Key Takeaways
- You can claim up to $300 in total work-related expenses without receipts; this is a combined cap, not $300 per item.
- Car expenses are claimed separately at 88 cents per kilometre for 2024–25 and 2025–26, capped at 5,000 work kilometres per car.
- Laundry up to $150 for eligible work clothing doesn’t need written evidence, but it counts toward the $300 cap, not on top of it.
- Small expenses under $10 each can be claimed without a receipt, up to $200 total per year.
- Working from home at the 70c per hour fixed rate doesn’t need receipts for the items it covers, but you still need a record of every hour worked.
- No receipts are not the same as no records. The ATO can still ask how you calculated the claim, and they do.
How much can you claim on tax without receipts in Australia?
You can claim up to $300 in work-related expenses without receipts on your Australian tax return. That’s the headline rule. But it’s not a free $300; you still need to have actually spent the money, the expense has to relate to earning your income, and you have to be able to explain how you arrived at the figure if the ATO asks.
Above that, there are separate carve-outs for car expenses (cents per kilometre method), laundry (up to $150), small expenses under $10 (up to $200 total), working from home (70c per hour fixed rate), and bucket donations under $10 to registered charities. We’ll walk through each one below, including the parts most people get wrong.
Quick note before we get into it. This is general information based on current ATO rules, not personal tax advice; for that, you want a registered tax agent. We’re a Melbourne bookkeeping and payroll firm. The reason we’ve written this is that the receipt question lands on our desk constantly. A client comes in mid-June, six months behind, asking what they can get away with claiming. The answer is usually more than they think and less than they hoped, and the difference is records.
The $300 rule, and where people get it wrong
If your total work-related expenses come to $300 or less, you don’t need written evidence. You can claim the lot without receipts. The conditions: you have to have spent the money, you can’t have been reimbursed for it, and it has to relate to your job.
That’s the rule. The misunderstanding is what people layer on top of it. We’ve had clients claim $300, thinking of it as a baseline everyone gets, regardless of what they spent. We’ve had others claim $300 on top of $1,200 in receipted expenses, assuming the $300 sits separately. Neither works.
If your total tips over $300, you need written evidence for the whole amount, not just the dollar that pushed you over.
A few things sit outside the $300 cap and have their own rules:
- Car expenses (cents per kilometre method)
- Travel allowance expenses
- Award transport payments allowance
- Overtime meal allowance
These don’t count toward the $300 limit, and they don’t get squeezed out by it.
Car expenses without receipts: cents per kilometre
If you use your own car for work, you can claim car expenses without keeping a single fuel receipt, using the cents per kilometre method.
For the 2024–25 and 2025–26 income years, the rate is 88 cents per kilometre. You can claim up to 5,000 work-related kilometres per car, per financial year. That’s a maximum deduction of $4,400 per car under this method.
The 88c rate is meant to cover everything: fuel, registration, insurance, servicing, repairs, and depreciation. You don’t get to claim those separately on top.
What you still need: a reasonable record of how you worked out your kilometres. A diary, a spreadsheet, the ATO’s myDeductions app, or notes in a calendar, anything that shows the trips were real and how you got to the total. The ATO doesn’t require fuel receipts for this method, but they can absolutely ask how you arrived at “4,200 kilometres” if you put that on your return.
What you can’t claim:
- Trips between home and your normal workplace (that’s private travel)
- Trips you’ve already been reimbursed for
- Vehicles that aren’t cars (motorbikes, vans over a tonne capacity)
Drive more than 5,000 work kilometres a year, and the logbook method usually beats cents per kilometre on the deduction side. It’s also a much bigger record-keeping job. You log every work trip for a 12-week representative period, then keep receipts for fuel, rego, servicing, insurance, and the whole running cost of the car. Worth it for tradies who are constantly on the road and reps clocking serious mileage. Less worth it for someone who clocks 6,000 km and would rather not babysit a logbook. We’ll cover that method properly in a separate post.
Laundry without receipts: the $150 rule (and what it doesn’t include)
You can claim up to $150 a year for laundering eligible work clothing without written evidence. The ATO accepts these flat rates:
- $1 per load if the wash contains only work clothing
- 50 cents per load if it’s a mixed wash with personal clothes
Here’s where this gets misread. The $150 sits inside the $300 cap. It is not a separate $150 on top. Claim the full $150 for laundry, and you’ve used half your no-receipt allowance, leaving $150 for everything else before written evidence becomes mandatory across the whole claim.
