Sold! The Real Estate Agent's Playbook Part 2: Advanced Deductions and Myth-Busting

CORRECTION NOTICE, updated 24 August 2026 A fact-check found nothing outright wrong in the deductions themselves, which is a good result for an episode this dense. Two figures are out of date, and one warning is framed in a way that will mislead people into thinking they are safe when they are not. The audio cannot be changed, so the corrections are marked inline below. Where the recording and this page disagree, this page is right. 1. THE WORKING FROM HOME RATE IS NOT 67 CENTS. It was 67 cents for 2022-23 and 2023-24. It has been 70 cents since 2024-25, and the ATO has not yet published a rate for 2026-27. Using 67 cents simply understates your claim. 2. NOT CLAIMING OCCUPANCY COSTS DOES NOT PROTECT YOUR MAIN RESIDENCE EXEMPTION. This is the one that matters. The advice to stay away from claiming rent, mortgage interest and rates is right, but the reason given invites you to conclude that as long as you do not claim, your exemption is safe. It is not. The trigger is whether you would be entitled to claim, and the ATO applies that test even if you have no mortgage at all. Its words: "If you are or would be eligible to claim part of the interest expense, your home is subject to CGT to the same extent", and you cannot "reduce the capital gain by not claiming a deduction for some or all of the interest". What protects the exemption is not having an area of your home that qualifies as a place of business in the first place. 3. THE CAR RATE IS NOW 91 CENTS per kilometre for 2026-27, set by LI 2026/19. The 5,000 kilometre cap in the episode is right. Verified against the ATO's fixed rate method and occupancy expenses guidance, its guidance on using your home to produce income, and LI 2026/19. ---------- Mia: Welcome to the podcast, our newsletter made easy. Please note, this podcast features AI-generated voices for your hosts, Mia Taylor... Leo: and Leo Baker, bringing you expert insights from the team at Aevum Accounting. Each week, we're here to help you confidently navigate the ins and outs of Australian tax, whether it's for your individual finances or the complexities of your business. Mia: We'll cut through the jargon to give you strategies for compliance, smart planning, and that ultimate peace of mind. Leo: So, if you're looking to understand your obligations, maximize your financial position, or simply gain clarity on your money matters, you're in the right place. Let's get started with our review of the week! Mia: This week's review comes from Kurt, who left us a five-star review. He wrote: I couldn't be happier with the service from the team. They're professional, responsive, and always take the time to explain things clearly. They even recently helped me amend a tax return I thought was long finished. Leo: Thank you, Kurt! And honestly, "going back to fix what was missed" is the perfect theme for today, because we are heading back out to the open homes with our real estate agents. Mia: Picture it. Every single year, an agent strides in, drops a receipt for a two thousand dollar Italian wool suit on the desk, and says, with total confidence: this one's a write-off, I only ever wear it to auctions. Leo: And every single year, we have to be the ones to break the bad news. Welcome to The Closing Statement, Part 2. Back in Episode 26 we handed agents the starter kit. Today we go deeper: the advanced claims the sharpest operators are quietly making, and the myths that cost everyone else money at tax time. Mia: Quick recap of Part 1, because it all rests on the ATO's three golden rules: you spent the money yourself and weren't reimbursed, it directly relates to earning your income, and you have a record to prove it. Leo: On the car: your normal home-to-office drive is private, even the twilight open home at eight at night. But office to open homes, between two jobs on the same day, or home straight to a training course, those you can claim, through a logbook or cents-per-kilometre. Mia: And the two that start arguments: the suit is not deductible, conventional business clothing never is. And gifts and advertising only count if you actually earn commission. Fixed salary, no commission, and you can't claim them. Leo: That's Part 1. Now the advanced stuff, starting with the one that trips up new agents: education. Mia: Getting your very first Certificate of Registration, the ticket that gets you into the industry, is not deductible. That's a cost of getting the job, before you're earning the income. But once you're in, it flips completely. Leo: Renewing that registration every year is deductible. So is study that builds on the job you're already doing, an auctioneering course, a licence upgrade, sales training to lift your current numbers. Mia: And this is a big one agents forget: conferences and professional