Truck driver phone, parking, tolls and your own car

Past the meals and the gear, a driver's return picks up a handful of smaller travel and communication costs. Each is real, but each has a line drawn through it: the work part counts and the private part does not, and the trip that is part of the job counts while the trip to the job does not. This chapter sorts the phone, the parking and tolls, and the one situation where your own car earns a claim.

Your phone and data

If you use your own phone for work, taking dispatch calls, running navigation, logging jobs or staying in contact on the road, you can claim the work-related portion of the bill. The word portion is the point: the phone is personal as well, so you claim a fair work-use share rather than the whole plan. If the use is only incidental and the total claim comes to $50 or less, no detailed records are needed; beyond that, hold the bill and show how the work-use percentage was reached, worked out over a representative period. Calls home to family while you are away are private, and there is nothing to claim where your employer provides the phone and pays the plan.

Parking and tolls: the work trip, not the commute

Parking and tolls are deductible when you incur them on a genuine work trip, and private when they belong to your commute. Paying to park or crossing a tolled bridge while carrying out your duties, away from your regular depot, is a work cost. Parking at or near your regular depot, and the tolls you pay on the ordinary trip between home and work, are private, however unavoidable they feel. And as with everything else, if your employer reimburses the toll or the parking, there is nothing left for you to claim.

The taxi to the depot after maximum hours

One genuinely useful claim gets missed because it does not feel like a work trip. If you reach your maximum driving hours out on a run and have to take a taxi, ride-share or other transport to the depot or to rest, that transport is deductible, because it is travel in the course of your work rather than an ordinary commute. The same applies to a required trip from the depot to another work site. Keep the receipt, and treat it as the work travel it is.

Your own car, never the employer's truck

Car expenses are a narrow claim for an employee driver, and the first thing to be clear on is that they apply only to your own car, never to the employer's truck. The truck's running costs belong to whoever owns it, and for an employee that is the employer, not you. Where you use your own car for genuine work travel, between two depots, between two jobs on the same day, or from home directly to an alternative work site rather than your usual depot, you can claim it. You have two methods: a fixed amount per work kilometre, capped at a set number of kilometres a year and reset annually, or a logbook that captures your actual work-use percentage of the running costs. Read the current rate off the ATO cars and travel page, keep a record of the trips, and remember that the ordinary drive between home and your regular depot is not one of them.

Union fees and the small recurring costs

Union and professional association fees, such as your TWU membership, are deductible in full where they relate to your work, and your union generally sends a yearly statement of the fees you paid. Work-related stationery you buy yourself, such as logbooks and diaries, is deductible where the employer does not provide it. These are small lines, but they are steady, and they are among the easiest to substantiate.

The bottom line

Take the work portion of your phone, the parking and tolls from a genuine work trip, the transport to the depot when your hours run out, and your union fees. Where you use your own car for work travel between sites, claim it by the cents-per-kilometre or logbook method, and never try to claim the employer's truck. Leave the commute and its parking and tolls off, keep the receipts and the trip records, and this part of the return is clean.

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