Private ruling: Work related expenses - motor vehicle expense - itinerancy
Published: November 2013
Ruling period: Year ended 30 June 2012 | Year ended 30 June 2013
Date scheme commenced: 1 July 2011

Ruling: Q1: Are you entitled to a deduction for the cost of travel from home to your various work locations under section 8-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA 1997) as an itinerant worker? | A1: Yes

Relevant facts and circumstances: You are employed. Your role involves attending different work sites to undertake your employment duties. You have a base location. You attend your base location to do administrative work and store and retrieve resources. You are not required to attend your base location on particular days, you attend on a needs basis. The logbook information you supplied shows that you regularly work at more than one work site each day. There does not appear to be a regular pattern of attendance at these work sites. On some occasions you travel from home to your base location only, then home again. These occasions are sporadic in their timing. You are paid an 'itinerant staff allowance' by your employer. You are paid a 'cents per kilometre' allowance by your employer for work travel usage of your private car, excluding the travel from home to your base location and return. You are advised of which work sites to attend by your manager and you structure your visits around the needs of each work location to be visited. You generally have five work sites at any one time, however the number of work sites can vary. You work in conjunction with the manager and staff of each worksite to organise your visit schedule. You maintained a logbook. You have ownership of the motor vehicles used for the travel.

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

Reasons for decision: Summary: Section 8-1 of the ITAA 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. As per TR 95/34, the following characteristics have emerged from 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. · 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), and · the employer provides an allowance in recognition of the employee's need to travel continually between different work sites. It should be noted that the above characteristics are not exhaustive and no single factor on its own is necessarily decisive. The question of whether an employee's work is itinerant is one of fact, to be determined according to individual circumstances. In your case, you are required to travel to different work locations in order to perform your employment duties. Your employer pays you an allowance which indicates that travelling is a necessary element of your employment. Therefore it is considered that travel is a fundamental part of your work. You regularly attend different work sites to carry out your employment duties; there is no single 'workplace' which could be considered your fixed place of work. Even though you have a base location, where you complete administrative duties and store resources, the frequency of your attendance is sporadic and this would not be considered a fixed place of work. You are advised of the work sites that you are required to work at by your manager. You coordinate with the manager of each of these work sites to arrange visit times. On most days you will attend two or more worksites and there appears to be no regular pattern to your visitation schedule. Given these facts we consider there is a degree of uncertainty of location as there is no regular pattern of work sites you are required to attend. Taking into account the aforementioned indicators, it is considered you are engaged in itinerant work and therefore the cost of travel from home to your various work locations is deductible under section 8-1 of the ITAA 1997.