Travel is where a mechanic's return parts ways with other trades, and the straight answer is that for most mechanics the car claim is slim. You work out of one workshop, drive in of a morning and home at night, and that trip earns you nothing at tax time. There is genuine work driving folded into the week, the parts run, the dash to another branch, the trip to a course, and that part does stand up. But it's usually a small figure, and you're better served admitting that than hunting a claim that isn't there. On any trip the ATO wants one thing settled: were you doing the job, or getting to it?
Be honest: the claim is usually small
A mechanic isn't a sparkie or a support worker moving between jobs all day; you work at a bench. Most of your kilometres are the commute, which is private, so a typical mechanic has only a handful of truly deductible trips across the year. That doesn't make the claim worthless, it makes it worth logging exactly rather than inflating. A claim built on real parts runs survives a look; one padded with the drive to work does not.
The commute you can't claim
The morning run from home to the workshop, and the trip back at knock-off, is private travel. It's not deductible, and it's the thing mechanics most often claim in error.
- Living a long way out makes no difference. An hour each way because that's where the workshop is stays your circumstance, not a work cost.
- An early start makes no difference. Lifting the roller door before the first booking, or staying back to finish a job, is still ordinary travel to and from work.
- Carrying your tools home usually doesn't either. The narrow exception is below, but the everyday habit of taking a bag of tools home won't convert the commute into a deduction.
The driving you can claim
The instant you're moving for the work rather than moving to reach it, the answer turns. These are the trips a mechanic can genuinely claim.
The bulky-tools exception
One route does turn the home-to-workshop drive deductible, but it's drawn tight and a mechanic rarely meets it, so don't hang a claim on it lightly. Every one of these has to be true together, not merely whichever is convenient:
That last one sinks the claim for nearly every mechanic. Your roll cab lives at the workshop exactly because there's a locked bay for it, and a kit that stays put fails the test. Hand a mechanic somewhere secure to stow the tools and taking any home becomes a choice, and a choice won't turn a commute deductible.
The two methods
With deductible car travel in your own car, two ways exist to reach the figure. You run one or the other for the car through the year, and you take whichever lands higher:
A flat rate per work kilometre, reset annually by the ATO, with a ceiling of 5,000. Fuel dockets aren't required, though you still justify how the kilometres were counted. Most mechanics settle here, since the deductible driving is so light.
A twelve-week logbook pins down your work-use percentage, and you then claim that portion of the whole running bill: petrol, servicing, rego, insurance, everything. Heavier on records, and ahead only if you honestly cover serious work distance, unusual for a bench-based mechanic.
One method per car, and nothing doubled up. Both methods already fold petrol and servicing in, so you can't take the rate or the logbook share and then add fuel again. A car on a novated or salary-sacrifice lease has no claimable running costs, because the lease sits with the employer. Parking and tolls on real work trips in that car stay claimable.
Parking, tolls, fines
- Not at your regular workshop. Parking at or beside the workshop you clock into each day rides with the private commute, so it's excluded.
- Not on the commute. A toll on the home-to-workshop leg belongs to that private trip like everything else on it.
- Fines are never deductible. Speeding fines and parking tickets stay yours to wear, even when picked up during a parts run.
The records that hold it up
A car claim rests entirely on the record beneath it, and since a mechanic's is modest, an inflated one is obvious at a glance.
- A trip diary or plain calculation of the work kilometres, under the cents-per-kilometre method.
- An honest twelve-week logbook and the running-cost paperwork behind it, under the logbook method.
- Receipts covering each parking fee and toll from real work trips.
- Trips written down the day they occur, not reconstructed from memory come July.
The bottom line
Be honest about the size of it. Drop the commute, whatever the hour or the distance, and claim only the driving that's truly part of the job: the parts run, the branch-to-branch trip, the drive to training. Save the bulky-tools exception for the rare case where all three parts genuinely hold and there's nowhere at the workshop to lock your kit away, which for most mechanics there is. Take cents per kilometre for a light claim, hold the parking and toll receipts, and record the kilometres as you drive them.
Work out what your parts-run driving and the rest of your claims are worth against your income.
General information only, not tax advice. Check the ATO or a registered tax agent for your situation.