Office worker phone, travel and the records that hold up

Working from home is usually the big number in an office worker's return, but it is rarely the only one. Around it sit a handful of smaller, recurring claims: the work share of your phone, a run between two offices, an insurance premium, the fee you paid to get last year's return done. None of these are large on their own, and that is exactly why they slip through. This chapter covers the ones office, admin, finance and HR staff most often miss, and the written evidence that decides whether any of them survive a question from the ATO.

Phone, data and internet

You can claim the work-related portion of your own phone and internet, never the whole bill. Calls, texts and data you use for the job are deductible; the rest of the plan, which is personal, is not. So the first job is a split, not a total.

If your work use is only incidental and the total claim is small, the ATO sets a low threshold, in the order of $50, under which you can use a simpler basis and keep less. Above that, you need written evidence of what you actually spent and a record that shows the work-use proportion. A representative four-week diary of your calls and data, or an itemised bill with the work items marked, is the usual way to fix that percentage, which you then apply across the year.

There is an important trap here. If you use the fixed-rate working-from-home method, your phone and internet are already inside that hourly rate, and you cannot claim them again as a separate line. Doing so is double-dipping, and it is one of the first things the ATO checks. The mechanics of that method are covered in the working-from-home chapter. Two more limits worth stating plainly: personal calls are never deductible, and you cannot claim a phone or a service that your employer provides or reimburses.

Travel that counts, and the commute that never does

The daily trip between home and your regular workplace is private travel. That holds however far you live from the office, and however early or late the hours, so shift starts and long drives do not change it. The parking and tolls you pay to get to that regular workplace go the same way: private, not deductible.

What is deductible is work travel once the day has started. Driving between two separate workplaces on the same day counts. So does driving from your usual office to an alternative workplace for the same employer, such as another branch or an off-site meeting, and driving from home directly to an alternative workplace like a client's premises rather than to your normal office. For office managers, executive assistants and admins who cover more than one site, this is where the real travel deduction lives.

If you use your own car for that work travel, there are two methods. Cents-per-kilometre lets you claim a set rate for each work kilometre, up to a capped number of kilometres a year; the ATO resets the rate most years, so read the current figure off the ATO page rather than assuming last year's. The logbook method works out the actual work-use percentage of your car costs from a representative logbook period, which suits higher mileage. Whichever you use, you claim the work legs only, not the commute at either end.

A few genuine extras that get missed

Some deductions have nothing to do with home or car, and they are easy to forget because they only come around once a year. Income protection insurance premiums are deductible where the policy is held outside super. If the cover sits inside your super fund it is not your deduction, and any benefits paid can be assessable, so the same product gives a very different answer depending on where it is held.

The fee you paid a registered tax agent to prepare last year's return is deductible in the year you pay it, and so is the cost of travelling to see them. A work bag, briefcase or laptop bag bought to carry work items such as a laptop, files or a diary can be claimed too, apportioned for any private use, provided it is there to carry work gear rather than as a fashion piece.

Overtime meals are deductible in narrower circumstances. You can claim the cost of a meal bought while working overtime only where you receive a genuine overtime-meal allowance under an award or industrial agreement, that allowance is shown separately on your income statement, and you declare it as income. The ATO sets a reasonable amount for overtime meals each year, so check the current figure rather than assuming a number.

The records that hold it together

Every claim above lives or dies on evidence. The ATO wants written proof of what you spent, showing the supplier, the amount, what the item was and the date. Where a cost is split between work and private use, it also wants a record of the work-use percentage and how you arrived at it. For working from home, that means a whole-year log of the actual hours you worked.

The $300 line is where people get caught out. If your total work-related claims come to more than $300, you need written evidence for all of them, not just the amount over the line. And the familiar "up to $300 without receipts" allowance is not a freebie: you still have to have genuinely incurred the spend and be able to explain it. It removes the receipt, not the requirement that the cost was real.

Small recurring costs are the ones that vanish first: the professional membership on direct debit, the webinar you paid for in March, the monitor bought online in a rush. Capture each as it happens instead of trying to reconstruct a year of them the night before you lodge. The ATO's free myDeductions app will hold the raw records and photos of receipts in one place, which is far easier than a shoebox at year end.

The bottom line

Claim the work share of your phone and internet, and only if you are not already covering them through the fixed-rate working-from-home method. Leave the commute, and its parking and tolls, out of the return, but do claim genuine between-site and office-to-client travel. Pick up the extras that hide in plain sight: income protection held outside super, last year's tax agent fee, a work bag, and overtime meals where a proper allowance applies. Then keep the written evidence as you go, because above $300 in total it is required for the lot, and the costs most likely to slip away are the small ones you never wrote down.

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