Quick answer: what IT professionals can claim in 2026-27
If you work in IT in Australia, your 2026-27 deductions come down to four buckets: home office hours, gear and software, training for your current role, and work travel that is not the commute. The headline rates are 70 cents per work-from-home hour under the fixed rate method, 91 cents per kilometre for work car travel (up to 5,000 km), and an immediate deduction for work gear costing $300 or less. New for 2026-27 is a standard deduction of up to $1,000 for work-related expenses that applies automatically – and that changes the maths for everyone whose claims are small. If your itemised claims add up to less than $1,000, take the standard deduction and skip the receipts. If they add up to more, itemise everything and keep evidence for every dollar.
This guide works through the rules with real numbers: a hybrid developer whose claims are worth itemising, and an office-based support technician for whom the standard deduction wins. It also covers the traps the ATO actually flags for this occupation – the monitor “set” rule, the 2am call-out myth, and the 100% work-use claim on a shared family laptop.
The three golden rules first
Every deduction in this guide has to pass the ATO’s three tests: you spent the money yourself and were not reimbursed, the expense directly relates to earning your income, and you have a record to prove it. Fail any one of the three and the claim fails, no matter how work-related it feels. Two consequences follow that catch IT workers out constantly. First, anything your employer supplies – the work laptop, the work phone, the software licence on your work machine – is not deductible, because you did not spend the money. Second, anything used for both work and private purposes can only be claimed for the work share, and you need a record showing how you worked that share out.
Home office: the 70c fixed rate, and what it does not cover
Most IT professionals now work from home at least some of the week, and the fixed rate method is the simplest way to claim it. Multiply your actual hours worked from home by 70 cents. That single rate covers electricity and gas for heating, cooling and lighting, internet, mobile and home phone use, and stationery and computer consumables. You need a record of the actual hours you worked from home for the whole year – a timesheet, roster, or diary – plus at least one bill for each type of cost the rate covers. Estimates are not accepted, and the ATO has made working-from-home claims a compliance focus every year since 2022.
One honest caveat on the rate: 70 cents is the confirmed rate for 2025-26, set under the ATO’s practical compliance guideline PCG 2023/1, and no different rate has been announced for 2026-27. Treat 70 cents as the working figure for 2026-27 and check it before you lodge in 2027.
What the fixed rate does not cover is just as important. You claim separately, on top of the hourly rate, the decline in value of furniture and equipment you bought for work – your desk, chair, monitors, laptop – and the cost of repairing that equipment. You cannot claim rent, mortgage interest, rates or house insurance unless part of your home is genuinely a place of business, which for an employee working hybrid is almost never the case. And you cannot claim anything at all for minimal tasks like checking your roster from the couch.
The trap to avoid is double-claiming: if you use the 70c rate, you cannot also claim your internet bill, phone bill or electricity separately. Those costs are already inside the rate. If your actual running costs are much higher than the fixed rate gives you, the actual cost method – the work-related portion of each real bill – may beat it, but it needs detailed records for every cost.
Gear and software: the $300 line and the set trap
Work gear follows a bright line. If an item costs $300 or less, is used mainly for work, and is not part of a set costing more than $300, you claim the full work-use amount in the year you buy it. A $280 monitor used 100% for work is a $280 deduction. A $89 headset is an $89 deduction. Over $300, you claim the decline in value over the item’s effective life instead – a laptop is generally depreciated over two years, a mobile phone over three.
The set trap is where IT workers lose money without realising it. Buy two $280 monitors together for your home setup and you have not bought two $280 items – you have bought a $560 set, and a set costing more than $300 must be depreciated, not claimed outright. The same logic applies to a keyboard and mouse bought as a bundle, or any group of identical items that together pass $300.
Software follows the same work-use logic. Annual subscriptions you pay for yourself – an IDE, a VPN service, a password manager, antivirus, version-control or cloud services you use for your current role – are deductible for the work-related portion. If a subscription is 100% work, claim it all. If the family also uses it, apportion it. Cloud lab costs you incur to practise skills for your current role (for example, running test environments for the platform you administer at work) sit in the same bucket, provided they relate to your current job and not a career change.
Training and certifications: current role only
Self-education is deductible when it maintains or improves the skills you need for your current role, or is likely to lead to increased income from that role. An AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Cisco or CompTIA certification exam and its preparation course, taken while you work in that technology, is deductible. A university subject or short course on the stack you actually use at work is deductible. Membership fees for professional bodies such as the Australian Computer Society are deductible, as are union fees.
