Cleaning products, equipment and the $300 rule

The spray bottle and the sponges come out of your own pocket in dribs and drabs, a few dollars at the servo or the discount aisle, and they add up to more across a year than most cleaners ever realise. The gear is the other half of the story: the mop you replace every few months, and the vacuum that cost you real money. How you claim these two things follows one line, the $300 line, and getting it right is the difference between claiming everything you should and quietly leaving money behind. This chapter covers the products you buy, the equipment you own, the way a "set" can trip you up, and the one write-off you keep reading about that an employee genuinely cannot use.

The products and consumables you buy yourself

These are the small, forgettable buys, and they are the single most under-recorded thing a cleaner spends money on. Each one costs a few dollars, you pay cash or tap without a second thought, and the receipt goes in the bin. Nearly all of them come in well under $300, so you claim them in full in the year you buy them.

• The consumables. Detergents, disinfectant, chemicals, cloths, wipes, sponges, scourers, dusters, scrapers and blades, bin and garbage liners, spray bottles, and the batteries that run your gear.
• Claimed in full, straight away. Because each item sits at or under $300, there is no depreciation to work out. You buy it, you use it for work, you claim it this year.
• The catch that shrinks an employee's claim. You can only claim what you paid for yourself and were not reimbursed for. Commercial and contract employers usually hand you the chemicals and the gear on site, which is exactly why an employed cleaner's product claim is smaller than a domestic cleaner's, who buys the lot. Claim what came out of your pocket, not what the depot supplied.

Equipment and the $300 rule

Your tools split into two camps, and the split is about price, not size. The rule underneath is simple once you see it, and it is the mechanic that decides how a purchase lands on your return.

• The small tools. Mops, buckets, brooms and hand spray gear are cheap, so they sit at or under $300 and you claim them in full the year you buy them.
• The big machines. A vacuum, steam cleaner, pressure washer, floor polisher or scrubber, carpet extractor, blower or a ladder can run past $300. Over that line you claim the decline in value, spread across the item's effective life rather than all at once.
• Apportion the private use. If you also run the vacuum through your own home, you claim only the work-use share, not the whole thing. The same goes for part-year ownership: a machine bought in March gets claimed for the months you owned it.
• Repairs and servicing count. Fixing or servicing your work equipment is deductible too, for the work portion, so the annual service on the steam cleaner belongs on your return.

The "set" trap

Here is where a run of cheap purchases can catch you out. You cannot always look at each item on its own.

If several items each cost $300 or less but they form part of a set that costs more than $300, or you buy a group of substantially identical items that together come to more than $300, you have to depreciate them. You cannot write each one off in full just because the individual price tag was under the line. The ATO looks at the set, not the single piece, so a matched kit or a bulk buy of the same tool is treated as one asset over $300.

The one write-off that isn't yours

You will read about the instant asset write-off, the one that lets a business immediately deduct assets well above $300 up to a cap the ATO sets each year. It is real, and it is worth knowing what it is, because it is not for you.

• It is a business concession. The instant asset write-off belongs to small businesses and sole traders running an ABN. The cap moves from year to year, which is the tell that it is a business measure rather than an employee rule.
• A PAYG employee cannot use it. As an employed cleaner your rule is the plain one: $300 or less means claim it in full this year, over $300 means claim the decline in value. There is no shortcut around the $300 line for you.
• Know which one you are. If you also run cleaning jobs under an ABN, the write-off may be yours on that side of your work. The Employed or sole trader? chapter sorts out who the concession is actually for, and which set of rules applies to you.

The records behind it

Every claim here stands on the receipt behind it, and this is the category where the paper trail leaks the worst, because the buys are small and constant. Keep a receipt for each item, from the box of cloths to the pressure washer. Once your total work-related claims pass $300, you need written evidence for all of them, so the habit of keeping every docket is what protects the whole return. For anything over $300 that you depreciate, hold on to the purchase details, the date and the price, because you carry that item across several years and need to prove where the decline in value started. The ATO's free myDeductions app will store receipts and a work-use note if you keep on top of it.

The bottom line

Split your spending by the $300 line and the rest falls into place. The chemicals, cloths and bin liners you top up yourself are claimed in full the year you buy them, so keep every small receipt because that is where the money quietly slips away. The vacuum, the pressure washer and anything else over $300 come off gradually as they decline in value, with the work-use share carved out on the ones you also use at home. Watch the set trap, claim only what your employer did not supply, and leave the instant asset write-off to the business owners it was built for.

General information only, not tax advice. Check the ATO or a registered tax agent for your situation.