ATO and tax experts reveal most ‘outrageous' things Aussies have tried to claim back
Yachts, island holidays, gaming consoles and even swimwear for a truck driver looking to cool off have featured among a collection of wild expense claims Australians have tried to slip past the
tax
office.
Ahead of the 2025 tax period, Australia's revenue collection agency has signalled what it will be cracking down on this year while warning exaggerated deduction attempts 'would not be tolerated'.
Among the 'most outrageous' work-related deduction attempts the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) received last year was a truck driver who tried to claim swimwear because they had stopped in a hot place and needed a swim, and an unnamed fashion industry manager who wanted to be reimbursed more than $10,000 they spent on luxury clothing bought to attend dinners and other functions.
A third example shared by the ATO was of a mechanic who tried to claim gaming consoles, a TV, an air fryer and vacuum cleaners as work-related expenses.
All claims were denied.
'While some people have tried their luck with unusual work-related deduction claims, most people realise to be able to claim an expense it needs to meet strict criteria,' ATO Assistant Commissioner Rob Thomson said.
'While a lunchtime dip might clear your head for work, swimwear for a truck driver is clearly not deductible.
'We know in many instances mistakes relating to work-related expenses could be avoided with a little time and effort.'
The 'revealing' length some Australians are willing to stretch the truth if they can score a tax break was also identified when Chartered Accountants ANZ (CA ANZ) surveyed 180 tax experts.
One taxpayer tried to claim a luxury yacht as a work expense because 'they might have some business to do' on some islands, while another wanted to be paid back for monthly salon trims because their 'hair grows during business hours'.
'There were many dubious claims related to health, wellness and personal aesthetic, including one for the cost of a gym membership as the individual needed to be strong and fit to renovate their rental property,' CA ANZ tax lead Susan Franks said.
'Another related to a Pilates reformer machine purchased to help an office worker who had a sore back.
'We also noticed a trend of big-ticket luxury purchases passed off as business and work expenses, including one who tried to claim a family trip to a tropical island was related to their earthmoving business.'
Other taxpayers tried to claim vet and food bills for their pets, a pool, school fees and an engagement ring.
Franks said the attempts were cheeky but discouraged people from making fraudulent claims 'because the ATO will not be laughing'.
The tax office said work-related expenses, working from home deductions and side hustles would be in the microscope this year, claiming these are areas that produce 'frequent errors'.
More than 10 million people claimed work-related deductions in 2024, and many lodged expenses relating to working from home.
'Work-related expenses must have a close connection to your income earning activities and you should be prepared to back it up with records like a receipt or invoice,' Thomson said.
'If your deductions don't pass the 'pub test', it's highly unlikely your claim would meet the ATO's strict criteria.
The advice for taxpayers is to check the ATO website and to consider using its app where expense records can be stored and later shared with your tax agent or uploaded to myTax when lodging your return.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Perth Now
5 hours ago
- Perth Now
$100m Powerball mystery leads to Bondi
One of Australia's biggest ever lottery prizes is still unclaimed, but new details have emerged to help track down the winner. Powerball operators The Lott have revealed that the sole winner of a $100m grand prize bought their ticket at an outlet in Bondi. The winning entry was purchased at Bondi Junction Newsagency and Internet Cafe, inside the local Westfield shopping centre. It has been more than 34 hours since one mystery Australian became the lucky winner, but the ticket has still not been claimed. The winner's ticket for the megadraw was unregistered, which means that lottery officials have no way of contacting them. Instead, ticket holders who tried their luck in Bondi are being encouraged to check their results and make contact with officials. Only six other Australians know what it feels like to win a $100m prize. NewsWire/ David Crosling Credit: News Corp Australia The Lott spokesperson Eliza Wregg said that one New South Wales punter was 'walking around completely oblivious' to their life-changing news. 'There are 100 million reasons why Sydney's eastern suburbs players should check their tickets today,' Ms Wregg said. 'Imagine discovering you're suddenly a multi-millionaire! You could immediately retire, take the trip of your dreams, or spoil those nearest and dearest to you.' The owner of the Bondi Junction Newsagency & Internet Cafe, Manish, said it was 'legendary' to hear that his team had sold the winning ticket. 'This is by far the biggest winning entry we've ever sold. The team are thrilled to hear the winning news. I'll be rewarding the particular staff member who sold the winning ticket too,' he said. 'The staff here are always excited, but they'll be extra excited to hear we've sold the big winning ticket. 'I'm hoping it's one of our regular customers, but you never know it could be a tourist too. We're located right next to closest station to Bondi Beach, so you never know!' The winning entry was bought at Bondi Junction Newsagency & Internet Cafe. NewsWire/ David Crosling Credit: News Corp Australia Powerball draw 1517 was conducted on Thursday and the winning numbers were 28, 10, 3, 16, 31, 14 and 21. The Powerball number was 6. When claimed, the winner of the $100m pot will join an exclusive club of mega lottery winners. Only six Australians have ever claimed a Powerball prize of $100m or more. It is estimated that half of all adults in the country bought tickets to Thursday night's draw. The odds of winning the grand prize are slim, at a margin of one in 134 million.
