What can you claim?

Entertainment / Travel Expenses / Work Cloths and Appearance - Spectacles & Watches

Entertainment expenses when with clients or colleagues on business, like Lunches and Dinners are generally 50% deductible.

We encourage you to code it to entertainment and at the end of the year we adjust for the non-deductible portion of larger bills. 

Alternatively split the payment in Xero coding 50% to entertainment and 50% to drawings.

We advise you to keep a diary detailing who was at the meeting and the business purpose. 

If the food or drink is brought into your clinic, it is generally fully deductible. 

Be careful with “working lunches”. These are not deductible so do not get into the habit on claiming your daily lunch.

Clothing, eyewear, and footwear is very seldom deductible unless it is ‘specific’ and ‘peculiar’. There are several cases involving taxpayers claiming hairdressing, wrist watches, spectacles, hearing aids batteries, private medical and physio expenses and child-care costs. In every case the taxpayer was unsuccessful as there was no nexus between the expenditure and generating income for the business. The items were not specific enough to their occupation and had an element of private benefit.

If you purchase a pair of shoes kept at the hospital and used only in theatre, then this could arguably be claimable, although we cannot guarantee this.

Home office

If your primary office is at home and you are unsure if you can claim, download the guild-lines for home offices.