FIFO & mining worker tax return checklist for 2026

You work the swing, come home wrecked, and the last thing you want at tax time is to sit down and reconstruct a year of gear, tickets and fuel from memory. The pay is good and the roster is brutal, and a fair slice of what you spend to hold the job down comes out of your own pocket. This checklist is the run-through to do before you lodge. It covers the deductions that are genuinely yours and, just as importantly for a FIFO worker, the ones that feel claimable but are not, because that second list is where mining returns get flagged. Work down it once, tick what you paid for, and lodge knowing the claim will hold.

Start here: the FIFO travel and LAFHA reality

This is the part that trips up more mine workers than anything else, so get it straight before you touch the rest. Your trip from home to the airport, and the flight to site, is a private commute. It stays private no matter how far you live from the pit or what hours your roster lands on, and that holds even in the rare case you pay for the flight yourself. In practice the company usually books the flights and runs the camp anyway, so there is nothing incurred to claim.

The living-away-from-home allowance is the other half of it. LAFHA is a fringe benefit, not income. It does not go on your tax return, and it gives you no deduction for the accommodation or food it covers, because those are private living costs. Receiving LAFHA creates exactly zero deductions. If any of this is fuzzy, the FIFO travel and LAFHA chapter works through the commute, LAFHA, and the narrow travel that genuinely does count.

The deduction checklist

Go through each line and tick the ones you paid for yourself this year. Anything the employer supplied, paid for or reimbursed comes straight off the list, because you can only claim what actually left your own pocket.

PPE, protective clothing and sun protection

• Protective gear you bought. Steel-capped boots, hi-vis, hard hat, safety glasses and goggles, gloves, hearing protection, and dust masks or respirators for silica and dust. Deductible to buy, repair, replace and clean.
• Fire-resistant and arc-flash clothing where the job needs it.
• Sun protection for outdoor work. Sunscreen, a broad-brim hat, and sunglasses where you work long stretches in the sun. Protective prescription sunglasses count too, apportioned for private use.
• Laundry of that gear. $1 a load for work-only washing, 50c a load where it goes in with the family wash. A total laundry claim of $150 or less needs no written evidence, though you still show how you worked it out.

The catch here is conventional clothing: plain drill shirts, jeans, work shorts and everyday closed shoes are not deductible even when the site requires them and you only wear them on shift. The PPE, clothing and sun chapter draws the line between protective gear and ordinary work clothes.

Tools, tickets and training

• Tools you funded, and the $300 line. A hand tool, drill or instrument costing $300 or less comes off in full the year you buy it. Anything over $300 is claimed a bit each year as it wears out. Watch the set trap: cheap items that form a set worth more than $300 together get depreciated, not written off at once.
• Repairs to your work tools.
• Ticket and licence renewals. Renewing a high-risk work licence, forklift or crane ticket, or a verification of competency you already hold to keep doing your current job is deductible. The first one, the ticket you got to land the role, is not.
• Work medicals, drug-and-alcohol and police-check renewals needed to keep your current role.

Heavy self-funded tools hit site trades hardest, so if you carry a real kit the tools, tickets and training chapter is worth the read for the $300 rule and the initial-versus-renewal line.

Phone, union, self-education and insurance

• The work share of your phone and data. Worked out from a typical four-week period, not guessed. A total claim of $50 or less needs no itemised records.
• Union or association fees. Your CFMEU Mining and Energy or AWU membership, in full.
• Self-education tied to your current role. Safety qualifications, machinery upgrades and industry courses that maintain or improve the skills you use now, along with fees, textbooks and the travel to attend.
• Income protection premiums where you hold the cover outside super.

What to leave off

These feel work-related and are not deductible, and each one is a spot the ATO watches on mining returns:

• The home-to-site commute, including a flight you pay for yourself to your regular site, and airport parking on the home leg.
• Camp and mess meals, and ordinary meals or snacks on a normal shift. Meals the employer provides or subsidises are private.
• The zone tax offset if you live in a city. Since 2015 your usual home has to be in the remote zone. A FIFO worker who flies out of Perth, Adelaide or Brisbane is excluded, and nights in a camp do not count.
• Fitness and gym costs, even where a fitness test is a condition of the job.
• Conventional clothing, the everyday drill shirts, jeans and closed shoes, even if the site requires them.
• The initial ticket, licence or induction, the White Card and first competencies you got to land the job.
• Your driver's licence, to get it or renew it, even when driving is part of the role. A separate heavy-vehicle or truck licence renewal is a different thing and does count.
• Relocation to a work location, and anything the employer already paid back to you.

The travel, meals and zone lines are the ones people most often get wrong, so the car, meals and zone-offset chapter sets out exactly where each one sits.

Keep the records, or the claim falls over

A deduction is only worth as much as the evidence behind it. Keep written proof of each cost and a quick note of any work-and-home split, and hold it for five years. The threshold to remember: if your work-related claims add up to more than $300 across the year, you need written evidence for every one of them, not just the part above the line. The standing exceptions still ask you to show your working, the laundry up to $150, the phone up to $50, cents per kilometre, and overtime meals within the reasonable amount. The knack is logging each cost the moment it lands, because a year rebuilt the night before you lodge is a year of quiet losses. The ATO's free myDeductions tool in the app handles the basics.

The bottom line

Run this checklist once before you lodge and the deductions that usually slip through, the respirator, the ticket renewal, the union fee on direct debit, the laundry, land back on your return where they belong. Claim what you paid for and can show, leave the commute and the LAFHA-covered costs off, and your bill settles on your real income once the genuine work costs are stripped out. You put in the swing for it. This is just making sure you keep your share.

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