By Brian Willett of Fincare Accounting & Planning

This issue of Finance Matters looks at the most overlooked tax deductions by salary earners.

You are correct if when you read that you said "that's not deductible" unless you are carrying bulky items which are deemed to heavy to be carried on public transport.

The leading case involved a doctor whose medical bag was deemed too heavy.  Other cases include a carpenter carrying a tool bag, or a musician with his equipment.

If you have adequate storage at your work site, and there is no reason to carry the heavy item home, then the deduction won't be claimable.

Other reasons to and from work is deductible are:

• Your home is effectively your work base and you are travelling to another work base.  Here one case involved an itinerant teacher and another a computer consultant.

• Transporting sensitive, valuable & potentially embarrassing items from one workplace to home and back to a different workplace the next day.  This case involved a dentist.

2.  Travel to Clients Premises

Travel from an employee's home into a clients premises and then on to the normal workplace is totally deductible where there are employment duties performed at the clients premises.

3.  Wholly expending travel allowances

Where an individual receives a travel allowance for overnight travel up to maximum daily levels the allowance can be claimed as wholly expended without documentation.

4.  Claims of less than $10 totalling less than $200

For minor expenses items under $10, a claim up to $200 can be made even if receipts aren't held.  The requirement is however you must keep a written record of the expenses.

5.  Laptops / Notebooks reimbursed by work

 If an employee buys a notebook which is later reimbursed by their employer under a salary sacrifice arrangement, they are still entitled to claim the depreciation on the notebook.

Finally, a believe it or not (for all you beer drinkers).

A Canadian professional snooker player who had developed a nervous condition could only play after drinking a few pints of beer.  Hence without the beer his earnings would be severely impacted, so he was allowed a deduction for the purchase of his beer.