Records Required to Claim Fuel Tax Credit

To work out your fuel tax credits, and to support your claims, you need to keep records showing the amount of fuel you acquire, manufacture or import for your business activities and how you use that fuel. Start keeping the records you need now, so you are ready to calculate and claim your fuel tax credits when the time comes.

You need business and tax records to show which activities you’re carrying out, as well as to support your actual claims.

Records demonstrating your business activities include:

• business expenses relating to eligible activities
• sales and production records
• lease documents for agricultural land or equipment
• share farming contracts
• vehicle and equipment use and maintenance records
• work contracts
• government requirements (such as licences).

Other records that will support your claims for fuel tax credits include:

• tax invoices for the fuel you’ve acquired
• records showing how you used the fuel and any loss, sale or disposal of the fuel
• records of how you calculated your fuel tax credits (you may want to use the Fuel tax credits calculation worksheet, NAT 15634).

If you claim less than $300 in fuel tax credits in a financial year, you do not have to keep records showing you acquired fuel. However, the fuel you acquire must be intended for use or actually used in an eligible business.

Your records must be in English (or easily translated into English) and you need to keep them for five years after you make the claim, as we may ask to examine them within this period. You don’t need to send your records to us unless we ask you to.

If we do examine your claims and you can’t support them with adequate records, you may have to repay all or part of the fuel tax credits you have received. You may also have to pay penalties.

Source: ATO

Sales Rep Disallowed Car Log Book Deduction

See also this post ==>  Claiming work related car expenses

A sales rep was disallowed a claim for car expenses based on the log book method. The ATO argued they were not satisfied that the log book accurately reflected the use that the taxpayer had made of his car for income-producing activities.

Read more >

High Court Rules in Favour of Football Players

The High Court has rules that football players, depending on their contractual arrangements, can claim a tax deduction for fees paid to their respective managers to negotiate their contracts

The High Court has recognised that an individual can carry on a business, for the purposes of both paragraph 8-1(1)(a) and paragraph 8-1(1)(b), that includes activities undertaken under an employment contract as an employee. As the contractual framework under which the taxpayers carried on their businesses as football players applied to all players operating in the AFL and NRL competitions, the Tax Office accepts that the principles set out by the High Court have equal application to those other players.

See case - Spriggs and Anor v Commissioner of Taxation

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