Sydney Morning Herald
8 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
To defend itself, Australia mustn't kowtow to its rivals. Or its allies
Which is why Albanese left Canberra quite untroubled by the prospect of not meeting the US leader at all. And, if a meeting were to occur, Albanese had no intention of grovelling, no basket of delicacies to offer. Even though Trump tells us that he's open to extravagant gifts. When Ramaphosa said to Trump, 'I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you,' the US president replied: 'I wish you did. I would take it.' Australia has had an offer on the table in an effort to persuade Trump to exempt the country from the tariffs he has imposed on every other nation and penguin colony (with notable exemptions for Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Cuba). Loading 'The ball is now in the US court,' Trade Minister Don Farrell told me five weeks ago. 'We have put our proposition to them, and it's open to them if they want to accept it.' It included an offer of setting up a reliable supply chain for critical minerals to help break China's stranglehold. The offer is still in the US court. Albanese is not going to plead. The Coalition is still demanding that the prime minister insist on an urgent meeting with Trump at any cost. Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor on Thursday said that Albanese must do 'whatever is necessary to meet with President Trump … as quickly as possible'. Maybe the opposition hasn't quite adjusted to the quiet patriotism that Australians feel about this. The country wants its leader to be on his feet dealing with Trump, not his knees. Or maybe the Liberals do get it, and they're trying to set Albanese up to fail. Loading In a poll published this week, non-partisan Pew Research found that, among 24 nations, Australia was one of the countries with the greatest distrust of Trump. Seventy-seven per cent of Aussies said they did not trust Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. This was identical with sentiment in Canada, yet Trump hasn't breathed a word about annexing Australia. The median distrust rating across all 24 countries was around six in 10. Australians have firm views about the US president. We will not reward a lickspittle leader. Does that mean we want to dump the AUKUS agreement with the US and Britain? From the news coverage this week of Trump's decision to review the deal, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's deeply unpopular. But a separate poll this week revealed that the opposite is true. The Lowy Institute survey poll found that 67 per cent of Australians support acquiring US nuclear-powered submarines, the first and most contentious element of the AUKUS pact. The poll of over 2100 people was conducted in March. When it was first announced, Lowy's poll found support at 70 per cent. 'Over the past four years, the Lowy Institute poll has shown that Australians' support for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines remains strong,' said Lowy's director, Michael Fullilove. The strident anti-AUKUS campaign led by Paul Keating and the Greens has made no real impact. The Australian electorate is discerning enough to judge Australia's national interests. And to tell the difference between distrust of Donald Trump on the one hand, and, on the other, an agreement between Australia and the country that Trump leads temporarily in order to acquire a national asset. (With Britain, of course, the third participant.) Australians have firm views about AUKUS. We will not reward a sellout leader. Which leads us to a key point largely overlooked in the week's frenzied coverage. America is not the point of AUKUS. The reason it exists is not out of love for the US. Or Britain. It came into being because of mutual fear of China. Beijing has built the world's biggest navy so that it can drive the US out of the Western Pacific and dominate the region. If it dominates Asia and the Pacific, it dominates the majority of the global economy. Which ultimately means it dominates the world. If you don't understand this, you haven't been listening to Xi Jinping. Or taking him seriously. Loading Australians understand the country's vulnerability. For years now, seven respondents in 10 have told Lowy's pollsters that they think China will pose a future military threat to Australia. The experts agree. The doyen of Australian defence strategy, Paul Dibb, says that Australia's navy and air force would not last a week in a confrontation with China. 