Quick answer
You can claim work travel such as flights, trains, buses, taxis, tolls, and parking, plus accommodation, meals, and incidentals when you travel away from home overnight for work. Ordinary commuting between home and your regular workplace is private and not deductible. Keep tax invoices, claim GST credits on domestic travel, and keep a travel diary if you are away six or more nights.
Is business travel tax deductible in Australia?
Work-related travel is deductible; commuting is not. Travel directly connected to earning your income, such as flying to a client, attending a conference interstate, or moving between two workplaces, is deductible. Ordinary travel between home and your regular place of work is private, even if you do some work on the way. Narrow exceptions apply for carrying bulky tools that cannot be stored at work, and for genuinely itinerant workers.
When the trip takes you away overnight, you can also claim the related accommodation, meals, and incidentals. This is distinct from living away from home, which applies to longer relocations and is dealt with through fringe benefits tax rather than as a deduction. See car expenses for travel in your own vehicle, which uses separate methods.
How much can you claim?
You claim the actual cost of work travel. There is no fixed cap, but the cost must be genuinely work-related, and any private portion of a trip must be excluded. The GST treatment varies:
| Travel type | GST treatment | GST credit |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic flights, taxis, trains | 10% GST | Claimable with a tax invoice |
| International airfares | GST-free | None |
| Accommodation in Australia | 10% GST | Claimable with a tax invoice |
| Tolls and parking | Usually 10% GST | Claimable with a tax invoice |
Where you receive a bona fide travel allowance, the ATO publishes annual reasonable amounts for accommodation, meals, and incidentals. Claiming within those amounts can reduce the substantiation required, but you must still have spent the money.
Worked example. A manager flies Sydney to Perth for a three-day project: a $620 domestic return flight including GST, $90 of taxis, and $40 of tolls and parking. The whole $750 is deductible and, with tax invoices, the GST included is claimable. An international leg on the same trip would be GST-free, deductible but with no GST credit.
Record-keeping requirements
Keep a tax invoice for each travel cost that includes GST, and note the work purpose. If you are away from home for six or more consecutive nights, keep a travel diary recording the nature, dates, places, and duration of your work activities, which is how you separate work from any private days. The ATO requires records to be kept for five years.
How to claim, step by step
- Confirm the travel is work-related, not ordinary commuting.
- For travel in your own car, use the car expense methods instead.
- Claim the actual cost of flights, public transport, taxis, tolls, and parking.
- Reclaim GST credits on domestic travel where you hold a tax invoice; international airfares are GST-free.
- Keep a travel diary for any trip of six or more consecutive nights.
- Exclude any private portion of the trip and keep records for five years.
Common mistakes
- Claiming home-to-work commuting as business travel without meeting a narrow exception.
- Trying to claim a GST credit on a GST-free international airfare.
- Failing to keep a travel diary for trips of six or more nights, which weakens the whole claim.
- Claiming the private portion of a trip that mixed work with a holiday.
- Confusing a genuine work trip with living away from home, which is an FBT matter.
Software that helps
Travel receipts arrive across flights, apps, and paper, so the win is capturing and coding them consistently.
- TravelPerk books and itemises business trips and feeds the spend into the ledger.
- ExpenseFlow captures flight, taxi, and toll receipts from email and photos, applies the correct GST or GST-free treatment per type, and syncs the coded trip to Xero.
- ATO myDeductions records trips and travel expenses in the ATO app.
FAQ
See the answered questions above for commuting, the travel diary rule, GST credits, reasonable amounts, and travel to a new location.