Healthcare worker car expenses are a significant tax deduction for nurses, doctors, allied health professionals, and aged care workers across Australia. If you travel between hospitals, clinics, patient homes, or training locations, the ATO allows you to claim the cost of that travel — provided you follow the rules.
For the 2025–26 financial year, the cents per kilometre rate is 88 cents/km (up to 5,000 km), or you can use the logbook method to claim actual expenses based on your business-use percentage. This guide explains which trips qualify and how to maximise your claim.
Which car trips are deductible for healthcare workers?
The ATO allows you to claim car expenses when you travel directly between two workplaces. For healthcare workers, this includes:
- Hospital to clinic — driving from your morning shift at one hospital to an afternoon session at a different clinic
- Clinic to patient home — community nurses, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists visiting patients
- Hospital to training location — attending a mandatory CPD session or conference at a different venue
- Multiple employer sites — agency nurses or locum doctors travelling between different facilities on the same day
The critical rule: the trip must be between two work locations. Driving from home to your first workplace of the day is commuting — and commuting is not deductible.
Home-to-work travel: limited exceptions
The ATO treats home-to-work travel as private in almost all cases. However, there are narrow exceptions that some healthcare workers may qualify for:
Carrying bulky equipment. If you transport medical equipment that is too large to leave at work (and your employer does not provide secure storage), you may claim the trip from home to your first workplace. This is rare for most nurses but may apply to some allied health workers carrying therapy equipment.
Itinerant workers. If you have no fixed workplace and travel to different locations each day — for example, a home-visiting community nurse — some or all of your travel may be deductible. The ATO assesses this on a case-by-case basis.
On-call travel. If you are called in outside your normal roster to attend an emergency, the travel to the hospital for that specific call-out may be deductible. Regular on-call travel to a known workplace generally is not.
For detailed rules on home-to-work commuting, see Home to Work Commuting ATO Rules.
Cents per km vs logbook method for healthcare workers
You have two options for calculating your car expense deduction:
Cents per kilometre method (88c/km in 2025–26)
- Claim up to 5,000 business kilometres
- Maximum deduction of $4,400
- No logbook required, but you must be able to show how you calculated your business km
- Covers all running costs — fuel, rego, insurance, depreciation, servicing
Logbook method
- Requires a 12-week logbook (valid for five years)
- No kilometre cap — claim the business percentage of actual costs
- Better if you drive more than 5,000 business km per year
- Better if you have an expensive vehicle with high running costs
Most healthcare workers who travel regularly between multiple sites find the logbook method delivers a larger deduction. A nurse doing 12,000 business km annually claims nothing extra under the cents method beyond 5,000 km — but captures every kilometre under the logbook method.
For a full comparison, see ATO Logbook Requirements.
Parking, tolls, and other transport costs
Parking at work is not deductible. Even if your hospital charges $15/day for staff parking, the ATO treats this as a private expense related to your commute.
Parking during work travel is deductible. If you park at a clinic while visiting patients between facilities, that parking cost is a legitimate work-related deduction.
Tolls follow the same rule. Tolls on your regular commute are private. Tolls incurred while travelling between workplaces during the day are deductible.
Public transport costs for work-related travel (not commuting) are deductible. If you take a train between hospitals because parking is unavailable, claim the fare.
What healthcare workers cannot claim
- Parking at your regular workplace (even if the hospital charges you)
- Travel from home to your first workplace of the day (standard commute)
- Travel from your last workplace to home (standard commute)
- Fines or speeding tickets, even if incurred during work travel
- Meals purchased during work travel (unless receiving a travel allowance and staying overnight)
- The personal-use portion of any car expense
Record-keeping tips for healthcare workers
The ATO expects clear records. For car expense claims over $300 in total, you need written evidence. Here is what to keep:
- Logbook entries — date, start/end odometer, destination, and purpose for each work trip
- Receipts — fuel, servicing, insurance, registration, and tolls
- Roster records — proof you worked at multiple locations on specific dates
- Odometer readings — start and end of the financial year
Tripbook automates most of this. With automatic GPS tracking, every trip between hospitals, clinics, and patient visits is logged with the date, distance, and route. Classify trips as business or personal with a swipe, and export an ATO-compliant report at tax time.
EV FBT exemption for healthcare professionals
If your employer offers salary packaging, the electric vehicle FBT exemption is worth exploring. Eligible battery electric vehicles below the $91,387 luxury car tax threshold are exempt from fringe benefits tax — meaning you can salary package an EV with significant pre-tax savings.
This is particularly valuable for healthcare workers employed by public hospitals, which are classified as Public Benevolent Institutions. The EV exemption stacks on top of existing salary packaging caps.
Maximise your healthcare car expense deduction
Track every work-related trip from day one. Use the logbook method if you drive more than 5,000 business km. Keep your logbook current (a 12-week record is valid for five years, but update it if your travel patterns change significantly).
Download Tripbook to capture every kilometre between hospitals, clinics, and patient homes — automatically, accurately, and ATO-ready.
