Australian teachers — classroom teachers in primary and secondary, early childhood educators, TAFE instructors, university lecturers, and casual relief teachers (CRTs) — have a strong, well-established deduction profile. The biggest single category for primary teachers is self-supplied classroom resources (books, art supplies, manipulatives) which can run into the thousands of dollars per year. Add registration fees, professional development, and the costs of maintaining current curriculum knowledge, and most teachers leave several hundred to several thousand dollars on the table each year by under-claiming. This page covers what the ATO accepts, what the audit guides flag, and how casual-relief teachers' situation differs from full-time staff.
Registration + professional memberships
- VIT registration (Victorian Institute of Teaching) — annual fee fully deductible. NSW NESA, Queensland College of Teachers, TRBSA (SA), TRBWA (WA) — equivalent fees deductible
- Working with Children Check renewal — deductible
- Australian Education Union (AEU) or Independent Education Union (IEU) membership — deductible
- Subject-association memberships — Mathematical Association of Victoria, Australian Literacy Educators' Association, Music Council, Australian Curriculum Studies Association etc. — deductible
- Professional indemnity insurance (where teachers carry their own; mostly applies to private-tutoring sole-traders) — deductible
Classroom resources you supply yourself
The single biggest category for primary teachers and a meaningful one for secondary specialists. Deductible if used for teaching the current class:
- Books + reading materials — texts for the classroom library, picture books for early-childhood, novels for English study units, reference texts
- Stationery + art supplies — markers, pens, paint, paper, glue, scissors, rulers, calculators (where supplying for class), classroom decorations
- Science / STEM materials — magnifying glasses, weights, scales, model-building kits, robotics kits, batteries
- Music + drama — instruments where used in class (recorders, ukuleles, classroom percussion); drama props; sheet music
- Sports equipment — cones, balls, stopwatches for PE classes if you're running them
- Curriculum guides + textbooks — syllabus documents, curriculum guides, teacher editions of student texts
- Online subscription services — Mathletics, Reading Eggs, Studyladder where you pay for the classroom subscription out-of-pocket
- Software + apps for class — Class Dojo, Seesaw paid features, language-learning subscriptions
- End-of-year gifts for students — generally not deductible (gift, not work expense). Year-end class celebration food bought for the class can be deductible if purchased specifically for a teaching purpose
Keep receipts. If you're tracking $1,000+ in classroom resources, the ATO expects to see them. A simple method: take a photo of every receipt and store in a dedicated folder.
Professional development + self-education
- PD course fees + conference registrations for current-role PD requirements (VIT requires 100 hours every 5 years for Victorian teachers; equivalent regimes in other states)
- Travel + accommodation to attend conferences within Australia or overseas where the conference is the primary purpose
- Online PD subscriptions — Education Services Australia courses, AEU member courses, subject-specific online platforms
- Postgrad qualifications connecting to current role — Master of Education while teaching; Special Education endorsement courses; reading-recovery training; ESL/EAL training. Deductible
- First aid + CPR renewal — required for many school roles, deductible
The nexus test: PD must maintain or improve current-role skills, or lead to increased income from current role. Studying to leave teaching for a different career doesn't qualify. Studying to add a specialty (e.g. completing a Master of Special Education while currently teaching mainstream) qualifies because it adds skills to current role.
WFH for marking, planning, parent communication
Teachers genuinely work from home — marking, lesson planning, report-writing, parent communication, online PD. The 70¢/hour fixed-rate WFH method captures electricity, internet, phone and consumables for those hours. Most teachers do 5-10 hours/week of WFH during the school year — say 6 hours × 40 weeks = 240 hours × 70¢ = $168 — modest but defensible if the diary record is contemporaneous.
Actual cost method may be better for teachers who've set up a dedicated home office (specific room used only for work). It captures depreciation on home-office furniture, a percentage of utility bills, and other running costs — but requires apportionment evidence and is more work. We model both before lodging.
Travel — between sites + to PD
- Home → school = private commute (not deductible). The school is your usual workplace.
- School → second school during a day = work travel (deductible). Common for music teachers, casual relief teachers, multi-campus instrumental teachers.
- Home → external PD venue = work travel if the PD venue is not a school you ordinarily attend
- School → excursion / camp accommodation = work travel (deductible) — if you're leading the excursion as a teacher
- Home → first school of the day for a CRT = private commute generally; but mid-day moves to a second school are work travel
Methods: cents-per-km (88¢/km, max 5,000 km, no logbook) or logbook method. Most teachers don't hit 5,000 work-related km — cents-per-km is usually right.
Casual relief teachers (CRTs) — different fact pattern
CRTs work across multiple schools without a single "home base" school. The travel-deduction position depends on the pattern:
- Working through a single agency that books you across schools — each school is a temporary workplace; travel between schools during a day is deductible; first-school-of-day from home and last-school-of-day back home are still private commute
- Self-employed CRT operating under an ABN with multiple school engagements — same general rule, but you may be running a sole-trader business with broader deduction potential (home office for admin, marketing of services etc.)
- If you have a regular pattern of working at the same school 4-5 days a week, that school becomes your usual workplace and home-to-it is private
CRTs working under an ABN (rather than as PAYG agency staff) need to register if turnover exceeds $75,000 in a rolling 12 months (standard threshold; the rideshare carve-out doesn't apply). Under that threshold, GST registration is voluntary.
Common mistakes we see
- Not tracking classroom-supply purchases through the year — easy to lose hundreds of dollars of legitimate deduction
- Trying to claim home-to-school travel as work-related — fails the test
- Claiming a holiday with "some research" as a self-education trip — fails the nexus test, gets disallowed
- Treating standard work clothes as a uniform — only specific occupational clothing or hi-vis with school logo qualifies
- Forgetting subject-association memberships and online PD subscriptions paid by personal credit card
- CRTs forgetting their union membership covers their work across all schools — deductible regardless of which agency placed them
- Claiming end-of-year gifts to students as a deduction — gifts to students are generally not deductible; some pre-arranged class celebration food can be
- Missing the WFH hours during marking/reporting periods — easy to capture if logged each week
Talk to us
Teacher returns are usually a clean 30-minute call: VIT/registration + union, classroom-supply receipts, PD costs, WFH hours, any travel between schools. Bring last year's return, registration receipts, classroom receipt photos, PD invoices, and your contemporaneous WFH diary if you keep one. We work with teachers across Australia by Zoom or phone — handy for after-school appointments rather than mid-day weekday slots.
Sources
ATO occupation guide for teachers and education professionals: ATO — Teachers and education professionals.
VIT registration (Victorian teachers): Victorian Institute of Teaching.
Travel deductibility: ATO — Transport and travel; TR 2021/4.
