Private ruling: Deductions - travel
Date of advice: 29 October 2025
Published: 15 December 2025
Ruling period: Year ended 30 June 20XX | Year ended 30 June 20XX
Date scheme commenced: 1 July 20XX

Ruling: Q1: Are you entitled to a deduction for the expenses you incur to travel between home and your regular workplace under section 8-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA 1997)? | A1: No. | Q2: Are you entitled to a deduction for the expenses you incur to travel between home and alternative locations where you undertake substantial work under section 8-1 of the ITAA 1997? | A2: Yes.

Relevant facts and circumstances: You are a medical professional. You provide your specialist services from various locations including: • a medical centre (under a verbal agreement) on X and X each week and on X and X once a month, for X hours each day • at various locations for a government department, X or X a month for X hours each day, and • interstate under a contract with a different government department a for X for X weeks at a time. You are also employed at a hospital every X, where every second X you work from home doing research and various other administrative tasks related to this role. Under your verbal agreement with the medical centre: • you are provided with a room to see patients only • you are not provided with a room to do any administrative work, and • the room does not belong to you when you are not on-site. When you are attending to patient's interstate you do not have a permanent office. You spend X hours each week doing administrative work in your home office in relation to your work at the medical centre. This includes letter correspondence with General Practitioners and other specialists in relation to referrals, reviewing and actioning patient results, dealing with emergency results and care and consultation with colleagues. You recorded your time spent at the medical centre and time spent working at home for a X day period and found that time spent providing patient facing care can generate an equal amount of time doing administrative tasks. You work in your home office both before and after travelling to the medical centre. You work as an advisor to another organisation for X hours each month. You do this work in your home office. You provide telehealth services from your home office for X hours X or X per month. Your home office contains a large desk with a computer, camera and microphone setup and an iPad to use AI software parallel to consulting. The room also contains a lamp, X large bookcases with medical textbooks, script pads, various types of envelopes, postage materials and stationery and medical equipment storage. You do not have a sign out the front of your home that clearly identifies your home as a place of business. Patients do not visit your home office for consults; however, neighbours randomly drop over to ask you questions. You do not advertise your professional services to the public outside of the advertising done by the medical centre. You do not transport bulky tools or equipment to or from your home. You have provided a travel log containing travel that is indicative of your normal travel. You incur expenses to undertake this travel which is not reimbursed.

Relevant legislative provisions: Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 section 8-1 Question 1 | Summary | None of the exceptions to the general rule that travel between home and a regular place of work is private apply to your circumstances. As such, the expenditure you incur to travel in either direction between your home and your regular workplace is not deductible under section 8-1 of the ITAA 1997.

Reasons for decision: Summary: You can deduct from your assessable income any loss or outgoing to the extent that it is incurred in gaining or producing your assessable income, or it is necessarily incurred in carrying on a business for the purpose of gaining or producing your assessable income, except where the loss or outgoing is capital or private in nature (section 8-1 of the ITAA 1997). The expenses of travelling between home and a place of work are generally not deductible as these expenses are of a private nature Lunney v FC of T: Hayley v FC of T (1958) 100 CLR 478, 7 AITR 166 ( Lunney and Hayley ). | Detailed Reasoning - Travel between a regular place of work and home: Lunney and Hayley considered the issue of whether fares paid by taxpayers to enable them to go day by day to their regular place of work and back to their home are deductible. The Full High Court held that the costs of travel to and from a taxpayer's home and work or business are not deductible. The expenses are incurred in order to enable them to earn income but are not expenses incurred in the course of earning that income. However, there are certain circumstances where it has been accepted that the cost of travelling between home and a regular place of work is deductible, such as: • you operate a home-based business • your home can be regarded as a base of operations • you are required to carry bulky equipment, or • where your work is itinerant. | Detailed Reasoning - Travel between places of business: Travel directly between two places of business will generally be accepted as business travel where the person does not live at either of the places and the travel has been undertaken for the purpose of enabling the person to engage in income-producing activities (paragraph 23 of Miscellaneous Taxation Ruling MT 2027 Fringe benefits tax: private use of cars: home to work travel (MT 2027)). However, the position is less clear where the person lives at one of the places said to be a place of business - it is then necessary to look closely at the requirement that the income-producing activity carried on at the person's home is such as to constitute the home as a place of business (paragraph 23 of MT 2027). | Detailed Reasoning - Home-based business: A home-based business is one where an area of your home is set aside and used exclusively as a place of business. Taxation Ruling TR 93/30 Income tax: deductions for home office expenses (TR 93/30) explains when an area of the home is a private study and when an area of the home is considered to be a place of business (paragraph 1 of TR 93/30). Whether an area of the home has the character of a place of business is a question of fact which depends on the particular circumstances of each case. This is likely to be the case where a part of a residence is set aside exclusively for the carrying on of a business by a self-employed person (for example, a doctor's surgery) (paragraph 4 of TR 93/30). The following factors, none of which is necessarily conclusive on its own, may indicate whether or not an area set aside has the character of a 'place of business': • the area is clearly identifiable as a place of business • the area is not readily suitable or adaptable for use for private or domestic purposes in association with the home generally • the area is used exclusively or almost exclusively for carrying on a business, or • the area is used regularly for visits of clients or customers (paragraph 5 of TR 93/30). The existence of any of these factors or a combination of them will not necessarily be conclusive in ascertaining the character of an area used as a home office. Rather the decision in each case will depend on whether, on a balanced consideration of: • the essential character of the area • the nature of the taxpayer's business, and • any other relevant factors, the area constitutes a 'place of business' in the ordinary and common sense meaning of that term (paragraph 11 of TR 93/30). | Detailed Reasoning - Home as a base of operations: An example of the application of this principle can be found in FC of T v. Collings 76 ATC 4254: (1976) 6 ATR 476 ( Collings ). In that case, an employee was engaged in supervising a major conversion in a computer facility under arrangements where she was required to be available at all hours to receive telephone calls and give advice to fellow workers at the office when problems arose in the operation of the computer. If she was unable to resolve the problem over the telephone or through a portable computer that she had been provided with she would return to the office in order to get the computer working. The Court accepted that there were two separate and distinguishable facets of her employment. While she regularly commuted to her work, she was also required to be ready on call at all other times. The Court held that, on the occasions that the taxpayer returned to work after hours: • she had commenced performance of her duties before leaving home and travelled to work to complete those duties. Her obligation was more than just being on stand-by duty at home, and • she did not choose to do part of the work in two separate places. The two places of work were a necessary obligation arising from the nature of the special duties of her employment. Rath J said (ATC at 4262; ATR at 484): I am not concerned with those normal daily journeys that have their sole relation to a person's choice of his place of residence; I am concerned with journeys which begin as a result of performance of the duties of the employment at the taxpayer's home. The journey from home to the office is undertaken, not to commence duty, but to complete an aspect of the employment already under way before the journey commences. It should be noted that where the application of this principle results in travel undertaken in response to an emergency call being treated as business travel, it does not follow that normal daily travel undertaken by the taxpayer to and from a regular workplace will be similarly treated. The decision in Collings was expressly restricted to travel outside the normal daily journey. | Detailed Reasoning - Transporting bulky equipment: Where the nature of a taxpayer's work creates a practical necessity, explained by work duties, to transport bulky equipment to and from a regular place of work (including to and from home to a regular place of work), the expenses of transporting the bulky equipment to and from that regular place of work may be deductible. | Detailed Reasoning - Itinerant work: The ITAA 1997 does not provide a definition of the word 'itinerant'. In the absence of a statutory definition, we must look to the ordinary usage of the word. The Macquarie Dictionary defines 'itinerant' as 'travelling from place to place' or 'one who travels from place to place especially for duty or business'. In FC of T v. Genys (1987) 17 FCR 495; 87 ATC 4875; (1987) 19 ATR 356, the Federal Court held that the taxpayer's employment was not itinerant. The taxpayer was a registered nurse who used an employment agency to seek relief work with various hospitals. She was not continuously employed by any one hospital. When a hospital needed additional staff, they contacted the agency which would then contact the taxpayer. It was integral to the decision in this case that the taxpayer did not travel after the commencement of her duties. She merely travelled to work and home again. Northrop J (FCR at 498; ATC at 4879; ATR at 359) described itinerant as 'shifting places of work': ... where the taxpayer travels between home and shifting places of work, that is, an itinerant occupation. The question of whether a taxpayer's work is itinerant is one of fact, to be determined according to individual circumstances. It is the nature of each individual's income-earning activities and not their occupation or industry that determines if they are engaged in itinerant work. Indicators of itinerancy include: • travel is a fundamental part of the work, and • the existence of a 'web' of workplaces exists such that the taxpayer continually travels from one work site to another, regularly working at more than one work site before returning to his or her usual place of residence. | Detailed Reasoning - Application to your circumstances: In your case, you do not transport bulky equipment to and from your regular workplace at the medical centre. In addition, you are not engaged in itinerant work as travel is not a fundamental part of your work and you generally only travel to one workplace each day before returning home. Having regard to the characteristics of your home office, while it is used exclusively or almost exclusively for your business, it is the Commissioner's view that it is not a place of business. This is because: 1. it is not an inherent requirement that you have a place of business at home when undertake your income-earning activities from your home office 2. you do not have a sign out the front of your home advertising your business such that your home office could be clearly identified as a place of business 3. your home office has not been altered or renovated and is therefore readily suitable or adaptable for use for private or domestic purposes in association with the home generally, and 4. you do not use it for face-to-face patient consultations. As such your business is not considered a home-based business and therefore the travel between your home and the medical centre is not travel between 2 places of business. Your normal travel includes the journey between your home and the medical centre, your regular workplace and back home again. While you may undertake some work-related tasks at home before working at the medical centre you do not start your journey in response to a phone call or in the continuation of any activities commenced before you leave home like the taxpayer in Collings , and as such your home is not a base of operations. As noted above, the decision in Collings was expressly restricted to travel outside the normal daily journey. You do not incur expenses for any additional journeys between your home and the medical centre. You simply travel between home and the medical centre, your regular place of work, and back home. None of the exceptions to the general rule that travel between home and a regular place of work is private apply to your circumstances. The cost of your travel between home and the medical centre is not incurred as part and parcel of your income-producing activities. This expenditure is incurred as a result of your personal choice to work at the medical centre and where you reside; it is not incurred because of any particular aspect of your business. As such, the expenditure you incur to travel in either direction between your home and the medical centre is private in nature and not deductible under section 8-1 of the ITAA 1997. | Detailed Reasoning - Question 2: The costs of travelling from home to an alternative work location that is not in itself a regular work location is considered to have been incurred in earning your assessable income and is not considered to be private in nature. As such, when you travel in either direction between home and alternative work locations to undertake substantial income-producing activities, such as alternative location 1 or alternative location 2, the expenses you incur for this travel are deductible under section 8-1 of the ITAA 1997.