Articles
- Home
- Articles
Four Priorities for the ATO 2022 Tax Time
June 9, 2022
Blog
The ATO has announced a focus for Tax Time 2022 – Individuals, including the following four areas:
- record-keeping
- work-related expenses
- rental property income and deductions, and
- capital gain from crypto assets, property and shares.
Record-keeping
Records are the only thing that can prove you are entitled to those deductions. Records, receipts and other documentation used to prepare the return must be retained by the taxpayer for five years from the date of lodgement of the return and may have to be provided to the ATO on request.
Work-related Expenses
You can claim most of the expenses you incur to earn your income as an employee. But before making any deduction, rethink the “3 golden rules”:
- You did NOT get any reimbursement for the money you spent
- The deductions you claim must be directly related to your current income-producing activities.
- You must have evidence to prove them.
Work-related expenses mainly include:
- Car expenses
- Travel expense
- Clothing, laundry and dry-cleaning expense
- Self-education expenses
- Other work-related expenses
For more information, please see: Article 4: Questions about Deductions
For the 2022 tax return, ATO will focus on the following key areas:
-
Home office expenses
Since the start of the pandemic, one in three Aussies are moving offices from business premises to their home, home office expenses deduction is claimable. But please be careful about some areas:
First, if you continually claim home office expenses in tax returns, then correspondingly the other expenses would be expected to decrease, for example, car expenses, clothing and other work-related expenses, such as parking and tolls.
Second, three methods are available when we calculate home office expenses. Please be careful with the method you choose:
- Shortcut method
This method ends on 30 June 2022. To continue to claim a deduction for working from home after 30 June 2022, we can only use the rest two methods.
The shortcut method rate is 80 cents per hour, which covers all additional running expenses, such as utilities, a decline in value and repair of home office devices and furniture, cleaning, phone and internet, stationery etc. no other deduction is permitted.
- Fixed rate method
- Actual cost method
-
Tax-deductible expenses depend on individual circumstances.
Some work-related expenses change over time. We cannot just simply copy the previous year’s deduction.
- The portion between personal and employment use.
Share This :