development. If you fly interstate for a real estate conference like AREC, the registration, the flights and the accommodation can all be deductible, as long as it's genuinely about your work and not a holiday with a seminar bolted on. Leo: Keep the program and your receipts, and if you tack on a few private days, you just apportion. But a legitimate work conference is one of the biggest single claims an ambitious agent can make. Mia: Next, the ones on autopay: your professional memberships and your data. Your real estate institute membership, and your subscriptions to the tools of the trade, CoreLogic, RP Data, your agent subscriptions to the big property portals, all deductible, as long as you're paying for them yourself. Leo: And let's talk prospecting, because this is where agents spend a fortune and forget half of it. Your CRM subscription, your just-listed and just-sold cards, the letterbox drops, the social media ads, the boosted listings on the portals, all claimable, all advertising your services. Mia: Just remember the commission test still applies. If you earn a fixed salary with no commission, the ATO treats that marketing as your employer's job, not yours. Commission or a retainer, and it's back on the table. Leo: Here's one almost nobody claims: sun protection. If you're running outdoor auctions, walking buyers through open homes in the sun, or hammering in sign-boards on a Saturday, your sunscreen, sunglasses and a hat can be claimed for that outdoor, work-related use. Mia: And the bag. The satchel or briefcase you bought specifically to carry your laptop, your contracts and your lockbox keys between listings, that's a deductible work bag, to the extent you use it for work. Leo: Then there's the tech, and this is where the real money is. The camera you shoot listings on, the drone for aerial shots of the acreage, the laptop for contracts. If any single item costs three hundred dollars or less, you claim it outright. More than that, you claim its decline in value over time. Mia: Just watch the set rule. If a camera and its lens are bought together as a set and the set tops three hundred dollars, you can't split them to duck under the threshold. And only the work-related slice counts if you use the gear privately too. Leo: Here's a small one agents leave behind constantly: parking and tolls. When you're out on work trips, appraisals, open homes, settlements, the parking and the tolls are claimable on top of your car method. They are not baked into the logbook or the cents-per-kilometre rate. Mia: One that saves people thousands and gets missed constantly: income protection insurance. If you're paying premiums to protect your own commission income, those premiums are generally deductible. Just not the life or trauma cover bundled inside your super. Leo: And the home office, for all that late-night contract prep at the kitchen table. You can claim the running costs, power, internet, the work phone, using the ATO's sixty-seven-cents-an-hour rate, or the actual-cost method if you keep the detail. [CORRECTION: the rate is out of date. 67 cents applied to 2022-23 and 2023-24. From 2024-25 it has been 70 cents an hour, and the ATO has not yet set a rate for 2026-27, so check before you lodge. Two things worth remembering about the fixed rate: it bundles your phone, internet, electricity, gas and stationery, so you cannot claim any of those separately on top of it, and it requires a record of the actual hours you worked from home for the whole year, not a four-week sample.] Mia: But here's the line you do not cross: do not start claiming rent, mortgage interest or council rates on the family home. Your office is the agency. Claim occupancy costs on your home and you can punch a hole in your main-residence exemption, and hand yourself a capital gains bill when you sell. Not worth it. [CORRECTION: the advice is right, the reasoning is dangerous. It reads as though the exemption survives as long as you do not claim. It does not. The ATO's test is the interest deductibility test, and its words are that it "must be applied even if you haven't borrowed money to acquire your home", and that "if you are or would be eligible to claim part of the interest expense, your home is subject to CGT to the same extent". It goes further and says you cannot "reduce the capital gain by not claiming a deduction for some or all of the interest", nor add the unclaimed interest to your cost base. So quietly not claiming buys you nothing. What keeps you fully exempt is not having an area of the home that meets the place-of-business test: an area clearly identifiable as a place of business, not readily usable for private purposes, used almost exclusively for work, and necessary because your employer provides no alternative. For an agent with an agency desk, that last condition is usually the one that fails, which