perspiration. However the evidence of the taxpayer's duties summarized in para. 3 of these reasons falls far short of establishing that the conventional clothing worn by the taxpayer was exposed to wear so far beyond the normal that the expenditure incurred in replacing it and in having it dry cleaned, which would otherwise fall within the prohibition of sec. 51(1) as being of a private nature, qualifies for deduction as having been incurred in gaining or producing the taxpayer's assessable income. See Case A45,
69 ATC 270 .

7. For the foregoing reasons I would uphold the Commissioner's decision on the

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ATC 573

objection and confirm the assessment the subject of review.