Tax deductions for doctors and medical professionals
Most doctors we meet are claiming the obvious things and missing the rest, or claiming something they should not and never finding out until the ATO asks. Neither is comfortable.
This page sets out what you can and cannot claim as a doctor, specialist, registrar, resident or medical student 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. If you are a dentist, or an allied health professional such as a physiotherapist, psychologist or pharmacist, see our guides for dentists and allied health professionals.
Aevum Accounting is a CPA practice and registered tax agent in Balcatta, Perth, and medical professionals are one of the groups we work with most.
Approved by Ben De Rosa, CPA. Last checked against the ATO's guidance on 26 September 2026.
What doctors and medical professionals 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 hospital, practice 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
AMA or college membership fees. If the amount is on your income statement, that is your proof.
Renewing your annual practising certificate or registration. The renewal, yes. The initial cost of getting registered, no.
Medical indemnity insurance. Unless your employer pays it.
Medical equipment such as a stethoscope or scales. Immediately if it cost $300 or less, otherwise depreciated.
Self-education and CPD. It has to relate to the role you hold now, not a future one.
Conferences and seminars, including the fares to get there and accommodation if you stay overnight.
Books and journals. Outright at $300 or less, otherwise depreciated across your professional library.
Protective clothing, scrubs and enclosed non-slip shoes, and the laundry for them.
Driving between two workplaces on the same day, or to an alternative workplace.
Overnight work travel, where you genuinely sleep away from home.
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.
Overtime meals, but only with an overtime meal allowance under an award or agreement.
Not deductible, however it feels
Prescription glasses or contact lenses. Protective and anti-glare glasses are a different matter and can be claimed where they protect you from a real risk at work.
Haircuts, cosmetics and skincare. Private, even with a grooming allowance.
Business attire. Even where your employer requires it.
Your drivers licence. Private, even if the job requires you to hold one.
Child care while you work. Private.
Fines and parking tickets. Never, under any circumstances.
Work lunches and social functions. Even if you discuss work at them.
Moving house for a new job. Private.
Study loan repayments, and Commonwealth supported course fees even if you pay them upfront.
An ordinary watch, even if the job requires one. A fob watch is different, and so, in narrow cases, is the work-related use of a smart watch.
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 doctors, AMA and college memberships go on top. Indemnity insurance, registration renewals, CPD, equipment and conference costs can take your other work expenses past $1,000 on their own, and when they do, you need records for all of them. For most expenses, that means written evidence such as receipts.
Professional association fees are deductible. AMA membership, college fees and other medical professional association memberships. If the amount appears on your income statement or payment summary, you can use that to prove the claim.
Renewing your annual practising certificate is deductible. Getting it in the first place is not. This catches people every year. The ATO’s position is that the initial cost is incurred to let you start earning, not while earning, so it fails the second golden rule. Every renewal after that is fine.
Medical indemnity insurance is deductible where it relates to your work. If your employer pays the premium, you have not incurred an expense, so there is nothing to claim.
This is the area with the most money in it and the most confusion.
Self-education is deductible if, at the time you spend the money, the course either maintains or improves the skills you need for your current role, or is likely to increase your income from your current employment.
It is not deductible if it only relates to your job in a general way, has no connection to your current employment, or is designed to get you into a different job. A registrar studying toward their current specialty is on solid ground. Someone studying for a career they have not started yet is not.
Where it is deductible, you can claim course and tuition fees, student amenities fees, textbooks, academic journals and stationery. Equipment over $300 used for the study, such as a laptop, is depreciated rather than claimed outright. If you study at home you can claim running expenses but not occupancy expenses.
Repayments of HECS-HELP, FEE-HELP, VET Student Loans, SFSS or any other study and training support loan are never deductible. What matters is the type of place. If you are in a Commonwealth supported place, your student contribution is not deductible, whether you pay it upfront or through HECS-HELP. If you are in a full fee-paying place, your fees can be deductible, including fees you pay with a FEE-HELP loan, which count when you incur them, usually on the census date, rather than when you repay the loan.
Seminars, conferences and training courses are deductible where they relate to your work, including the fares to get there and accommodation if you have to stay overnight.
You cannot claim the trip between home and your regular workplace. That is private travel, no matter how early the shift starts, and even if you are on call and get called in.
You can claim driving directly between two separate workplaces on the same day, travel to an alternative workplace for the same employer, and the trip from home to an alternative workplace such as a training venue.
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 have to show how you worked out the kilometres.
Logbook. A valid logbook establishes your work-use percentage, and you keep written evidence of the actual costs. More work, and usually a bigger deduction if you drive a lot for work.
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 at your regular workplace is not deductible. Parking and tolls on genuine work trips are.
