Private ruling: Residency for Australian taxation purposes
Date of advice: 20 December 2017
Published: May 2018
Ruling period: Year ending 30 June 2017
Date scheme commenced: 1 July 2014

Ruling: Q1: Are the travel expenses between your home and your employers’ office an allowable deduction? | A1: No | Q2: Are the food and accommodation expenses in City B an allowable deduction? | A2: No

Relevant facts and circumstances: You live in City A with your family. Your employer has agreed to allow you to work from home. You have a home office in City A from which you complete part of your employment duties. You travel to City B each week as part of a negotiated arrangement with your employer.

Relevant legislative provisions: Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 Section 8-1 Detailed reasoning | Section 8-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 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, or relate to the earning of exempt income. | The expenditure related to the travel between an employees’ home and their normal place of work is considered to be a private expense. The cost of travelling between the home and workplace is generally incurred to put the employee in a position to perform their duties rather than in the actual performance of those duties. | The fact that certain expenditure, such as travelling to work, must be incurred in order to be able to derive assessable income, does not necessarily mean that the expenditure is incidental and relevant to producing the assessable income. It is a prerequisite to the earning of assessable income rather than being incurred in the course of gaining or producing that income. | The essential character of the travel to and from work is that of a private and domestic nature, related to personal and living expenses as part of the taxpayer's choice of where to live, in choosing to live away from and what distance from work. | The expenses you incur for the travel between your home and work are private in nature. Therefore, you are not entitled to a deduction for these expenses under section 8-1 of the ITAA 1997. | Likewise, where accommodation, meal and incidental expenses are incurred by an employee in relocating to a place of work or in living away from home to work, these expenses are a prerequisite to the work and therefore of a private nature and not deductible.