A plumber puts real distance on the clock in a week. Out to the first call-out before the roads choke up, back to the merchant when the fittings run dry, across town when the office bumps you onto a burst main after lunch. Some of that fuel is a true cost of doing the work, and some is nothing more than getting yourself there, and the return that slips up tends to slip in the same place. How early you left and how far the depot sits leave the ATO cold. Its one question: was the drive part of the work, or part of arriving at it?
The commute you can't claim
Home to depot at the start of the day, depot to home at the end, that's private travel. It doesn't come off, and it's the number one thing plumbers try to claim that they can't.
- A long haul from out of town won't rescue it. An hour each way because that's where you happen to live is your own affair, not a cost of the work.
- A loaded van won't either. Carting the kit back and forth to the depot is still plain travel to work, not grounds to deduct it.
- Nor will a travel allowance. Being paid towards the trip doesn't make the trip claimable. You declare the allowance as income; the private commute beneath it stays private.
Between jobs the same day
The second you're behind the wheel for the work rather than to reach it, the answer flips, and this is the travel most plumbers are owed yet forget to put down.
The bulky-tools exception
One path can make even the home-to-work drive claimable, and it's fenced in tight. All three parts below have to be true at once, not just whichever one suits you:
The third one is the sting, and where the claim usually gives way. If the depot puts a locked store or a container at your disposal, then taking the gear home is a choice, and a choice sinks the test.
A plumber with a heavy kit but a locked cage at the depot has nothing to claim. One lugging a jetter, an electric eel and a wet vac, with nowhere safe to stow them, does.
When the whole run counts: itinerant work
A narrower group can go further than the trips above, reaching even the home-to-first-job and last-job-home legs that stay private for the rest of us. This is itinerant work, and it describes a plumber with no fixed base, forever on the move job to job as the very nature of the role.
Be square with yourself about whether that's really you, because this is the spot where an overclaim comes apart. The signs the ATO weighs:
- Travel is core to the work, written into the role itself, not merely how you turn up to it.
- You cover a scatter of jobs, rather than one workplace you keep returning to.
- You generally hit more than one job before heading home.
- Where tomorrow lands you is genuinely up in the air, changing day to day.
The honest limit: put on one big job for several days and staying there until it wraps, those days read as an ordinary commute, even for a plumber who roams the rest of the week.
The two methods
With deductible car travel in hand, two routes give you the figure. You settle on one for the vehicle across the whole year, and you take whichever pays more:
A flat per-kilometre rate the ATO resets each year, with a work-kilometre ceiling of 5,000. Receipts for fuel aren't needed, but you do have to back the kilometre count.
A twelve-week logbook sets your work-use percentage, and that percentage applies to the lot: fuel, servicing, rego, insurance. Heavier on paperwork, but ahead once the van does big work kilometres.
One method per vehicle, and no stacking on top. Running costs already sit inside both methods, so you can't take the rate or the logbook percentage and then bolt fuel and servicing on afterwards. And a vehicle on a novated or salary-sacrifice lease has its running costs off-limits entirely, since the employer holds the lease. Parking and tolls on real work trips in it stay claimable.
When your ute isn't a "car"
The larger work utes get caught here. To the tax rules, a "car" carries under a tonne and seats fewer than nine. A ute built to lug a tonne or more falls outside that, as does a van seating nine-plus. When yours does, both cents per kilometre and the logbook are shut to you. You go to actual expenses for the work share instead, receipts and all: fuel and oil, insurance, loan interest, and the decline in value. Read the payload plate on a heavy dual-cab or a fully fitted work van first, because it decides which method you're even allowed.
Parking, tolls, fines
- Not at your regular base. Parking at or around the depot you report to every day belongs to the private commute, so it's out.
- Not on the commute. A toll paid heading from home to your usual depot goes the way of that private trip.
- Fines stay yours. A speeding fine or a parking ticket is your own to wear, even one racked up on a work trip.
The records that hold it up
A car claim survives on the record behind it, and this is precisely where a plumber's return tends to fall over.
- A diary or clear working of the work kilometres, on the cents-per-kilometre route.
- A real twelve-week logbook, with the running-cost records behind it, on the logbook route.
- A receipt for each toll and parking fee on genuine work trips.
- Trips jotted down the day they happen, not pieced back together in July.
The bottom line
Set the commute aside, whatever the hour or the mileage, and take the driving that's really part of the work: job to job in a day, the merchant and depot runs, and the full run if you genuinely rove with no home base. Hold the bulky-tools exception back for the times all three parts stack up and the workplace offers nowhere to lock the gear away. Check whether your ute or van even counts as a "car" before you choose a method, keep the toll and parking receipts, and log the kilometres while you're driving them.
Total your between-job travel, tools and the rest against your income and tax.
General information only, not tax advice. Check the ATO or a registered tax agent for your situation.