The line the ATO draws is the career change. A programming course is deductible for a developer; a project management qualification taken because you want to move out of development into project management is not, even if your employer encourages it. Study to get your first job in IT is not deductible either. If the course straddles the line, only the portion relating to your current role counts, and you need to be able to show it.
Car travel: 91c per kilometre, and the 2am call-out myth
For 2026-27, work car travel is claimed at 91 cents per kilometre under the cents-per-kilometre method, up to 5,000 km – a maximum claim of $4,550. Travel between two workplaces counts: driving from the office to a client site, or from one client site to another, is deductible. So is driving to a training facility for mandatory training your employer does not reimburse, including the parking there.
What does not count is the commute, and this is the myth that costs IT workers the most arguments with the ATO: driving from home to your normal workplace is private travel, even if you are called in at 2am to fix an outage, even if you travel outside normal hours, and even if you carry equipment. The ATO’s position is blunt – home to your regular place of work is private, full stop. The exception is narrow: if your home is genuinely your base of employment and you travel from home to other workplaces, that travel can be deductible, but it depends on your actual arrangements, so get advice before claiming it. Parking near your regular workplace is likewise private; parking at the training facility or client site is not.
You cannot mix methods for the same car: pick cents per kilometre or logbook for the year, not both, and you cannot claim fuel or servicing on top of cents per kilometre.
Phone and internet: the diary rule
If you are not using the fixed rate method for these costs (because you are on the actual cost method, or claiming phone costs outside home-office hours), you claim the work-related portion of your phone and internet bills, supported by a four-week representative diary showing your work versus private use. That diary is the record the ATO asks for, and a claim with no diary and a round 100% work-use figure is exactly the kind of claim data-matching flags. If your total phone and internet claim is $50 or less, the ATO accepts it on basic records alone, but above that you need the diary. Remember: on the fixed rate method, phone and internet are already covered by the 70c rate, so do not claim them again.
Worked example 1: Priya, hybrid backend developer, $118,000 salary
Priya works from home three days a week and is in the 30% marginal bracket, so with the 2% Medicare levy her marginal rate is 32%. Her 2026-27 claims:
- Home office, fixed rate: 1,140 hours x 70c = $798
- Monitor, $280, 100% work use: $280
- Laptop, $2,400, depreciated over two years at 80% work use: $2,400 / 2 x 80% = $960 for the year
- AWS certification exam and preparation course, current role: $495
- Software subscriptions (IDE and VPN), 100% work: $180
Total itemised claims: $798 + $280 + $960 + $495 + $180 = $2,713. That beats the $1,000 standard deduction by $1,713, so itemising is worth $1,713 x 32% = $548.16 in extra tax saved compared with taking the standard deduction. But it only works because Priya kept the records: her full-year hours log, the monitor and laptop receipts, the certification invoice, and a work-use estimate for the laptop that reflects real private use. Had she claimed the laptop at 100% work use, she would have overstated the depreciation by $240 – and a shared family laptop claimed at 100% is one of the first things the ATO’s occupation profiles pick up.
Worked example 2: Tom, office-based support technician, $78,000 salary
Tom works in the office four days a week and from home roughly one day a fortnight. His claims:
- Home office, fixed rate: 200 hours x 70c = $140
- Headset, $89, 100% work use: $89
- Phone work-use share (diary-supported): $120
Total: $349. For Tom, itemising is the worse choice. The automatic $1,000 standard deduction gives him $651 more in deductions than his itemised claims, with no receipts to keep and no diary to maintain. The standard deduction exists precisely for workers like Tom – and for 2026-27, claiming work-from-home costs reduces the standard deduction dollar for dollar, so there is no way to take both. Work out both figures, then take the bigger one.
Worked example 3: the client-site kilometres
Mei, a network engineer, drives her own car from the office to client sites and back during the year, logging 2,400 business kilometres. At 91c per kilometre that is $2,184 – well under the 5,000 km cap, so no logbook is needed if she uses the cents-per-kilometre method. Her daily commute of 22 km each way is not in that figure at all: 44 km a day, five days a week, 48 weeks, is 10,560 km of private travel that stays out of the return even though the car is the same car and the trips feel like work. Mixing the two – claiming the commute, or claiming fuel on top of the per-kilometre rate – is the car mistake the ATO flags most for this occupation.
