Welcome to our remote workers, miners and tradies page. If you are a contractor you may also be interested in our Contractors and Subcontractors page. This page is primarily aimed at employees but some contractors caught by the personal services income rules are treated very similar to employees for tax purposes.
To the right we list our booklets that are relevant to your situation and other useful information.
One of the things remote workers, miners and tradies have in common is the amount of stuff they have to take to work. Tradies because of their tools, miners because of their safety gear and remote workers because they have to carry enough uniforms etc to last them the length of their tour. Not to mention spares such as an extra pair of steel caps in case one pair get wet. Tradies are not limited to construction, meatworkers and chefs may also have to carry bulky tools.
If you have to carry items that you need to do your job, that weigh more than 20kgs you can claim the cost of transporting them in your car. So even though your personal home to work travel is not normally tax deductible you are allowed to hitch a ride with your tools and the trip becomes tax deductible. Bulky doesn’t have to necessarily be heavy it can be awkward such as a ladder.
It is important that you do not have anywhere safe to leave your gear at work while you are not there. It needs to be your own personal locker not a container that others have a key to. So even remote workers that have their own room may still qualify for the deduction because the cleaners have a key or the key has to be handed in and left on a hook while they are absent.
You can’t hitch hike with your tools when you fly with them. The only cost you are going to get a tax deduction for in that case is the excess baggage bill.
Tradies who are required to supply their own tools will probably have no trouble at all reaching the 20kg weight. Below is a list of some of the basics most of you would carry even if you are not in an occupation where you need to supply a lot of tools.
Take this quick quiz to see if you can get up to 20kgs and don’t stop there it is ideal if you can reach 27kgs. Think about what you can add to the list and get your kitchen scales out. If you are trainer assessor consider your laptop, manuals and files. Are you part of an emergency response team? That involves a lot more gear.
at the bottom of your spreadsheet. You can then email it to our nearest 