'A few days' is all it would take for the People's Liberation Army to destroy Australia's forces. Not that Beijing wants to invade the continent. Australian strategists believe that China can more effectively and efficiently coerce the country by merely deploying some of the 300-plus vessels in its navy to Australia's northern approaches. Extended live fire drills, for example, would deter commercial shipping. Australia's supply lines, imports and exports, would be interrupted. The broad concept – cutting Australia off from the US and the world – is the same one that Imperial Japan was putting in place in World War II. Loading Knowing this vulnerability, an intelligent island continent would put a high priority on submarines to patrol our approaches. Unfortunately, successive Australian governments proved more complacent than intelligent. The six Collins Class submarines were supposed to be entering retirement about now. Which brings us to the second key point overlooked in the week's sound and fury. Journalists asked Defence Minister Richard Marles what would happen if the Trump administration review were to terminate AUKUS. What, they asked, reasonably enough, is Australia's Plan B? He answered that there was a plan, and we had to make it work. More pungently, Jennifer Parker of ANU's National Security College wrote in this masthead: 'Calls for a plan B overlook a blunt reality: AUKUS is already Plan C.' Remember Tony Abbott's Japanese subs and Malcolm Turnbull's French subs? Australia is becoming a byword for fecklessness. China's shipyards are producing two nuclear-powered submarines a year. Australia hasn't produced a single submarine since 2001. It's entirely possible that the Pentagon's AUKUS review, led by Elbridge Colby, complicates the plan. But an Australian with deep and long experience of dealing with Washington predicts that it will not scrap the three-nation treaty: 'I don't think he will recommend kyboshing the AUKUS agreement because, if he did, he'd be effectively ending the alliance. Not formally, but it would fundamentally change the equation.' Either way, with or without AUKUS, Australia's priority should be to prepare itself to stand on its own. AUKUS was supposed to add a serious new capability but not to be the be-all and end-all of Australian defence. 'Things have dramatically changed,' Paul Dibb tells me. 'With the Chinese navy on our doorstep doing live fire drills and the unreliability of our great ally, we now need to do much more to develop the independent capability to deal with contingencies in the South Pacific and relevant contingencies in the South China Sea, events where the US would have no interest in getting involved.' Australia needs to be able to stand on its feet, not its knees, in dealing with its ally. It needs to be able to do the same with its rivals.
The Age
8 hours ago
- The Age
To defend itself, Australia mustn't kowtow to its rivals. Or its allies
Which is why Albanese left Canberra quite untroubled by the prospect of not meeting the US leader at all. And, if a meeting were to occur, Albanese had no intention of grovelling, no basket of delicacies to offer. Even though Trump tells us that he's open to extravagant gifts. When Ramaphosa said to Trump, 'I'm sorry I don't have a plane to give you,' the US president replied: 'I wish you did. I would take it.' Australia has had an offer on the table in an effort to persuade Trump to exempt the country from the tariffs he has imposed on every other nation and penguin colony (with notable exemptions for Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Cuba). Loading 'The ball is now in the US court,' Trade Minister Don Farrell told me five weeks ago. 'We have put our proposition to them, and it's open to them if they want to accept it.' It included an offer of setting up a reliable supply chain for critical minerals to help break China's stranglehold. The offer is still in the US court. Albanese is not going to plead. The Coalition is still demanding that the prime minister insist on an urgent meeting with Trump at any cost. Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor on Thursday said that Albanese must do 'whatever is necessary to meet with President Trump … as quickly as possible'. Maybe the opposition hasn't quite adjusted to the quiet patriotism that Australians feel about this. The country wants its leader to be on his feet dealing with Trump, not his knees. Or maybe the Liberals do get it, and they're trying to set Albanese up to fail. Loading In a poll published this week, non-partisan Pew Research found that, among 24 nations, Australia was one of the countries with the greatest distrust of Trump. Seventy-seven per cent of Aussies said they did not trust Trump to do the right thing in world affairs. This was identical with sentiment in Canada, yet Trump hasn't breathed a word about annexing Australia. The median distrust rating across all 24 countries was around six in 10. Australians have firm views about the US president. We will not reward a lickspittle leader. Does that mean we want to dump the AUKUS agreement with the US and Britain? From the news coverage this week of Trump's decision to review the deal, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's deeply unpopular. But a separate poll this week revealed that the opposite is true. The Lowy Institute survey poll found that 67 per cent of Australians support acquiring US nuclear-powered submarines, the first and most contentious element of the AUKUS pact. The poll of over 2100 people was conducted in March. When it was first announced, Lowy's poll found support at 70 per cent. 