RBizz Corporate Accountants
RBizz Corporate Accountants
Accountants of Growing Businesses, Simple to Complex.

Work Out Working From Home Expenses

14/07/2021 04:44 PM

See which method gives you the highest deductions for working from home

For 2020-21 financial year ending on 30th June, working from home has become a common term because most of the employees had to work from home if their duties didn't require them to be physically present at their workplace. For this reason, ATO has given a special method for calculating working from home expenses that employees can claim in their tax returns for work-related deductions.

 

This deduction although looks simple but may have lots of complexities when the questions come about the nature of expenses that can be included in working from home deductions and the methods of calculating accurate numbers.

 

There are more than one method to calculate working from home expenses and each method may result in different numbers. If you want to maximize your tax refund, then it is necessary that you choose the method than gives you the highest amount.

 

For a person who is not familiar with tax laws and rules, it may be difficult to work out the necessary numbers. This is the reason that many taxpayers don't claim the correct amounts in their tax returns and miss on maximizing the tax refund.

 

We have prepared an easy-to-use template to calculate the amount of deductions for working from home.

 

Even the most complex scenarios have been considered in this template. You can calculate the decline in value (depreciation) of assets you used for work purpose. You just need to input the date, amount of purchase and useful life of the assets. Template will calculate all the final numbers for deduction purpose.

 

All the rules of ATO have been considered while preparing this template.

 

During 2020-21, taxpayers will can use 3 methods to calculate their working from home expenses:

 

1. 52 cents per hour plus other expenses not included in the rate of 52 cents if you have a dedicated place of work at your home.

2. All actual numbers.

3. Shortcut method of 80 cents per hour that covers all expenses for working from home.

 

As ATO says taxpayers are free to choose a method that gives them better results, this template will work out 3 results with 3 methods. You need to input your numbers only once.

 

Please note:

1. Input your numbers in the cells shaded in green only. Other numbers include text and/or formulas.

2. In the last step you need to manually choose your numbers which you prefer to use for your tax return.

 

We hope you will find this template useful. If you need further help, please contact us at team@rbizz.com.au and we will be happy to assist you.

RBizz Team