Numerous Work-Related Expense Claims Disallowed

The AAT has denied a taxpayer’s deductions for work-related travel, clothing, self-education and rental property expenses (in a total of $116,068 and $140,581 for the 2013 and 2014 income year respectively), and upheld the ATO’s 50% administrative penalty on the tax shortfall for recklessness.

Apart from being unable to prove (or ‘substantiate’) some claims due to lack of receipts, and documents being in the wrong name, the AAT also criticised the taxpayer for:

• claiming work-related travel expenses on the basis of the ‘gap’ between travel expenses reimbursed by her employer and the ATO’s reasonable rates (which “was clearly not permissible under any taxation law”); and
• claiming clothing expenses for “formal clothes of high class”, despite her clothing not being distinctive or unique to her employment at the Department of Finance, and was instead rather conventional in nature (and so was not deductible).