Claiming petrol on your tax return and fuel tax concessions for small businesses
Date posted: Friday, April 3, 2015
Enter a car, truck, vehicle or any other kind of heavy equipment into the equation, and your tax can get complicated – whether you’re a small business or an individual at end of the financial year.
Luckily, we can shed some light on any confusion you want to get out of the way before tax time rolls in again.
For individuals
You can claim travel expenses – including your car’s petrol and public transport costs – as long as they’re directly connected with your work. However you can’t claim travel between home and work, as this is considered a private expense.
When you use your own car in the course of performing your job however, there are quite a few instances where claiming is all a-go, including:
- carrying bulky tools or equipment
- attending conferences or meetings
- delivering items or collecting supplies
- traveling between two separate places of employment (for example, when you have a second job)
- travelling from your home to an alternative workplace and then to your normal workplace or directly home (for example, if you travel to a client’s premises)
- perform itinerant work.
For businesses
As a business, there’s a federal tax placed on all fuel you purchase (not nice). To help you out, the government has in place a fuel tax credit scheme that allows you to claim back that tax (nice).
Usually included as part of your usual Business Activity Statement (BAS) – much the same way other taxes like GST are claimed – the fuel tax credit scheme applies to most fuel used in the course of carrying on trade, including driving machinery and running plant, equipment and heavy vehicles.
To be eligible, your business needs to be registered for GST, registered separately again for fuel tax credits, undertaking an eligible activity. It also needs to meet several environmental criteria – for example, emission standards for heavy diesel vehicles.
At Pakenham Taxation + Accounting we’re experts in all the details of personal and business taxation. Make this end-of-financial year easier for yourself and contact our team for further questions about what you can and can’t claim on tax.