A cooking life puts more kilometres on you than the roster lets on: across town to the second kitchen on a split, out to a function the venue is catering off-site, over to the other room when the head chef shifts you for the night. Part of that petrol is a true work cost and part is just you getting to work, and the return that misreads it usually misreads it in the same place. How late you finished or how far the venue sits does not sway the ATO. It asks one thing only: was the drive part of doing the job, or part of arriving at it. Overtime meals ride on the same page, because a late double is where both questions surface together.
The commute you can't claim
Getting from home to your regular venue at call time, and home again after the last plate, is private travel. It does not come off, and it is the one thing cooks reach for most when they should not.
- Carrying your knives changes nothing. The ATO singles chefs out on this: hauling your roll to and from your regular kitchen does not make the commute a work trip. Knives are not bulky enough, and most kitchens have a spot to leave them.
- A midnight finish changes nothing. Dragging yourself home after a marathon service is nothing more than everyday travel between home and the job.
- A split shift changes nothing. Heading home in the afternoon lull and coming back for dinner is still commuting to the one workplace, only twice.
Between venues the same day
The instant you are driving for the work rather than driving to reach it, the answer turns over, and this is the leg most cooks are owed and leave behind.
The two methods
Once you have travel you can claim, there are two ways to arrive at the number. You run one or the other for the car over the year, and you take whichever pays more:
A fixed amount per work kilometre, reset by the ATO each year, ceilinged at 5,000 work kilometres. No fuel receipts, but you still show how you reached the kilometres.
A twelve-week logbook to set your work-use percentage, then that slice of every running cost: fuel, servicing, rego, insurance, all of it. Heavier on records, worth more when you rack up real kilometres between venues.
One method to a car, and no doubling up. Fuel and servicing already live inside both methods, so you cannot take the rate or the logbook slice and then bolt petrol on top. You can still claim parking and tolls on a real work trip, say paying to park at an off-site function, but not at the venue you clock into day after day.
Overtime meals
A late double is where the meal question lands, and the rule is tighter than most cooks assume. An overtime meal can be deductible, but only when the award has paid you for it.
The line that trips people: an ordinary meal on a normal shift never comes off. A coffee to push through service, or the feed you grab on a standard day because there was no time to pack lunch, is a personal cost. Only the meal bought on real, allowance-paid overtime is one the ATO lets you claim.
Tips are income you declare
This is the far side of the ledger, and cooks get it wrong often enough to earn it a line of its own. Tips are taxable, and they must be declared however they reach you: cash in hand, a share of the tronc, or paid out by the venue. If the income statement waiting in myGov does not already carry them, you key them in yourself before lodging. It is not a deduction, but leaving tips off is exactly the gap the ATO goes looking for, so square the income away before you touch the claims.
The records that hold it up
A travel or meal claim stands entirely on the record beneath it, and this is precisely where kitchen returns fall apart.
- A trip diary or plain working of the work kilometres, where you run cents per kilometre.
- A real twelve-week logbook and the running-cost records sitting under it, where you run the logbook method.
- Your payslip showing the overtime meal allowance, since that allowance is what makes the meal claim possible at all.
- Trips and meals jotted on the day they happen, not pieced together from memory in July.
The bottom line
Leave the commute off, however late the finish or however far the venue, and claim the driving that is genuinely the job: venue to venue the same day, on to a second cheffing job, and out to off-site events. Run one method per car and keep fuel from stacking on top. Claim an overtime meal only where the award allowance was paid, shown as income and actually spent, and let the staff feed and the shift coffee sit where they belong. Declare your tips as income before any of it, hold the logbook and the receipts, and the travel side of your return will stand.
See what your between-venue travel, overtime meals and the rest add up to on your return.
General information only, not tax advice. Check the ATO or a registered tax agent for your situation.