The AAT has held that a taxpayer was not entitled to a deduction for work-related car expenses to transport essential equipment from his home to his work.
The taxpayer was a train guard for the Rail Corporation New South Wales. He had lodged an objection against his 2010 assessment (out of time but accepted by the Commissioner) seeking a deduction of $3,700 on a cents per km basis for car expenses for having to transport essential equipment (including full folders of railway instructions) and materials between his home and work place (at Moss Vale station in NSW). The AAT noted that he had a locker at his work place.
The Tribunal said that once it was accepted that all the equipment that was essential to the taxpayer’s employment activity would fit into the secure locker provided for him at Moss Vale station, “his deduction claim must fail”. Given those findings, “then to the extent that [the taxpayer] carries essential equipment between work and home, he does so as a matter of personal choice”, the Tribunal said. Even if the locker did not accommodate all the equipment issued to him by RailCorp, and he chose to store the non-essential equipment (such as his wet weather gear) in the locker and transport his essential equipment, the Tribunal said the taxpayer’s claim would similarly fail. That would also be a matter of personal choice, the Tribunal said, “and personal choice of that kind is not enough to displace the principle established in Lunney’s case [Lunney v FCT (1958) 100 CLR 478] that transport between work and home is not deductible”.
(AAT Case [2014] AATA, Re Ford and FCT, AAT (sitting as the Small Taxation Claims Tribunal), Frost DP, AAT Ref: 2013/2680, 6 June 2014.)
[LTN 124, 1/7/14]