Hi
My son is a tennis coach and brought a second hand car for say $15k. He is employed on a casual basis.
He needs the car to transport equipment (racquets, balls, nets etc) and travels to different places in his line of work.
I understand he can claim cents/km at tax return time, but can he also depreciate the car?
Thanks!!
Nice try but lacked execution.
Fluffy dice and sheepskin seat covers might do the trick.
It's one method or the other. Cents/km is a simple method to encapsulate all expenses and already includes depreciation. It's perfect for people who are say employed on a casual basis and use their car occasionally for business related work travel. You still can't claim just for driving from your house to your "usual" place of work. It has to be incurred above and beyond that.
Hypothetically - 'if' your son kept all that gear at your house due to lack of space at his own, and has to drive first to your house to pick it up, that might be considered a reasonable travel expense claim for the second part of his journey to the court and back to yours.
Of course check with your accountant in any of these matters.
You can also get around the "place of work" issue if you have heavy / bulky items related to the job that can only be transported in a vehicle and the place of work doesn't provide sufficient security or storage space for those items.
I used to take a tool box home every night (and claim the mileage) as the workshop I was in didn't have big enough lockable work benches and hadn't upgraded security after a break-in.
Register for an ABN and claim an instant write-off.
https://www.ato.gov.au/Newsroom/smallbusiness/General/$30,000-instant-asset-write-off/
Is he employed as a sole trade or as an employee?
If he is a sole trade he will be able to instantly write off the entire amount spent (apportioned for non business related travel, for example 50%)
If he is an employee, he should keep a 12 week log book of his activities and then claim using the log book method. This usually provides a much bigger deduction than the cents per km method.
If he's really good at accelerating the progress of time he can absolutely depreciate the car.