Tax deductions for engineers
For engineers, whether an expense is deductible often comes down to one detail. The drive to a site can be claimable when the drive to the office is not, and steel caps are claimable when the jeans you wear with them are not.
This page sets out what you can and cannot claim as a civil, mechanical, electrical, chemical or other engineer in Australia, checked against the ATO's own occupation guide. Where a rule has a catch in it, we have said so rather than left it out.
Aevum Accounting is a CPA practice and registered tax agent in Balcatta, Perth, working with engineers across Australia.
Approved by Ben De Rosa, CPA. Last checked against the ATO's guidance on 26 September 2026.
What engineers can claim
Before any specific deduction, an expense has to clear all three of these. The ATO calls them the three golden rules.
1. You spent the money yourself and were not reimbursed. If your firm or employer paid for it, it is not your deduction.
2. The expense directly relates to earning your income. Not helpful to your career in general. Directly related to the job you are doing now.
3. You have a record to prove it. Usually a receipt.
If an expense was part work and part private, you can only claim the work-related portion. And you cannot claim at all if you have no records, or if someone else paid.
The short version, before the detail. These are the claims worth checking every year.
Usually deductible
Professional association and union fees. If the amount is on your income statement, that is your proof.
Renewing a registration or accreditation you need to keep working. Not the first one you needed to get the job.
Protective gear, such as steel caps, hi-vis, a hard hat and goggles, and laundry for protective clothing.
Sunglasses, a hat and sunscreen, if you work in the sun for extended periods.
Tools and equipment, such as a calliper or scientific calculator. Outright at $300 or less, otherwise depreciated.
A laptop and software you pay for yourself, for the work-related portion.
Study that directly relates to your current role, such as a Master of Engineering in your field.
Seminars, conferences and training courses that relate to your work.
Driving from the office to a site, between sites, or from home to a site that is an alternative workplace.
Parking and tolls on work trips.
Overnight work travel you pay for yourself.
Overtime meals, but only with an overtime meal allowance under an award or agreement.
Phone, data and internet, for the work-related portion.
Working from home, at 70 cents per hour for 2024-25 and 2025-26, or actual costs.
Not deductible, however it feels
The drive between home and your regular office, however far it is.
Everyday clothes, including jeans on site and a suit you only wear to work.
Your drivers licence. Private, even if the job requires you to hold one.
Networking breakfasts and work functions, even when your employer encourages them.
An MBA or other study taken to broaden your career or change jobs.
Commonwealth supported course fees, even paid upfront, and study loan repayments.
A laptop, phone or tools your employer supplies.
Food and drink during normal working hours, even with a meal allowance.
Prescription glasses or contact lenses. Protective glasses are a different matter.
Rent, mortgage interest, rates and house insurance when you work from home. Generally private for an employee.
Fines, even ones you get while working.
Each of these is explained properly below.
From the 2026-27 income year, if you are an Australian resident earning a salary or wage, you get a standard deduction of up to $1,000 for work-related expenses. The ATO applies it automatically and you do not need receipts for it. It became law in June 2026 and starts with the 2026-27 return, which you lodge from July 2027. It does not apply to the 2025-26 return you are lodging now.
It is not a bonus on top of your normal claims. Any work-related expenses you claim reduce it dollar for dollar. Claim $600 of expenses and your standard deduction drops to $400, so you land on $1,000 either way, with more paperwork. If your work expenses are more than $1,000, you claim them the way you do now, and you need records for every dollar you claim, not just the part above $1,000. For most expenses, that means written evidence such as receipts.
Union fees and professional association memberships sit outside it. You can claim those on top of the full $1,000, as long as you keep the records. The same goes for deductions that are not work expenses, such as donations to charity, income protection premiums and your tax agent's fee.
For engineers, fee-paying study, a new laptop or regular site visits in your own car can take you past $1,000, and the decline in value on a laptop or tools reduces the standard deduction too. Keep your receipts until you know which side of the line you are on.
Union and professional association fees are deductible. Membership of a trade, business or professional association that does not directly relate to your job is capped at $42 a year for each one.
If you need to be registered as an engineer to get your job, the first registration is not deductible, because the ATO treats it as a cost of getting the job rather than doing it. Renewing it while you are working is deductible. The same rule applies to any registration or accreditation you must hold.
Other licences follow the same pattern. The first one you need to get a job, such as a forklift licence, is not deductible. The additional cost of a special licence or permit your current duties need, such as a heavy vehicle permit, is. Your ordinary drivers licence is never deductible.
Everyday clothes are private, even if your employer requires them and you only wear them at work. The ATO's examples are jeans and t-shirts on building sites, and a suit worn only at work.
Protective clothing and gear is deductible where it protects you from a real and likely risk of injury or illness at work, such as the steel caps and hi-vis a structural engineer wears for concrete pours. A chemical engineer who buys $49 goggles to protect against chemicals, because her employer does not supply them, claims the $49.
