Deduct your overnight travel expenses

Overnight travel expenses involve being away from home for at least one night for work or business purposes. Business or work travel is in contrast with other types of private travel such as for leisure purposes or regularly commuting between one's home and workplace. Reasons for work or business trips include servicing customers, working at different job sites, visiting suppliers, training, conferences, seminars, and networking.

Deductible overnight travel expenses will include:

• Meals.
• Accommodation.
• Incidental expenses, including alcohol, snacks, toiletries, movies, magazines.
• Car hire and car parking fees.  
• Air, bus, train, tram and taxi fares.

Implementation Process and Costs

1.  Keep receipts of all expenditure.
2. Where overnight travel is partly for work or business purposes and partly for private purposes (say a holiday), then the expenses will need to be apportioned. Apportionment is calculated on a time basis by working out how many days in the trip related to work/business purposes, and how many are private.
3. A travel diary is compulsory where the overseas travel is greater than six nights. Also, a travel diary is mandatory for local travel where the trip is not exclusively for work/business purposes, i.e. part private purposes.
4. Work or business travel days include:
   • Travels days.
   • Weekend days between two work/business days.
   • Days where more than 50% of the day was spent on work/business activities.