IT professional tax return checklist for 2026

Most of your deductions live in one place: your home office and the running costs of working there. The rest are certifications, subscriptions and memberships that recur on a card you rarely look at. None of it is hard to claim, but the WFH rules moved recently and the same three or four mistakes get returns flagged every year. This is the checklist to run before you lodge, so the setup you paid for and the study that keeps you current land on your return, and the myths stay off it.

1. Have these ready before you open your return

• Your income statement. Employers finalise it in myGov, usually by mid-July. Wait for the "Tax ready" status before you lodge, and check every employer if you changed jobs during the year.
• Your whole-year record of work-from-home hours. This is the one people arrive without. If you use the fixed-rate method, you now need actual hours for the full year, kept as you went. A roster, timesheet, calendar or diary is fine; an estimate or a four-week sample is not.
• Your receipts and card statements. The equipment, the cert renewals, the software subscriptions and the ACS membership, plus the statements that catch the direct debits you would otherwise forget.

2. Working from home: pick one method

You claim the additional running costs of working from home, and you choose one method for the year. You cannot mix them for the same period.

• Fixed rate. A set cents-per-hour figure the ATO updates each year, multiplied by your hours. Simpler, and it usually suits hybrid or lower-hours work.
• Actual cost. The work-related portion of each real bill, apportioned on a fair basis with receipts. Often wins for a full-time-WFH worker with a dedicated room and high energy use, but it demands full records.

The reminder that costs IT workers the most: the fixed rate already bundles your home and mobile phone, your internet and data, electricity and gas, and computer consumables. If you claim the fixed rate, you cannot also claim phone or internet on top. That is the single most common WFH error. The decline in value of your equipment is claimable on top of either method. The working-from-home chapter walks through choosing between the two.

3. Home-office equipment and the $300 line

• Items $300 or less. A keyboard, mouse, webcam, headset, a monitor arm, a sub-$300 monitor: each comes off in full the year you buy it, for the work-use portion.
• Items over $300. A $1,200 standing desk, an ergonomic chair, a laptop: claimed a little each year as it declines in value.
• Apportion dual use. A laptop used 60% for work is claimed at 60%, whichever side of $300 it sits.

One IT-specific catch worth flagging: you cannot split a self-built PC into sub-$300 parts to write each off, because parts that only work together are treated as one asset. The equipment chapter covers the $300 line and depreciation in full.

4. Certifications and courses that build on your role

• Study tied to your current duties. An AWS, Azure, GCP, Cisco, CompTIA or security cert, or a course that upskills the job you do now, is generally deductible: exam fees, renewals, study materials, practice tests and the travel to attend.
• The test. It has to maintain or improve the skills of your current role, or be likely to lift your income from it. Study to move into a different field, or to first break into IT, fails.

The current-role line and the HECS-HELP versus FEE-HELP nuance are in the certifications chapter.

5. Phone, memberships, software and travel

• Phone and internet under actual cost. The work-use share of your own bills, worked out from a representative four-week diary, only if you are not already claiming them through the WFH fixed rate.
• ACS or other memberships. Australian Computer Society, ISACA, (ISC)² or AIPM fees where they relate to your work, in full.
• Software subscriptions. The work portion of your IDE, GitHub, cloud sandboxes or an antivirus subscription; an annual subscription comes off in the year you pay it.
• Travel between sites. Driving between two jobs the same day, or to an alternative workplace for the same employer, such as a support tech on call-outs. Cents per kilometre or a logbook.

The recurring claims and the travel exceptions are set out in the phone, memberships and travel chapter.

6. The myths to leave off

These feel work-related and are not, and they are where IT returns get flagged:

• Rent, mortgage interest and other occupancy costs. As an employee working from home for convenience, you cannot claim them, and claiming mortgage interest would drag your home into capital gains tax. This is the top IT myth.
• Phone and internet on top of the fixed rate. Already baked in, so claiming them again is double-dipping.
• 100% of a shared connection. The household uses it too, so only the work portion is yours.
• The commute. Home to your regular workplace and back stays private, however long the drive or odd the hours.
• A course to get into IT. The study that first qualified you, or that changes your field, is not deductible.
• HECS-HELP repayments. Study-loan repayments are never deductible, and neither are course fees you incur under the HECS-HELP scheme.
• A home lab or gaming PC with no work link. Deductible only for a genuine connection to your current job, apportioned for private use. A hobby rig or a side project is private.
• The instant asset write-off. That is a business concession for an ABN. As an employee you use the $300 rule and decline in value, nothing more.

7. Keep the records, or the claim falls over

A deduction is only as strong as the evidence behind it. Keep written evidence for each claim, and if your total work-related claims come to more than $300, you need it for all of them. The one record IT workers most often lack is the whole-year log of home hours the fixed rate now demands, so bank those hours as you go rather than reconstructing them in July. The ATO's free myDeductions tool captures receipts and hours as you incur them.

General information only, not tax advice. Check the ATO's guide for IT professionals or a registered tax agent for your situation.

The bottom line

Run this checklist once before you lodge and the money that usually slips through, the second monitor, the WFH running costs, the cert renewal on a card you never check, lands back on your return. Claim the work portion of what you paid for and can evidence, keep occupancy costs and the double-dip off, and your bill settles on your real income once the genuine work costs come out.