Overnight travel is deductible where the work requires you to sleep away from home. Accommodation, meals and incidentals. You cannot claim if your employer provided or reimbursed them, and you cannot claim if you simply chose to sleep near work rather than drive home.
Most clothing is not deductible, and this is where a lot of incorrect claims come from.
You cannot claim conventional clothing, which means everyday clothing anyone might wear regardless of occupation. Business attire worn by a doctor is conventional clothing, even if your employer requires it and you only wear it at work.
You can claim clothing in one of four categories: protective clothing, occupation-specific clothing, a compulsory uniform, or a non-compulsory uniform your employer has registered on the Register of Approved Occupational Clothing.
A white lab coat is not occupation-specific. The ATO’s reasoning is that it is worn across multiple professions, so it does not distinctly identify your occupation. It can still qualify as protective clothing where it protects your conventional clothes.
Scrubs and enclosed non-slip shoes are protective. Ordinary closed shoes, trousers, shirts and socks are not, because they lack protective features designed for the risks of your work. If the hospital supplies your scrubs and launders them, you have no cost, so there is nothing to claim for buying or washing them.
Laundry of clothing in those categories can be worked out at $1 per load where the load is work clothing only, or 50c per load where you mix work and personal items. Dry cleaning and repairs are claimed at actual cost. For the 2025-26 return, if your laundry claim is $150 or less you do not need receipts, but you still need to be able to show that you spent the money and how you worked the figure out. It is not an automatic deduction, and the ATO is explicit about that. From 2026-27 that shortcut ends, and you need written evidence for clothing and laundry claims.
Protective equipment is deductible where you use it against a real and likely risk of injury or illness at work. Face masks, face shields, safety glasses, sanitiser.
Prescription glasses and contact lenses are not deductible, even if you need them to work. Protective glasses are, including anti-glare, photochromatic, safety glasses and goggles, if you wear them to reduce a real and likely risk of illness or injury at work, and only for the work-related portion.
Grooming is never deductible. Not hairdressing, not cosmetics, not skincare, even with a grooming allowance and even where your employer expects you to be well presented.
Equipment costing $300 or less is deductible in the year you buy it, if you use it mainly for work. A stethoscope, a set of scales. Above $300, you claim the decline in value over the item’s effective life instead.
The $300 threshold has two traps: it does not apply if the item is part of a set that together cost more than $300, or if it is one of several identical or near-identical items totalling more than $300. Above $300, if you bought the item part way through the year, you claim its decline in value only for the part of the year you owned it.
Insurance on your medical equipment is deductible. So are repairs to tools and equipment you use for work. Equipment your employer supplies is not yours to claim.
Your professional library is depreciated over its effective life. A single reference book costing $300 or less that you use mainly for work can be claimed outright. Textbooks you have already claimed as self-education cannot also go into your professional library.
Watches. An ordinary watch is private, even if your job requires one. A watch with special work characteristics, such as a fob watch, is claimable, and above $300 it is depreciated. A smart watch is ordinarily private. You may be able to claim the work-related use where some of its functions are an essential part of your work, and you keep a diary of that use for a representative period.
Phone, data and internet are deductible for the work-related portion. You need evidence of the total spend and a basis for the work percentage, such as an itemised bill covering a representative four weeks. Calls to family while travelling for work are personal.
Working from home running expenses are deductible: electricity and gas, phone and internet, stationery and consumables, and the decline in value of equipment and furniture.
The fixed rate method is 70 cents per work hour for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 income years (it was 67 cents for 2022-23 and 2023-24). The rate covers energy, phone, internet, stationery and consumables, so you cannot claim those separately on top of it. You need a record of your actual hours.
As an employee you generally cannot claim occupancy expenses such as rent, mortgage interest, rates or house insurance. That only changes if part of your home genuinely is a place of business, which is rare for a salaried doctor and worth a conversation before you claim it.
Food and drink during your normal working hours is not deductible, even if you receive a meal allowance. That includes the coffee on a long shift.
Overtime meals are deductible, but only where all of the following apply: you buy and eat the meal while working overtime, you receive a separate overtime meal allowance under an industrial law, award or agreement, not one folded into your salary and wages, and you declare it as income, even if it shows only on your payslips.
Meals while travelling overnight for work are deductible as part of travel expenses.
This is the one that most often puts real money back for internationally trained doctors, and it is regularly missed.
The Medicare levy is 2% of taxable income, paid by most Australian residents to help fund the public system. If you are working in Australia on a temporary visa and your visa status means you are not entitled to Medicare benefits, you may be exempt from the levy. Eligibility turns on your entitlement to Medicare, not on the visa subclass by itself. If you have a spouse or other dependants, they also need to be in an exemption category for the same period.
