Removal Costs | 2023 Gotax

Are Removal and Relocation Costs Tax Deductible?

Your employer sends you out to the never never to take up a new role with the company.  Makes sense that it's a deductible cost right?, after all I'm doing it for my employer......but.....

You can't claim a deduction for removal or relocation costs.

This is the case even if relocating is a condition of your employment when you take up:

• a transfer in an existing job
• a new job with a different employer.

Removal and relocation expenses never have a sufficient connection to earning your employment income or income producing activities. You incur these expenses to start earning employment income, so they are private or domestic expenses.

If you receive an allowance from your employer to cover some of the costs of relocating, you must declare the allowance as assessable income in your tax return and this is no offsetting costs to claim against it.

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