‘I work from home, can I claim a tax deduction for travel to my workplace?’

When home is a base of employment, you can claim a deduction for the cost of a trip from home to your place of work if your home was a base of employment. You must meet all 3 of these conditions:

• You are required to start your employment duties at home then travel to your regular place of work to complete those particular duties.

• Undertaking the work in 2 locations is necessary due to the nature of your employment duties.

• The trip to your regular place of work is not part of a normal trip to work that would have occurred anyway.

Example
Tom is the IT Security Director of a data storage company. He's on call 24 hours a day to be notified of a security breach. His employer installs a secure terminal at his home so he can work from home if he receives a call out of hours. Normally, Tom would provide advice over the phone to the staff on site, and sometimes he would log into the secure terminal at his home to correct the issue.

At times, Tom starts working on a security issue from the home terminal but is then required to drive into the office out of hours to resolve the issue. On these occasions the transport expenses he incurs for this journey are deductible, as his home has become a base of employment. However, his regular daily trip into the office is not deductible.