To claim it you first apply to Services Australia for a Medicare Entitlement Statement, which certifies the period of the financial year you were not eligible for Medicare. We then use that statement to claim the exemption in your return. You can claim for a full year or for the part of the year you were not entitled.
If you qualify for the Medicare levy exemption, you are also exempt from the Medicare Levy Surcharge for the same period. Your return still has to show those days in the surcharge section. For any part of the year you are entitled to Medicare, the surcharge has its own rules around income and private hospital cover. Getting one right and the other wrong is common.
Medical students. If you are working while studying, you lodge a return like anyone else, and your work-related deductions follow the ordinary rules. Your course fees are generally not deductible, because the study is getting you into the profession rather than maintaining skills in a job you already hold.
Interns and residents. Once you are employed as a doctor, self-education that maintains or improves the skills of that role starts to become deductible. This is the year the answer changes for most people, and it is worth asking rather than assuming.
Registrars. Training toward the specialty you are already working in generally qualifies. College fees, exam fees, courses and the associated travel are usually the largest claims of your career at this stage.
Deductions are the small end of the conversation. If any of the following apply to you, the structure is worth more than the receipts.
You do locum work alongside a salaried role. You have started or are considering private practice. You bill through a service entity or a trust. You have an ABN and receive payments that may be personal services income. You are buying into a practice, or selling out of one.
These decisions change what you pay over years, not in a single return, and they 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.
Keep receipts for everything you intend to claim. Beyond that: a logbook if you use the logbook method for your car, and kilometre records if you use cents per kilometre; hours worked from home, if you are claiming working from home; your income statement, which often carries your association fees and allowances; and your Medicare Entitlement Statement, if you are claiming the levy exemption.
For the 2025-26 return you are lodging now, two shortcuts still apply. 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. The ATO’s current guidance is that if you use its per-load rates for laundry, you keep a record of how many loads you washed, whether each was a work-only or mixed load, and evidence that you paid for the laundry.
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.
Individual tax return by email: $330. In person at Balcatta or online: $440.
Add a rental property, a sole trader schedule, or share and crypto trading: $100 each.
Business consultation, 60 minutes: $400.
All prices include GST, and we agree the fee before we start. See the full price list.
Can I claim my AHPRA registration?
The annual renewal, yes. The initial cost of getting registered in the first place, no. The ATO treats the first one as an expense that lets you start earning rather than one incurred while earning.
Can I claim my scrubs and my lab coat?
Scrubs yes, as protective clothing, if you pay for them, and the laundry if you wash them yourself. If the hospital supplies and launders your scrubs, there is nothing to claim. A lab coat is not occupation-specific, because it is worn across several professions, but it can still be claimed as protective clothing where it protects your ordinary clothes. Business attire under it is not claimable at all.
Can I claim the drive to the hospital?
No. Home to your regular workplace is private travel. You can claim driving between two workplaces on the same day, travel to an alternative workplace for the same employer, and the trip from home to a training venue.
Is my college or exam fee deductible?
If it maintains or improves the skills you need in the role you are working in now, or is likely to increase your income from that role, yes. If it is getting you into a role you do not hold yet, no. Registrars training in their current specialty are usually well placed.
I am on a temporary visa. Do I have to pay the Medicare levy?
Possibly not. If your visa status means you are not entitled to Medicare benefits, you can apply to Services Australia for a Medicare Entitlement Statement and we can claim the exemption in your return, as long as your spouse and any other dependants are also exempt for that period. If you qualify, you are also exempt from the Medicare Levy Surcharge for the same period.
How much can I claim for working from home?
70 cents per hour for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 income years under the fixed rate method, which covers energy, phone, internet and consumables, so you cannot claim those separately as well. You need a record of your actual hours. The alternative is claiming actual costs, which needs more records and sometimes gives a better result.
How does the $1,000 standard deduction work for doctors?
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 your work expenses are under $1,000. If they are over, claim them as normal and keep records for every dollar. Your AMA, college membership and union fees go on top either way. College training and exam fees are study costs, so they count against it.
Do you work with doctors 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 doctors’ tax in two episodes of the Aevum Accounting Podcast. The Medical Professional’s Checklist (episode 11) covers the everyday claims, and Senior Doctors & Locum Work (episode 25) covers locum income, structuring and building wealth. Episode 25 has a written companion: Senior Doctors and Locum Work.
If you run or are joining a practice, The Medical Clinic’s GST Guide (episode 38) is worth a listen. For the Medicare levy surcharge, listen to The Medicare Levy, the Surcharge, and the Cover That Doesn’t Count (episode 56), and for the new standard deduction, 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 nurses and midwives, paramedics and police officers.