EOFY 2019/2020 – What a year!
Posted by
Matt Hale
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From home offices to home schooling, you’ll be hard pressed to find someone whose life has not been drastically impacted by COVID-19 over the last several months. As the story has developed, it has been clear that the financial impacts of COVID vary from person to person – everyone has a different tale to tell.
To help you make sure that any possible financial wins are not missed, we have provided some information below on what has changed and how to capitalise on it.
If you are working from home for the first time, here are some things you can claim:
- Phone and internet expenses
- The decline in value of equipment and furniture
- Electricity and gas for heating, cooling and lighting
- Stationery and computer items, like paper and ink cartridges
- Additional heating & electricity (in some circumstances).
To help people navigate through this COVID period, the ATO (Australian Tax Office) recently announced a simple way to calculate the expenses that you have incurred, working from home due to Corona.
If you have been working from home, you can claim a tax deduction of 80 cents per every hour you have worked from 1 March 2020 until 30 June 2020. This is the equivalent of someone doing a full 40 hour week from home – providing an additional deduction of close to $400.
The shortcut method is only available for the defined time-period, so if you have been working from home before 1 March, you will need to choose one of the existing methods to calculate this.
- Fixed-rate method
- Actual cost method
If you are not sure as to what you should or shouldn’t claim on tax, or if your circumstances have changed in 2020, please touch base with us via the ‘book now’ button on the home page.
If you’d like to know more, here are some previous pieces we have done in this space: