Private ruling: Itinerant worker - Home to Work travel
Date of advice: 15 September 2017
Published: January 2018
Ruling period: Year ended 30 June 2017
Date scheme commenced: 1 July 2016

Ruling: Q1: Are you entitled to a deduction for the cost of travel between home and a place of work under section 8-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA 1997)? | A1: No

Relevant facts and circumstances: You are employed by a caring organisation as a care provider. Your duties include driving to several clients home to provide care services and driving clients to recreational activities, daily outings and appointments. You have supplied copies of your rosters for clarity and for the 2017 year they show a pattern of between 1 and 2 client visits per day to roughly 6 regular clients within a range of approximately 15 kms. Your clients are allocated to you on a roster basis every two weeks. You occasionally receive last minute cancellations You use your own private motor vehicle to visit and transport these clients. Your employer pays you a car allowance. You attend your head office, which is located approximately 110 kms away from your home, 2 to 4 times a year. You are not required to carry bulky equipment in your motor vehicle to your clients' homes.

Relevant legislative provisions: Section 8-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997

Reasons for decision: Summary: Section 8-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 deals with general deductions and allows a deduction for all losses or outgoings to the extent to which they are incurred in gaining or producing assessable income, except to the extent that they are outgoings of a capital, private or domestic nature. Generally a deduction is not allowable for the cost of travel between home and work as it is considered a private expense. However, a deduction may be allowable for the cost of travel between home and work for an employee who is engaged in itinerant work. 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 the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The following characteristics have emerged from these cases as being indicators of itinerancy: ● travel is a fundamental part of the employee's 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 worksite to another. An employee must regularly work at more than one worksite before returning to his or her usual place of residence, and ● 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). In Federal Commissioner of Taxation v. Wiener 78 ATC 4006; (1978) 8 ATR 33 (Wieners Case) a teacher that was required to regularly travel to four or five different schools in any one day had travel as a fundamental part of their work. In your case you are often only required to travel to one or two places of work during your work day. You do take clients to their appointments and this part of your duties would be considered work related travel. If a person performs work at a single site and then moves to other sites on a regular basis, it would be considered that a 'web' of work places exists. In Wiener's case, the taxpayer was required to attend four to five schools each day. This constituted a 'web' of work places and implied continual travel based on the frequency with which an employee moves from one work site to another. Although an employee may perform duties at more than one location, this fact in itself may be insufficient to constitute a 'web' of workplaces. Each workplace may be regarded as a regular or fixed place of employment. The element of uncertainty of location is generally another distinct characteristic of itinerant employment. Unlike an ordinary worker who makes the daily journey to his or her regular place of work, the itinerant worker often cannot be certain of the location of their work sites. In your case, you are only required to travel to one or two places of work on a regular basis therefore do not travel continually for work purposes during your working day. Although you worked at a number of locations, the pattern of your visits would suggest that each client's home you visited would be regarded as a regular place of employment. In view of the above, on balance it is determined that you were not engaged in itinerant work and the travel undertaken by you between your home and your clients' homes was normal travel to and from work. Therefore as the cost of this travel is private in nature, you are not entitled to a deduction under section 8-1 of the ITAA 1997.