If you are a wage-paid construction worker, your refund is built from a year of small, self-funded costs: the boots you replaced, the discs and blades you burned through, the hi-vis you washed most nights, the union fee coming out of your pay before you ever see it. None of that reconstructs itself in July. This is a plain list to run before you lodge, so you claim what is genuinely yours and leave off the things that get returns pulled apart.
You paid for it out of your own pocket, it was for the work, no one paid you back, and you can prove it.
Income and allowances to declare
Start with what goes in, not what comes out. Get the income right first and the deductions sit on solid ground.
- All your wages, including any cash. Your income statement lands in myGov, usually by mid-July. Wait for the "Tax ready" status before you lodge. If any of your pay came as cash, it still counts as income and still has to be declared.
- Your allowances, declared in full. A site, underground or inclement-weather allowance is assessable income, so it goes on your return whether or not it bought you anything. That kind of allowance pays you for the conditions, not for an expense, so on its own it funds no deduction at all. You claim only where you actually spent deductible money.
Tools you paid for yourself
For most trades this is the biggest line, and the one people get wrong in both directions.
An immediate deduction the year you buy it.
Claimed as its decline in value, spread across its effective life, so an expensive saw or drill kit is still claimable, just over several years rather than all at once.
Consumables like blades, bits and discs, plus repairs and servicing, are deductible regardless of the $300 line.
Protective gear, sun protection and uniform
This is where the small, easily-forgotten claims live, and where a lot of what feels like work clothing is quietly not deductible.
The catch on plain clothes: ordinary drill shirts, jeans, shorts and work socks are conventional clothing and never deductible, even when the site insists on them and even when they come home filthy. Washing them is not claimable either.
Travel between sites
Carrying bulky, essential tools with no secure storage at the site can change that, but only when there is genuinely nowhere on site to lock them away.
Licences, tickets, fees and study
What to leave off
These feel like part of the job, but the ATO does not allow them, and putting them on a return is what invites a closer look:
- The home-to-site commute. Private, even if you live a long way out, start before dawn, or get paid a site or fares allowance.
- Anything supplied or reimbursed. Tools, PPE or gear the employer handed you or paid you back for. You carried no cost, so there is nothing to claim.
- Everyday clothing. Jeans, drill shirts and shorts, and the cost of washing them.
- The initial White Card and your driver's licence. The ticket that got you onto site to begin with, and the licence you hold anyway, whether you are getting it or renewing it.
- Fines. Never deductible, even one you cop on a work trip.
- Ordinary meals, the gym, and personal costs. A feed on a normal shift, gym and fitness fees, and general living expenses are all private.
- The instant asset write-off. That is a business concession for ABN holders, up to a cap the ATO sets, and an employee cannot use it. For you it is the $300 line: immediate under, decline in value over.
The records that hold a claim up
Every line above stands or falls on the evidence behind it. The ATO's rule is plain: keep written evidence for what you claim, and once your total work-related claims pass $300 you need records for all of them, not just the part over the line. The hard part is never the big purchase. It is the drip of small costs across twelve months, the replacement gloves, the discs, the union fee out of your pay, the loads of hi-vis washing, that no one keeps a shoebox for.
- Tool and gear receipts for anything you bought and weren't reimbursed for.
- A logbook or kilometre diary if you're claiming between-site driving.
- Your final payslip for the year-to-date union fee figure.
- Licence and course renewal notices tied to your current trade.
- A note of your laundry loads per week worked, for the washing claim.
The bottom line
One pass through this list catches the money that usually goes missing: the boots and gloves, the sunscreen, the discs and blades, the union fee out of your pay, the kilometres between sites. Declare all your income and your allowances in full, claim what you funded and can prove, and leave the commute and the everyday clothes where they belong. You spend real money keeping yourself safe and equipped on site. This is how you get that back.
See what your tools, protective gear, site travel and other claims come to at tax time.
General information only, not tax advice. Check the ATO or a registered tax agent for your situation.