Retail records, the $300 myth and your work status
Two things decide whether a retail return holds together: the records behind your claims, and knowing which set of rules applies to you in the first place. The first is where most claims quietly fall over. The second matters because a shop assistant on a payslip and a stallholder selling on their own ABN are taxed on different footings, and mixing the two is a fast way to get a claim wrong.
What a record has to show
To claim a work expense you need evidence you actually incurred it. A written record, usually a receipt, has to show the supplier, the amount, what you bought, the date you bought it, and the date the document was produced, and it needs to be in English for a cost you paid in Australia. For anything you use partly for private reasons, such as your phone, you also keep a note of how you reached the work-use percentage. The way to stay ahead of it is to log each cost the moment you pay it, at the till or when a course fee goes through, instead of rebuilding a year from memory at lodgement.
The $300 without receipts myth
This is the most misunderstood figure in a retail return. If your total work-related claims come to $300 or less, you do not have to keep written receipts for them. That is a substantiation concession, not a free $300 you can add to every return. You still have to have genuinely spent the money on a real work expense, and you still have to be able to explain how you worked the amount out. And the moment your total claims go past $300, the concession falls away entirely: you then need written evidence for all of your claims, not just the part above $300. A few specific claims sit outside this rule with their own limits, such as laundry up to $150 and small incidental phone use.
Records that carry their own rules
Some retail claims have their own substantiation shortcuts, and it helps to know them. Laundry of a genuine uniform can be claimed up to $150 without receipts, though you still show the per-load working. Incidental phone use with a total claim of $50 or less needs no detailed records. Overtime meals and overnight travel within the ATO's reasonable amounts have their own concessions, though you must still have spent the money. None of these is automatic, and each still rests on a real expense.
Employee, or on an ABN?
This whole cluster is written for the employed retail worker, the one who gets a payslip, has tax withheld and receives an income statement at year end. Most people on a shop floor are exactly that. A different group runs their own retail as a business: market stallholders, online resellers and independent traders operating on an ABN. Their tax works differently, because they are running a business rather than earning wages. They deal with trading stock, they may have to register for and charge GST, and a genuine home base of business can bring in costs an employee can never claim, along with its own consequences. If you invoice customers, buy stock to resell and lodge a business activity statement, you are in that camp, and the employee rules in these chapters are not the ones that apply to you. If you are paid a wage to work in someone else's shop, they are.
The bottom line
Keep a record for every claim, note the work-use share on anything you also use privately, and treat the $300 line as a concession you have to back up rather than a number you can assume. Know which side of the employee-or-business line you sit on before you start, because it changes the rules underneath everything else. Get those two things right and the rest of your retail return is just careful addition. The ATO's free myDeductions app can hold the receipts and trip records as the year runs.
General information only, not tax advice. Check the ATO or a registered tax agent for your situation.