Sunglasses, hats and sunscreen are deductible if you work in the sun for extended periods, for the work portion. Prescription glasses are private, but in the ATO's example a civil engineer on Queensland sites can claim his prescription sunglasses, less any private use.
Laundry of protective clothing, such as a hi-vis jacket, or a uniform can be worked out at $1 a load for work clothing only, or 50 cents a load if you mix in personal items. Dry cleaning and repairs are claimed at actual cost.
Tools and equipment you use for your job are deductible, such as a calliper or scientific calculator, along with the cost to insure and repair them, for the work-related portion. Anything your employer supplies is not yours to claim.
An item costing $300 or less is deductible in the year you buy it, if you use it mainly for work. Above $300, you claim the decline in value over its effective life. Watch for two traps. Items in a set are added together: in the ATO's example, 16 spanners bought at $22 each are a set costing $352, so they are depreciated rather than claimed outright. Identical items bought in the same year are added together too, so ten identical clamps at $40 each cannot be claimed outright either.
Your own laptop and software are claimable for the work-related portion, including subscriptions, anti-virus software and a VPN.
The rules for salary packaging a laptop, phone or software change on 1 April 2027. From that date, work-related items such as laptops, phones, tablets, software, protective clothing and tools of trade will no longer be exempt from FBT when provided through salary packaging. This became law in June 2026, so check with us before you package a device.
Self-education is deductible if, when you pay for it, it maintains or improves the skills you need for your current duties, or is likely to increase your income from your current job. It is not deductible if it gets you into a new job, or only relates to your work in a general way.
In the ATO's examples, a chemical engineer can claim a Master of Engineering (Chemical). A civil engineer doing an MBA to broaden his career opportunities cannot claim the total course fees, but can claim the project management subject, because it is directly connected to his work. A draftsperson studying for a mechanical engineering degree cannot claim it, because it leads to new employment.
Where study is deductible, you can claim course fees, textbooks, journals and stationery, and the travel between home and your place of study. How you pay matters. In a Commonwealth supported place, your fees are not deductible, whether you pay upfront or through HECS-HELP. In a full fee-paying place, they can be, including fees you defer through FEE-HELP. Study loan repayments are never deductible.
Seminars, conferences and training courses that relate to your work are deductible, including fares, registration, and accommodation and meals if you stay overnight. If the trip is mainly a holiday, you can only claim the direct costs. Networking breakfasts and work functions are entertainment, and are not deductible even when your employer encourages them.
You cannot claim the trip between home and your regular office. That is private, even if you live a long way away, start early, are called in while on call, or work from home on other days.
You can claim driving from the office to a site, from one site to another on the same day, and from home straight to a site that is an alternative workplace. In the ATO's example, a structural engineer who drives from home to a project site and then to her office can claim the trips. The catch is time. A site you are assigned to for three months or more will usually become a regular place of work, and the drive from home to it becomes private.
Carrying bulky equipment is a narrow exception. It only applies where the equipment is essential for your work, bulky enough that a car is the only practical way to move it, and there is no secure storage at the workplace. Taking it home by choice does not count.
Cents per kilometre. 88 cents per kilometre for 2024-25 and 2025-26, and 91 cents for 2026-27, capped at 5,000 work kilometres per car per year. You still need a record of how you worked out the kilometres.
Logbook. A 12-week logbook establishes your work-use percentage, and you keep evidence of the actual costs.
Neither method works for a ute that carries one tonne or more, a vehicle that seats nine or more including the driver, or a motorcycle. For those, you claim actual costs and keep all the receipts.
If your car is salary packaged under a novated lease, you cannot claim its running costs, because it is usually your employer that leases the car and makes it available to you. You can still claim work-related parking and tolls you pay yourself.
Some packaged benefits show on your income statement as a reportable fringe benefit amount, and packaged super shows as reportable employer super contributions. Both count toward income tests such as your HELP repayments.
Parking and tolls on work trips are deductible. Parking at or near your regular office, and tolls between home and work, are not. Fines are never deductible.
The engineers guide does not cover fly-in fly-out work, but the ATO's ruling on employee travel has a WA mining example. A worker who lives in Sydney is rostered on, and paid, from the time he arrives at Perth airport. His travel from home to Perth airport, including the flight from Sydney, is private. The travel from Perth airport to Geraldton and on to the mine site is part of earning his income, so it can be deductible, but only if he pays for it himself. The ruling also lists facts that point the other way, such as being rostered on and paid only from when you arrive on site, or being free to arrange your own travel. Where a combination of these applies, that leg may not be deductible even if you pay for it yourself. If your employer pays for the flights, there is nothing to claim.
Overnight travel is deductible when you travel for work and sleep away from home as part of your duties. You can claim accommodation, meals and incidentals you pay for, but not if your employer provides or reimburses them, or if you choose to sleep near work rather than go home. A long posting in settled accommodation, such as a unit or house, is living away from home rather than travel. In the ATO's example, an engineer on a 12-month country project cannot claim his accommodation and meals.