is exactly why you should not be claiming.] Leo: Let's make all of this real, because on their own these sound small. Mia: Meet Dave. Mid-career sales agent, on commission, drives everywhere, works most weekends. Dave claims his car, and that's about it, because the accountant will sort the rest. Leo: So let's add up what Dave's been leaving on the table. His institute membership and his CoreLogic subscription, around two thousand dollars a year. An interstate conference, another two thousand. Income protection premiums, fifteen hundred. Decline in value on his laptop, camera and phone, close to a thousand. Sun protection, the work bag, parking and tolls, a few hundred more. Mia: That's more than six thousand dollars in deductions Dave never claimed. Depending on his tax bracket, that's well over two thousand dollars a year, back in his pocket, that he's been handing to the tax office for nothing. Leo: And multiply that by a few years of not claiming, and you can see exactly why Kurt's review at the top mattered. Which brings us to myth-busting. Mia: Because the sales meeting is where bad tax advice goes to breed. Myth number one: my car is a hundred percent business, I basically live in it. Leo: Love the confidence, but no. That home-to-office leg is private no matter how many hours you work. Without a logbook, you're capped at the cents-per-kilometre method, five thousand business kilometres, and not a metre more. [CORRECTION: correct, and the rate for the 2026-27 income year is 91 cents per kilometre, set by LI 2026/19. It was 88 cents for 2024-25 and 2025-26.] Mia: Myth number two: I have to look the part, so my grooming and my gym are deductible. Leo: They are not. Haircuts, cosmetics, teeth whitening, the gym membership, all private, even if you're the face on the bus stop and in every video. Presentation might be your business, but the ATO calls it personal. Mia: Myth number three, and this is the expensive one: I wine and dine my clients, so it's all deductible. Leo: This is where agents get burned. Taking a client to lunch, shouting coffees, footy tickets to celebrate a settlement, that's entertainment, and entertainment is not deductible. Full stop. Mia: But here's the nuance, because a gift is different from entertainment. A hamper, a bottle of wine, a bunch of flowers sent to the seller? If you earn commission, that genuine gift is deductible. The tickets to the game are not. Leo: Myth number four, and agents do this one all day: I'm out at appraisals from morning till night, so my lunch and my coffees are on the ATO. Mia: Sorry, no. A meal while you're going about your normal workday is private, full stop. Food only becomes deductible on genuine overnight work travel, or under a proper overtime meal allowance, not the flat white between inspections. Leo: And the last one, myth number five: I got a parking fine at an open home, so surely that's a work expense. Mia: Never. Fines are never deductible, not parking, not speeding to a settlement, not a single one. The ATO will not chip in for a ticket, no matter how work-related the hurry was. Leo: So let's total up the wins agents leave on the table: registration renewals, your institute membership, your data subscriptions, conferences, prospecting and marketing, sun protection, the work bag, parking and tolls, income protection, and the decline in value on your gear. Mia: And do yourself one favour: keep the records. Use the ATO's myDeductions app, snap the receipts as you go, and run a real twelve-week logbook. In an audit, the claim you can't prove is the claim you lose, and agents get looked at more closely than most. Leo: And here's what a lot of agents don't realise. If you've been missing these for years, you're not stuck with it. The team can go back and amend your previous returns and claw that money back, just like they did for Kurt. Mia: So if you're an agent who's been quietly writing off the suit and forgetting the rest, don't guess your way through another tax time. Head over to aevumaccounting.com.au and book a session with the team. They know exactly where the line sits for real estate, so you stay compliant and keep every dollar you're owed. Leo: Sell the houses. Let the team defend the deductions. Mia: Couldn't have said it better. Leo: Thank you for joining us for Episode 49! We hope today's given our hard-working agents a stack of claims to chase up before tax time. Mia: Before we go, a quick but important reminder. The information shared today is for general informational purposes only, and does not constitute specific tax or financial advice. Leo: Everyone's situation is unique, and tax laws are complex. For personalized advice tailored to your situation, we always recommend consulting with a qualified professional. Mia: Until next time, stay savvy, stay proactive... Leo: And keep building your financial future!