Private ruling: Travel – Home to work - Itinerancy
Date of advice: 16 April 2019
Published: May 2019
Ruling period: Year ending 30 June 2020
Date scheme commenced: 1 July 2019

Ruling: Q1: Is your work itinerant? No. Are you entitled to a deduction for the costs associated with a plain to travel to your work? No.

Relevant facts and circumstances: You are a resident of Australia for taxation purposes. You work as a professional. You carry out work at other locations. You obtain your work from more than one agency. You are not an employee of any agency. You can choose which work you take. You currently travel to your work on commercial flights. You receive a travel allowance or reimbursement for your travel expenses from the establishment you do the work for. You attend one location to carry out the work, when that contract ends you then take up another contract at another establishment. You intend on doing less than 10 jobs in the 2020 income year. You will retain your current employment as professional working full time. You will do your other work in your days off or leave breaks. You worked for one week at site 1 in three times in late 2018. In early 2019 you did a week at site 1 and a couple of shifts in site 2. You intend on purchasing a plane to fly to your work. You wish to claim fuel, interest on loan, hanger rental and maintenance. You will still receive the travel allowances or reimbursement from the establishments you carry out the work. You have a current pilots licence. You are not required to carry bulky equipment to carry out your work.

Relevant legislative provisions: Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 section 8-1

Reasons for decision: Summary: Section 8-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA 1997) allows a deduction for all losses and outgoings to the extent to which they are incurred in gaining or producing assessable income, except where the outgoings are of a capital, private or domestic nature. A deduction may be allowed for home to work travel expenses in certain exceptional circumstances, for example: ● The employees home constitutes a place of employment and travel is between two places of employment, ● The employees employment is inherently of an itinerant nature, and ● The employee has to transport by vehicle bulky equipment necessary for employment. The second scenario above may apply to you in that your work may be determined to be of an itinerant nature. Taxation Ruling TR 95/34 provides guidelines for establishing whether an employee is carrying out itinerant work. These guidelines have been established through the views taken by the Courts, Boards of Review and Administrative Appeals Tribunal in deciding when an employee’s work is itinerant. The following characteristics have emerged from these cases as being indicators of itinerancy: ● Travel is a fundamental part of the employees work. ● The existence of a web of work places in the employee’s regular employment, that is, the employee has no fixed place of work. ● The employee continually travels from one work site to another. An employee must regularly work at more than one work site before returning to his or her usual place of residence. ● The employee has a degree of uncertainty of location in his or her employment (that is, no long-term plan and no regular pattern exists). ● The employee has to carry bulky equipment from home to different work sites. The characteristics above provide guidelines for determining whether an employee's work is itinerant. It is considered that no single factor on its own is necessarily decisive. In your situation: ● Travel is not a fundamental part of your work. ● You need to travel to do the work but you do not travel on work. ● You do not have a degree of uncertainty in relation to your work as you choose which jobs you take from the agency. ● You select work that fits in with your full-time job. ● You are not required to carry bulky equipment to carry out your work. Your work is not of a itinerate nature and would not become itinerant if you did it full-time. You are not able to claim as a deduction the expenses related to flying your own plane to and from your work.