There are so many myths, misconceptions and inaccuracies swirling around each time we hit tax season. We get it, who actually wants to spend hours staring at the ATO website?!

Well, we’ve done the research for you. Here are three tax time myths busted.

1. You can claim travel from home to work

Whether you’re forking out to top up your Opal or Myki card, or cringing every time you read the screen at the petrol bowser, traveling to and from your workplace can be pricey. Unfortunately - despite popular belief - you can’t claim the cost of getting yourself to and from work as a tax deduction. 

You can only claim what it costs you to move between different locations while you’re working. For example, if your work has more than one site, you can claim the cost of traveling between sites during your working hours. Or, if you need to leave the office to visit a client, that’s another type of travel you can claim.

2. The $300 ‘no receipt’ limit means you can just claim $299 for whatever you like

If you’ve lost track of your receipts but you have bought work supplies or equipment with your own money, the ATO says you can still make a work-related expenses claim as long as the total amount is under $300. 

BUT! That doesn’t mean you can just chuck $299 of ‘misc’ on your tax return and be done with it. You’ll need to be able to account for what you spent the money on if the ATO asks, so make sure you’ve actually got the goods to prove it.

3. Going up a tax bracket means I’ll be worse off, since I’ll be paying higher tax on all my income

Australia has a progressive individual income tax system, which means you only pay the higher tax rate on the portion of your income that’s above the threshold for your new tax bracket.

For example, say you’re on a $60k salary with no other income - that means you fall into the third tax bracket of $45k-$120k. These are the brackets:

So basically, if you’re earning $60k, that doesn’t mean all your income will be taxed at a higher rate. Instead the first $18,200 gets no tax, the rest up to $45k gets 19c and ONLY the last $15k gets the higher rate of 32.5c… Geddit?

All information contained in the Flux app is for education and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional financial, legal or tax advice. While we do our best to provide accurate information on the podcast, we accept no responsibility for any inaccuracies that may be communicated.