With more Australians than ever working from home for the first time in a bid to social distance and help prevent the spread of Coronavirus or COVID-19, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has announced a new measure to make it easier for people to claim on their working from home expenses come tax time.
Under this new method, the way to claim has been simplified to allow a set rate of 0.80c per hour to be claimed for all the running expenses evolved with new working from home arrangements, rather than needing to calculate specific running expenses as expected with the current claim methods. This claiming method also allows for multiple people living in the same house to claim individually and no longer requires a dedicated work from home area to claim.
Furthermore, during the announcement of this new claim method announced by Assistant Commissioner Karen Float, the only thing required to keep for compliance purposed was the total amount of hours worked from home each week.
A reminder was also made about the other expenses that could be claimed with new working from home costs, such as for the setup costs of workstations and equipment. To be eligible to claim these expenses on your annual return, you must have spent the money to purchase these items yourself and not be reimbursed by your employer. You must also retain a record, such as a receipt of the purchase.
The new method will be in place for working from home arrangements from 1st March 2020 until the end of the financial year, 30 June 2020, when the arrangements will be re-evaluated depending on the COVID-19 situation. Any working from home claims before the 1 March 2020 date will need to be calculated from the original working from home methods.
If you have any questions about working from home or other areas that you may be able to claim on your annual tax return, please contact us by calling our team on 07 3367 3155 or emailing our office on support@walkerhill.com.au
