Construction travel: between sites and the bulky-tools rule

There is a lot of driving in a build. Out to a site before the traffic, off to the supplier when you run short of timber, across town when the foreman moves you to the next job that afternoon. Some of that petrol is genuinely a work cost and some of it is just you getting to work, and the return that gets it wrong usually gets it wrong in the same spot. The ATO does not care how early you left or how far the site is. It asks one thing: was the trip part of doing the job, or part of turning up to it. Sort that out and the rest of the car claim is mechanical.

The commute you can't claim

Driving from home to your site in the morning, and home again when you knock off, is private travel. It is not deductible, and it is the single biggest thing construction workers claim when they shouldn't. The reasons it feels unfair do not shift the answer:

• Living out the back of nowhere doesn't help. A ninety-minute run to a site because that's where the work is remains your circumstance, not a work expense. The commute stays private however far you drive it.
• A pre-dawn start doesn't help. Being on the tools by 6am, or crawling home after a long pour, is still ordinary travel to and from work in the ATO's eyes.
• A site or fares allowance doesn't help. Being paid an allowance to cover the drive doesn't make the drive deductible. The allowance is income you declare; the commute underneath it is still private.

Between sites the same day

The moment you are moving for work rather than moving to get to it, the answer flips, and this is the trip most workers are entitled to and leave off. These legs are deductible because the driving is part of the job:

• Site to site. Finishing on one job and driving straight to another the same day. Neither end is home, so the leg counts.
• The depot or the supplier run. Calling past the yard for gear, or ducking to the supplier for more materials before heading on to the job, is deductible travel.
• On to a second job. Leaving the site and driving directly to a second job that evening is claimable, because you are travelling between two workplaces.
• Home straight to an alternative workplace. Driving from home to a client's site or to off-site training that isn't your regular workplace is deductible, unlike the drive to the site you report to day after day. If the foreman redeploys you mid-morning and you drive off to a job you weren't expecting, that unplanned leg counts too.

The bulky-tools exception

There is one way the home-to-site drive can become deductible, and it is drawn tightly. Every one of these has to hold at the same time, not just the one that suits you:

• The tools are essential to the work, not just handy to have in the tray.
• They are genuinely bulky, awkward by size and weight, the sort of load you can only sensibly shift by vehicle rather than carry.
• There is nowhere secure to store them at the site, so transporting them yourself is a necessity, not a preference.

The catch is in that last one, and it is where the claim usually falls over. If the site gives you a locked store or a container to leave your gear in, then taking the tools home is your choice, and choice fails the test. The ATO draws the line with two workers. A bricklayer with a heavy kit but an employer-provided locker on site has no claim, because there was no need to cart it home. A concreter hauling a wheelbarrow, a mixer, shovels and screeds with no secure storage anywhere on the job does have a claim, because there was no other way. This is a real deduction for the few in the second position, not a lever for turning the daily drive into a write-off.

When the whole run counts: itinerant work

A smaller group can claim more than the trips above, including the home-to-first-site and last-site-home legs that are private for everyone else. This is itinerant work, and it fits a worker with no fixed workplace who continually travels site to site as the very nature of the job. Think of a worker checking several jobs across a day, never based anywhere, uncertain each morning where the day will send them. For that person the whole run can be deductible.

Be straight with yourself about whether it describes you, because this is where an overclaim comes apart. The indicators the ATO weighs up:

• Travel is fundamental to the work, built into the job itself rather than just how you happen to get there.
• You work across a web of sites, not a single workplace you return to.
• You usually cover more than one site before going home.
• There is real uncertainty about where you'll be next, changing from day to day.

The honest limit: if you are posted to one site for several days and stay there until that job is finished, those days are an ordinary commute, even for a worker who is itinerant the rest of the time. Settling on a single site for a stretch turns the drive back into private travel while it lasts.

The two methods

Once you have deductible car travel, there are two ways to work out the number. You use one or the other for the car across the year, and you pick whichever comes out higher:

• Cents per kilometre. A set rate for each work kilometre, which the ATO resets every year, capped at 5,000 work kilometres. No fuel receipts needed, but you still have to show how you arrived at the kilometres, not write down a tidy number after the fact.
• The logbook method. You run a logbook for twelve continuous weeks to establish your work-use percentage, then claim that share of every running cost for the year: fuel, servicing, registration, insurance, the lot. More records to keep, but it can be worth a good deal more if the car does serious kilometres for work.

One method per car, and no stacking. Fuel and servicing already sit inside both methods, so you can't claim the rate or the logbook share and then add petrol and servicing on top. And if the car is on a novated or salary-sacrifice lease, you can't claim its running costs at all, because the employer is the one leasing it. You can still claim parking and tolls on genuine work trips in that car.

When your ute isn't a "car"

This one catches out the bigger utes on site. For tax, a "car" is a vehicle built to carry a load under one tonne and fewer than nine passengers. A ute with a payload of one tonne or more sits outside that definition, and so does a vehicle that seats nine or more, or a motorbike. If your vehicle is one of those, you can't use cents per kilometre or the logbook method at all. Instead you claim the actual expenses for the work portion, backed by receipts: fuel and oil, insurance, interest on the loan, and the decline in value. It is worth checking the payload plate on a heavy dual-cab, because the method you're allowed depends on it.

Parking, tolls, fines

Parking and tolls follow the trip that earns them:

• Claimable on a genuine work trip. Paying to park while you're at a client's site between jobs, or a toll on the drive from one site to the next, is deductible.
• Not at a regular workplace. Parking at or near the site you report to every day is part of the private commute, so it's out.
• Not on the commute. A toll paid on the way from home to your usual site goes with the rest of that private trip.
• Fines are never deductible. A speeding fine or a parking ticket stays your own cost, even if you picked it up on a work trip.

The records that hold it up

A car claim lives or dies on the record behind it, and this is exactly where construction returns come undone. Cents per kilometre still needs a diary or a clear, shown working of your work kilometres. The logbook method needs a genuine twelve-week logbook plus the running-cost records to sit behind it. And every parking fee and toll needs its receipt. The dependable way to have the lot at tax time is to note each trip on the day it happens, not to reconstruct a year of site-to-site runs from memory in July. The ATO's own myDeductions app will log trips and store receipts for free.

The bottom line

Leave the commute off, however early the start or however long the drive, and claim the driving that is genuinely part of the job: between sites the same day, the supplier and depot runs, and the whole run if you truly roam site to site with no fixed base. Keep the bulky-tools exception for when all three parts really hold and there's nowhere on site to lock the gear away. Check whether your ute counts as a "car" before you pick a method, hold the parking and toll receipts, and record the kilometres as you drive them. Do that and the car claim is both larger than most workers realise and solid enough to stand behind.

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