Eligible clothing falls into a few buckets. A compulsory uniform with the employer’s logo on it. Occupation-specific gear, like chef whites. Protective items, steel-caps, hi-vis. The test the ATO applies is whether the clothing is conventional or not. If you’d happily wear it to dinner, it isn’t deductible.
This is one of the most common rejected claims in hospitality and retail.
Dry-cleaning is treated separately. You can claim it with receipts, on top of the $150 home laundry figure.
Small expenses under $10: the $200 quiet rule
This one barely gets attention, but it’s useful.
Work-related expenses of $10 or less can be claimed without a receipt, up to $200 combined for the year. This is the rule that covers all the small purchases nobody bothers documenting, the $4 pack of pens from the petrol station, the $8 USB stick you grabbed because you needed one before a meeting. Individually, they’re nothing. Across a year, they add up.
You still need a record. Not a receipt, but a written entry showing:
- What the item was
- The supplier
- The cost
- The date you bought it
- The date you made the record
A note in a diary, a row in a spreadsheet, an entry in myDeductions. Not difficult. Just consistent. If you’re already running accounting software like Xero or MYOB, capturing these as you go is a thirty-second job rather than a June reconstruction project.
This is separate from the hard-to-get receipts rule, which covers situations where a receipt simply isn’t available, such as toll roads, parking meters, and vending machines. There’s no $10 limit and no $200 cap on those. You just need a written record with the same details, made at the time.
Working from home without receipts: the 70c fixed rate
For 2024–25 and 2025–26, the fixed rate method for working from home is 70 cents per hour.
That rate covers electricity, gas, internet, mobile and home phone usage, stationery, and computer consumables, bundled into a single hourly figure. You don’t need separate receipts for any of it under this method, but you do need:
- A record of every hour worked from home for the entire income year (timesheets, a roster, a diary, a calendar, anything contemporaneous, not estimated after the fact)
- At least one bill for each running expense the rate covers, one electricity bill, one internet bill, one phone bill, to prove you actually incurred those costs
The ATO has been clear: estimates of hours worked from home are no longer acceptable. Records have to be made at the time, not reconstructed in July when you’re doing your return.
Decline in value of equipment (laptop, desk, monitor) sits outside the 70c rate and is claimed separately, with receipts.
Bucket donations: $10 without a receipt
Small one, but worth knowing. Donations of $2 or more to a deductible gift recipient (DGR) charity are tax-deductible. For bucket collections, the kind run by registered charities at shopping centres or events, you can claim up to $10 in total without receipts.
Anything above $10 needs a proper receipt. And the donation has to be a genuine gift, not a raffle ticket or a fundraising dinner where you got something in return.
“No receipts” doesn’t mean “no records”
This is the part most articles soften, and most clients misread.
The ATO’s substantiation exceptions don’t remove the requirement to prove you actually spent the money; they just change what proof looks like. You still need to:
- Have personally paid the expense
- Not been reimbursed
- Be able to show how the cost relates to your work
- Explain how you calculated the claim
If you can’t produce a paper receipt, acceptable supporting records include:
- Bank or credit card statements (showing supplier, amount, date)
- Email confirmations and digital invoices
- Diary entries made at the time
- Payslips showing allowances or deductions
- Photos of equipment, uniforms, or work setups
- Logbook or kilometre records for car claims
Bank statements alone usually aren’t enough. A line that reads “Bunnings $87.40” doesn’t tell the ATO whether you bought a hammer for a job or a barbecue for the weekend. That’s where a contemporaneous diary entry or supplier email closes the gap.
Records have to be kept for five years from the date you lodge the return.
Where we see this go wrong
Working with Melbourne small business owners, tradies, hospitality operators, retailers, and professional services, there are a few patterns that come up every EOFY.
Claiming the $300 “because everyone does
The ATO knows this happens and uses industry averages to flag claims that look automatic. If you didn’t actually spend the money, don’t claim it. False claim penalties are calculated as a percentage of the shortfall, 25% if the ATO considers it a failure to take reasonable care, climbing to 75% for intentional disregard. On top of that, interest accrues until the bill is paid.
Treating the $300 as a top-up on receipted claims
It isn’t. The moment your total work-related expenses exceed $300, the entire amount needs written evidence. Plenty of returns get amended over this.
