You’ve turned your home into a home office during COVID-19. So, what can you claim on your tax return and how do you claim it? Fortunately, the ATO has now made it easier than ever.

 

If you are one of the hundreds of thousands of Australians now working from home thanks to social distancing measures, part of your house has become your workplace.

After the stockpiling of toilet rolls and pasta subsided, a second purchasing rush got underway. With working from home on so many agendas, stocks of desks, stationery, monitors, printers, office chairs and noise-cancelling headphones ran low around the country as home offices were quickly cobbled together.

 

Work-related phone use is up, the internet is being pushed to its limits – for work and binge-watching TV – not to mention increased power use with everyone at home, all the time, every day.

 

Working from home, you’ll find yourself personally paying for things your employer would usually cover at your place of work.

 

The good news is, if purchases and costs are work-related, chances are some or all the costs may be claimed on your next tax return.

 

We’ll run through the traditional ways to claim for working from home expenses and also provide details on the ATO’s new temporary simplified method, introduced especially to apply to the current COVID-19 crisis time period.

 

Click here to check what you can claim.