'Over the past four years, the Lowy Institute poll has shown that Australians' support for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines remains strong,' said Lowy's director, Michael Fullilove. The strident anti-AUKUS campaign led by Paul Keating and the Greens has made no real impact. The Australian electorate is discerning enough to judge Australia's national interests. And to tell the difference between distrust of Donald Trump on the one hand, and, on the other, an agreement between Australia and the country that Trump leads temporarily in order to acquire a national asset. (With Britain, of course, the third participant.) Australians have firm views about AUKUS. We will not reward a sellout leader. Which leads us to a key point largely overlooked in the week's frenzied coverage. America is not the point of AUKUS. The reason it exists is not out of love for the US. Or Britain. It came into being because of mutual fear of China. Beijing has built the world's biggest navy so that it can drive the US out of the Western Pacific and dominate the region. If it dominates Asia and the Pacific, it dominates the majority of the global economy. Which ultimately means it dominates the world. If you don't understand this, you haven't been listening to Xi Jinping. Or taking him seriously. Loading Australians understand the country's vulnerability. For years now, seven respondents in 10 have told Lowy's pollsters that they think China will pose a future military threat to Australia. The experts agree. The doyen of Australian defence strategy, Paul Dibb, says that Australia's navy and air force would not last a week in a confrontation with China. 'A few days' is all it would take for the People's Liberation Army to destroy Australia's forces. Not that Beijing wants to invade the continent. Australian strategists believe that China can more effectively and efficiently coerce the country by merely deploying some of the 300-plus vessels in its navy to Australia's northern approaches. Extended live fire drills, for example, would deter commercial shipping. Australia's supply lines, imports and exports, would be interrupted. The broad concept – cutting Australia off from the US and the world – is the same one that Imperial Japan was putting in place in World War II. Loading Knowing this vulnerability, an intelligent island continent would put a high priority on submarines to patrol our approaches. Unfortunately, successive Australian governments proved more complacent than intelligent. The six Collins Class submarines were supposed to be entering retirement about now. Which brings us to the second key point overlooked in the week's sound and fury. Journalists asked Defence Minister Richard Marles what would happen if the Trump administration review were to terminate AUKUS. What, they asked, reasonably enough, is Australia's Plan B? He answered that there was a plan, and we had to make it work. More pungently, Jennifer Parker of ANU's National Security College wrote in this masthead: 'Calls for a plan B overlook a blunt reality: AUKUS is already Plan C.' Remember Tony Abbott's Japanese subs and Malcolm Turnbull's French subs? Australia is becoming a byword for fecklessness. China's shipyards are producing two nuclear-powered submarines a year. Australia hasn't produced a single submarine since 2001. It's entirely possible that the Pentagon's AUKUS review, led by Elbridge Colby, complicates the plan. But an Australian with deep and long experience of dealing with Washington predicts that it will not scrap the three-nation treaty: 'I don't think he will recommend kyboshing the AUKUS agreement because, if he did, he'd be effectively ending the alliance. Not formally, but it would fundamentally change the equation.' Either way, with or without AUKUS, Australia's priority should be to prepare itself to stand on its own. AUKUS was supposed to add a serious new capability but not to be the be-all and end-all of Australian defence. 'Things have dramatically changed,' Paul Dibb tells me. 'With the Chinese navy on our doorstep doing live fire drills and the unreliability of our great ally, we now need to do much more to develop the independent capability to deal with contingencies in the South Pacific and relevant contingencies in the South China Sea, events where the US would have no interest in getting involved.' Australia needs to be able to stand on its feet, not its knees, in dealing with its ally. It needs to be able to do the same with its rivals.