Forgetting the kilometre records
Cents per kilometre doesn’t need fuel receipts, but it does need a record of how you arrived at your kilometre figure. “Roughly 5,000 km” written on a sticky note in June isn’t a record, and the ATO has been actively asking for kilometre substantiation.
Mixing up “no receipts” with “no records
This is the one we see most. People throw out everything because they heard you don’t need receipts under $300, then can’t reconstruct what they actually spent the money on when their return gets reviewed. It’s a much bigger problem when you’re setting up a new business and trying to establish a clean record from day one.
The cleanest way to avoid all of this: keep records as you go. The myDeductions app is free, ATO-built, and good. A monthly five-minute review of your expense tracking is the difference between a smooth EOFY and a scramble.
When a bookkeeper helps
If you’re a sole trader, contractor, or running a small business in Melbourne, the receipts question stops being just about tax deductions; it becomes about whether your business records are in any state to make decisions from.
We work with clients whose books we get to in early June, six months behind, with a folder of crumpled receipts and a vague sense of what’s been deductible. We also work with clients whose records run cleanly all year, usually because they’ve built a few habits worth borrowing, and they walk into EOFY knowing where they stand. The difference isn’t intelligence. It’s a system that runs whether or not you’re paying attention to it.
A bookkeeper doesn’t replace a tax agent. But the records that hold up at tax time, the ones that survive an ATO review without drama, are the ones that were captured properly when the expense happened, not reconstructed nine months later.
If your records have got away from you and EOFY is closing in, that’s usually the right time to bring someone in.
Get your records sorted before EOFY
If your books look more like a folder of receipts than a system, EOFY is usually when that becomes a problem. We work with Melbourne small businesses to get records clean, compliant, and usable, so tax time stops being a scramble and starts being a five-minute conversation with your tax agent.
Speak with us about getting your bookkeeping sorted.
FAQs
Can you claim tax without receipts in Australia?
Yes. The ATO allows you to claim up to $300 in work-related expenses without receipts, plus separate allowances for car expenses (cents per kilometre method), laundry (up to $150), small expenses under $10 (up to $200 total), and working from home at the 70c per hour fixed rate. You still need to have spent the money and be able to explain how you calculated the claim.
What is the maximum I can claim on tax without receipts?
There’s no single number. The $300 rule covers general work-related expenses. Car expenses sit outside that, up to 5,000 km at 88c per kilometre ($4,400). Working from home hours at the 70c fixed rate sit outside it too. Bucket donations up to $10. Add the categories that apply to your situation, and that’s your ceiling.
Can I use bank statements instead of receipts for tax deductions?
Sometimes. Rarely as the only evidence. A bank statement gets you the supplier, the amount, and the date. What it doesn’t get you is what you actually bought. A line that reads “Bunnings $87.40” could be a hammer for a job site or a Sunday barbecue, and the ATO won’t take a guess. Statements work as backup when something else fills the gap, such as an email receipt from the supplier, a diary entry made on the day, or a photo of the item.
How many kilometres can you claim on tax without receipts?
5,000 work-related kilometres a year, per car. The 2024–25 and 2025–26 rates are 88 cents per kilometre, which puts the maximum deduction at $4,400. You don’t need fuel receipts. You do need to show how you got to your kilometre figure, diary entries kept during the year, trip notes in your calendar, or the ATO’s myDeductions app are all fine. A round number scribbled in June isn’t.
What happens if I claim deductions without receipts and get audited?
The ATO will ask you to substantiate it. If you can show what the expense was, why it is related to your work, and how you worked out the figure, the claim normally holds. Bank statements, diary entries, emails from suppliers, and photos of the item all help build that picture. If you can’t substantiate it, the deduction comes out, and you pay tax on the difference plus interest. Penalties start at 25% of the shortfall for failure to take reasonable care, and climb to 75% if the ATO finds intentional disregard. Most denied claims aren’t deliberate; they’re disorganised. Which is fixable.
Do I need receipts for working from home deductions?
Not for the items covered by the 70c per hour fixed rate (electricity, gas, internet, phone, stationery, computer consumables), but you do need at least one bill for each of those expenses to prove you incurred them, plus a record of every hour you worked from home during the year. Estimated hours aren’t accepted. Equipment depreciation is claimed separately and does need receipts.
Is the $150 laundry deduction on top of the $300 rule?
No. The $150 laundry allowance is included within the $300 cap, not on top of it. If you claim the full $150 for laundry, you have $150 left to claim other work expenses without receipts before you hit the $300 ceiling and need written evidence for everything.
