A recent Parliamentary Inquiry into Tax Deductions created some fairly sensational headlines about what and how deductions are being claimed – $22 billion worth to be exact.
In Australia, tax deductions are available for expenses incurred in producing assessable income. These are generally work-related deductions or investment related deductions. And, unlike some other countries, these expenses can be offset against taxable income including wages (other countries only allow deductions relating to capital income against capital gains).
In a recent speech, the Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan highlighted that in 2014-15, more than $22 billion was claimed for work-related expenses. “While each of the individual amounts over-claimed is relatively small, the sum and overall revenue impact for the population involved could be significant – in the vicinity of, or even higher than the large market tax gap of $2.5 billion – and that’s just for this category of deductions, work-related expenses.”
He went on to say that in this same period around 6.3 million people made claims for clothing expenses totalling almost $1.8 billion. “That would mean that almost half of the individual taxpayer population was required to wear a uniform or protective clothing or had some special requirements for things like sunglasses and hats.” Clearly, that’s unlikely.
While the ATO is doing random audits of taxpayers making claims for work-related expenses, the primary problem for the Commissioner is, as he says, that the individual amounts over-claimed are relatively small. The administrative cost of a crackdown is likely to be more than what would be gained. The likely ‘solution’ then is to change what taxpayers can claim.
If you want to see the likely ‘hit list’ of deductions with a potentially short future, then Treasury’s submission to the Inquiry is a starting point:
- Investment expenses – investment-related deductions are generally targeted as they are not as transparent and are generally attributed to more affluent members of the community
- Work-related expenses – unsurprisingly, if you follow the money you can see that the pattern of expense claims closely follow the ATO’s compliance focus and activities