Common mistakes IT professionals make
- Double-claiming internet and phone on top of the 70c fixed rate. They are already inside it.
- Writing off expensive gear at once. Only items costing $300 or less (and not part of a pricier set) are claimed in full. A $2,400 laptop is depreciated, not written off.
- Claiming employer-supplied devices. If your employer gave you the laptop or phone, or reimbursed you, there is no deduction.
- Claiming the commute, including call-outs. Home to your normal workplace is private, even at 2am for an outage.
- Career-change study. A course for a different role is not deductible, even if your employer encourages it.
- 100% work use on a shared device. Apportion honestly, and keep the record that supports the split.
- Mixing car methods. Cents per kilometre or logbook for a car, not both, and no fuel claims on top of cents per kilometre.
- Estimating home-office hours. The ATO wants a record of actual hours for the whole year. A guess reconstructed at lodgement time is the claim that fails review.
- Forgetting the $1,000 standard deduction comparison. If your itemised total is under $1,000, itemising costs you money in record-keeping for a smaller deduction.
Five tips that are actually worth something
Log your hours as you go. A calendar entry or timesheet entry each work-from-home day takes seconds and is worth $798 a year at Priya’s hours. Reconstructing a year of hours from memory at tax time is not a record.
Buy the set deliberately. If you need two monitors, know that buying them together makes them a depreciable set. Buying one this year and one next year is not a loophole to manufacture – but timing a genuine purchase across financial years is legitimate planning.
Keep the certification invoice with the result. Exam fees, preparation courses and the certificate itself together prove the expense relates to your current role. A course invoice alone invites the career-change question.
Run the standard-deduction comparison before you start collecting receipts. If your realistic total is under $1,000, the standard deduction is the better outcome and the record burden disappears.
Separate the side work. If you also freelance or contract on the side, that income and its deductions are a different part of the return from your employment claims. Keep the two sets of records apart from day one, and read our side hustle tax guide for the ABN, GST and record rules that apply there.
FAQ: IT professional tax deductions 2026-27
Can I claim my gaming PC if I also work from home on it?
Only the work-use portion, and only with a record supporting the split. A high-end machine bought mainly for gaming with some work use gives you a small work percentage of its depreciation, not a full deduction. The ATO’s data-matching compares claims against occupation profiles, and a $4,000 PC claimed at 100% by a developer is a known flag.
Can I claim my internet bill on top of the 70c rate?
No. The fixed rate already covers internet, phone use, energy and stationery. Claiming any of them separately is double-dipping, and it is the most common error the ATO flags in working-from-home claims. If your actual bills are much higher, consider the actual cost method instead, with full records.
Can I claim travel to the office for an after-hours call-out?
No. Home to your normal workplace is private travel even for emergency call-outs. Only travel between workplaces, or from a home base of employment to other workplaces, is deductible.
Is my AWS certification deductible if it helps me get promoted?
Yes, if it relates to your current role. A certification that maintains or improves the skills for the job you already hold, or is likely to increase your income from that job, is deductible. A qualification aimed at a different role is not.
Do I still need receipts if my claims are under $1,000?
Not if you take the 2026-27 standard deduction, which applies automatically up to $1,000 and replaces itemised work-related claims. But if you want to itemise above $1,000, you need written evidence for every work expense you claim. The old $300 no-receipt threshold does not survive the standard deduction: below $1,000 you take the standard amount, above it you substantiate everything.
Can I claim rent or mortgage interest for my home office?
As an employee, almost certainly not. Occupancy expenses are only deductible if part of your home is a place of business, which hybrid work-from-home arrangements do not meet. The fixed rate method covers running costs only.
Bottom line
For most IT professionals in 2026-27, the return comes down to one comparison: add up your home-office hours at 70c, your gear (respecting the $300 line and the set rule), your current-role training and your genuine work travel, and compare the total with the automatic $1,000 standard deduction. Take whichever is bigger, keep the records the bigger figure requires, and leave the commute, the employer laptop and the career-change course out of it. Do that, and the claim is both larger and defensible. Use our income tax calculator to see what the extra deduction is worth at your marginal rate, and read our work-from-home guide, deductions checklist and car expenses guide for the detail behind each bucket. For the same occupation-by-occupation treatment, see our engineers and mechanics guides.
General information only, not personal tax advice. Rates and rules change – confirm the current position against the ATO’s IT professionals guide before lodging.
