[LINK] Working at home

David dlochrin at aussiebb.com.au
Wed Aug 4 13:01:45 AEST 2021


On 2021-08-04 12:06, Karl Auer wrote:
> On Wed, 2021-08-04 at 11:40 +1000, David wrote:
>> Surely genuine out-of-pocket expenses are allowable personal tax
>> deductions
> 
> This is something that really gets my goat :-)
> 
> A tax deduction is not the same as money in the hand. And the less tax
> you pay, the less meaningful a tax deduction is.
> 
> Added to which, if you have claimed tax deductions on your house you
> will end up paying a proportional amount of capital gains tax when you
> sell the house.
> 
> So no. Just - no. If an employer is using my assets to make money, then
> they can pay me accordingly and THEY can deduct the expenses.
> 
> There may still be tax implications for me, but they will be way
> simpler, and can generally be cast as an allowance or as a (generally
> tax neutral) reimbursement.
> 
> But I'm not an accountant, so this could all be wrong :-)

Neither am I, a fact which occurred to me as I was writing earlier!

I thoroughly agree with you about employers not transferring their own costs to their employees.  However I don't think we'll see any change soon, especially from the current Government, and so I thought that point was worth mentioning.  A decent tax deduction at the end of the year is at least something.

The capital gains tax angle hadn't occurred to me, but isn't one's primary residence CGT free?

Pursuing all the accounting plusses & minuses makes my head spin, I think I'll go back to General Relativity (:-)...

David Lochrin





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