An allowance does not give you a deduction by itself. A height allowance, for example, is income with no deduction to match. Food and drink during normal hours is private, even with a meal allowance. Overtime meals are deductible only if you buy and eat the meal while working overtime and receive a separate overtime meal allowance under an industrial law, award or agreement, not one folded into your salary and wages, which you declare as income, even if it shows only on your payslips. The reasonable amount is $38.65 for 2025-26 and $40 for 2026-27. If your claim is no more than that, you do not need receipts, but you must still be able to show what you spent and how you worked it out.
Phone, data and internet costs are deductible for the work-related portion. Work out your work use over a continuous four-week period, such as one monthly bill, and apply it to the year. Keep your bills and a record of how you worked out your work use.
Working from home is deductible when you incur extra running costs by doing it. The fixed rate method is 70 cents per work hour for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 income years. It covers energy, phone, internet, stationery and computer consumables, so you cannot claim those separately. You need a record of every hour you actually work from home, because an estimate is not accepted, and at least one bill or receipt for each type of expense the rate covers. Your desk, chair and computer are claimed separately. The actual cost method needs more records. Either way, as an employee you generally cannot claim rent, mortgage interest, rates or house insurance.
Everything above is written for employees. If you contract through your own ABN or a company, the rules are different, and the personal services income rules may apply. We cover them in The Consultant's Tax Trap: PSI and the ATO Traffic Light System (episode 42). The $1,000 standard deduction does not apply if business income is your only income.
These decisions are much cheaper to get right before the fact. We talk through them in a business consultation, and the first conversation for a new business is free.
For the 2025-26 return you are lodging now: receipts for everything you claim, a logbook or kilometre records for car claims, a record of your hours if you work from home, and your income statement. Two shortcuts still apply this year. If your total work-related expenses, other than car, travel allowance and overtime meal allowance claims, are $300 or less, you can claim them without receipts. If your laundry claim, not counting dry cleaning, is $150 or less, you do not need written evidence of it. In both cases you still have to be able to show that you spent the money and how you worked out the figure.
From 2026-27, those shortcuts end for everyone. If you claim more than the standard deduction, you need written evidence, such as receipts, for your work-related expenses. Some exceptions continue, including travel allowance and overtime meal allowance claims within the ATO's reasonable amounts, and car claims at cents per kilometre. For those, you still need records that show how you worked out the claim. For laundry at the ATO's per-load rates, its current guidance is to keep a record of how many loads you washed, whether each was work-only or mixed, and evidence that you paid for it.
The ATO's myDeductions tool in their app is a reasonable way to keep records through the year. We cannot access it directly, but you can export from it and send it to us. A shared Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox folder works just as well.
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Can I claim my professional membership and registration?
Your professional association and union fees, yes. Renewing a registration or accreditation you need to keep working, yes. The first registration you needed to get the job, no.
Can I claim the drive to a site?
Driving from the office to a site, between sites on the same day, or from home straight to a site that is an alternative workplace, yes. Home to your regular office, no.
I fly in and fly out. Can I claim the travel?
Getting from home to the hub airport is private, even when that means a flight. In the ATO's WA mining example, the worker is on duty and paid from Perth airport, so the travel from there to the site can be deductible, but only if he pays for it himself. If your employer pays, there is nothing to claim. If you are only rostered on and paid from when you arrive on site, and free to arrange your own travel, that leg may not be deductible even if you pay for it.
Can I claim steel caps and hi-vis?
Yes, as protective gear, if they protect you from a real and likely risk of injury at work and your employer did not supply them. Laundry for protective clothing such as a hi-vis jacket is claimable too. Jeans, t-shirts and suits are not.
Is a Master of Engineering or an MBA deductible?
A Master of Engineering in the field you already work in can be. An MBA taken to broaden your career is not, although a subject directly connected to your work, such as project management, can be. The fees are only deductible in a full fee-paying place, including one funded through FEE-HELP.
How does the $1,000 standard deduction work for engineers?
From the 2026-27 return, you get up to $1,000 automatically, with no receipts needed. Any work expenses you claim reduce it, so it helps most when yours are under $1,000. If they are over, claim them as normal and keep records for every dollar. Your professional association and union fees go on top either way.
Do you work with engineers outside Perth?
Yes. We are based in Balcatta and we work with clients across Australia, by email or online appointment. See our pricing page for how the two options differ, or book an appointment.
We have covered engineers' tax on the Aevum Accounting Podcast in The Engineer's Financial Blueprint (episode 14).
For the new standard deduction, listen to The Thousand Dollar Deduction (episode 54).
We are a CPA practice and registered tax agent, TPB registration 26302591. You can check our credentials, meet the team, or book an appointment.
Also worth reading: tax accountants Perth for how we work with individuals, and our guides for tradies, FIFO and mining workers and office workers and public servants.