IT phone, internet, memberships and travel deductions

The big-ticket IT deductions get the attention: the working-from-home method, the gear, the certifications. The costs on this page are smaller and quieter, and that is exactly why they slip off the return. An on-call ping answered from your own phone, the Australian Computer Society debit that renews itself in the background, the drive out to a client site to stand up a server. Each one is genuinely connected to how you earn, each one has a rule that decides whether it counts, and together they add up to more than most engineers claim. Here is the set that gets missed, and the line that governs each.

Phone and internet, and the double-dip to avoid

The work-use share of your own phone and internet is deductible. If your total claim for the year is $50 or less and only incidental, you can claim it without keeping records. Above that, you need an itemised bill and a work-use percentage worked out from a representative period, rather than a figure you settled on because it felt about right.

• Work use in IT genuinely runs high. Team chat, incident channels and on-call rotations mean the connection carries real work, and a higher percentage can be fair. But it has to be evidenced from your own usage, not assumed from the job title, and personal calls and browsing never go in the claim.
• The double-dip to state plainly. If you claim your working-from-home phone and internet through the fixed-rate method, you cannot also claim them here. The fixed rate already has phone and internet built into it, so counting them a second time is the same cost claimed twice. It is one or the other: the fixed rate with those baked in, or the actual bills apportioned, not both. The mechanics of that choice sit in the working-from-home chapter.

Professional memberships and publications

Membership of a professional body relevant to your role is deductible, and this is a clean one that regularly goes unclaimed because it renews on a card without a second thought.

• The body for your field. Membership of the Australian Computer Society, or another body that fits your duties such as a project-management or information-security institute, is deductible in full.
• Technical publications and subscriptions. These are deductible where the content is specific to your work. A journal or reference service you rely on for your duties qualifies; a general newspaper or magazine is private, however much industry news it happens to carry.

Software subscriptions

The work-related share of software and subscriptions you pay for yourself is deductible, such as an IDE licence or a code-hosting plan you cover out of pocket rather than through the employer. This is a short note here because the mechanics, immediate deduction versus decline in value, live in the equipment chapter.

Travel between sites

Your home-to-regular-work commute is not deductible. That holds even when the drive is long, or the hours are odd because you were called in overnight. The trip that turns private travel into a deduction is one where the driving is part of the job rather than part of turning up to it.

• Between two jobs the same day. Driving from one workplace to a second on the same day is deductible, because neither end of that leg is home.
• To an alternative workplace for the same employer. A support technician running between call-outs, or heading from home straight to a client site to install software, is travelling for work rather than commuting to a fixed base. If you have no fixed base at all and genuinely move from site to site, the whole run can count.
• The bulky-equipment exception. There is a narrow allowance where you carry equipment that is essential and genuinely bulky, and there is nowhere secure to leave it at work. All three have to hold at once, so it applies to few IT roles, but it is real where they do.

Work out the claim by cents per kilometre, at a rate the ATO sets each year and capped at 5,000 work kilometres, or by logbook for a share of your actual running costs. If the car is on a novated lease you cannot claim its running costs, since the employer is leasing it, though parking and tolls on genuine work trips still count. And relocating to be near a new work location is not deductible, even where the job requires the move.

A couple more that belong here

Three costs sit outside the categories above but are worth checking on your own return:

• Income protection premiums. Deductible where the policy is held outside super. Premiums funded inside your super fund are not claimed on your return.
• The tax-agent fee. What you pay to have last year's return prepared is deductible the following year.
• Overtime meals. A meal on overtime is deductible only where you receive an award overtime-meal allowance shown separately on your income statement and declared as income. No allowance, no claim, and an ordinary meal on a normal shift stays private.

The records that hold these up

These claims come down to evidence that is easy to have and easy to forget. For phone and internet, keep an itemised bill and the work-use record behind your percentage. For travel, keep a logbook or a clear record of your work kilometres logged as you drive them, not reconstructed from memory at year's end. For the memberships, subscriptions, premiums and the agent fee, keep the receipts and renewal notices. The free way to carry the lot is the ATO's own myDeductions app, which will log trips and store receipts as you go.

The bottom line

None of these is the largest number on an IT return, and that is precisely why they get left off. Claim the work share of your phone and internet, but only once, never on top of the fixed rate. Put through the ACS membership, the technical subscriptions and the software you pay for yourself. Claim the driving that is genuinely part of the job and leave the commute where it belongs. Add income protection outside super, the agent fee and a properly-supported overtime meal. Kept as you go, these quiet costs are worth exactly what you paid for them.

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