You can claim up to 5,000 business kilometres per car on your Australian tax return without a logbook by using the cents per kilometre method. For the 2025–26 income year the rate is 88 cents per kilometre, which puts the maximum deduction at $4,400 per vehicle.1Australian Taxation Office. Cents per Kilometre Method You skip the logbook, but you still have to show the ATO how you arrived at your figure if they ask.
How the 5,000-Kilometre Cap Works
The cents per kilometre method uses one flat rate to cover every running cost of the car: fuel, registration, insurance, servicing, depreciation, and repairs. No receipts for those individual expenses. You multiply your business kilometres, up to 5,000, by the rate the Commissioner has set for the income year.1Australian Taxation Office. Cents per Kilometre Method
The rate changes periodically. It sits at 88 cents for the 2024–25 and 2025–26 income years.1Australian Taxation Office. Cents per Kilometre Method Check the ATO’s published rate for the year you are lodging, because an outdated rate is an easy way to get flagged.
The 5,000-kilometre cap is per car, not per taxpayer. Two work cars means up to 5,000 business kilometres claimable on each. If one car travels 8,000 business kilometres in the year, though, everything above 5,000 is simply discarded under this method. That rule sits in section 28-25 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, and there is no workaround.
The method only applies to a “car” as the tax law defines it: a motor vehicle designed to carry fewer than nine passengers and a load under one tonne. Sedans, hatchbacks, SUVs, and most utes qualify.2Australian Taxation Office. Deductions for Motor Vehicle Expenses You must own or lease the vehicle.
Which Kilometres You Can Actually Count
Business kilometres are those driven in the course of earning your assessable income. Typical examples: travelling between two separate workplaces on the same day, driving from your regular office to a client site, and trips to conferences or training venues that your employer requires you to attend. Work errands like collecting supplies also count.
The trip between home and your normal workplace is a private expense. It doesn’t matter how far it is or how limited public transport is. The ATO treats that drive as a commute, not work travel.2Australian Taxation Office. Deductions for Motor Vehicle Expenses
There are three narrow situations where home-to-work travel is deductible:3Australian Taxation Office. Trips You Can and Can’t Claim
- Your home is a base of employment: you begin substantive work duties at home and travel to your regular workplace to continue those specific duties. Checking emails before you leave doesn’t qualify.
- You carry bulky tools or equipment that are awkward to transport, essential to the work, and cannot be stored securely at the workplace. Bringing tools home by choice when storage exists at work doesn’t count.
- Your work is itinerant, with no single fixed workplace and travel between multiple sites throughout the day. Tradespeople, travelling salespeople, and some healthcare workers often fit here.
These exceptions attract close scrutiny in audits. If you claim under any of them, write down which exception applies and why you meet its conditions.
What Records to Keep Without a Logbook
The method does not require written evidence of exact distances, and that is the point. But the ATO can still ask how you worked out your business kilometres, so “I just guessed” is not a defensible position.1Australian Taxation Office. Cents per Kilometre Method
The legislation calls for a “reasonable estimate.” In practice, you should be able to reconstruct the claim from something tangible:
- Diary or calendar entries recording the date, destination, and reason for each work trip. A few words per entry is enough: “3 March, drove to Smith client site, Parramatta, contract review.”
- Map-based distance estimates from Google Maps or similar for regular routes. Screenshot or print the results. One calculation covers every trip on that route.
- Odometer readings at the start and end of the income year. If you claim 4,800 business kilometres but only put 6,000 total kilometres on the car, that implies over 80 per cent business use, which will raise eyebrows for most employees.
- Work rosters and appointment records that show where you were required to be on specific dates.
You don’t lodge any of this with your return. You produce it only if the ATO reviews the claim. Recording trips as they happen is far easier than trying to reconstruct a year’s travel later, and this is where most claims collapse in audits: a round number close to 5,000 kilometres with nothing behind it.
When a Logbook Would Beat the Cap
The cents per kilometre method tops out at $4,400 for the current year. If you drive substantially more than 5,000 business kilometres, or your running costs are high, the logbook method will almost certainly produce a bigger deduction. It has no kilometre cap and lets you claim a percentage of all your actual car expenses.4Australian Taxation Office. Logbook Method
The logbook itself runs for a continuous 12-week period and records odometer readings, destinations, and the purpose of every trip. It then sets your business-use percentage for up to five years. Someone driving 25,000 kilometres a year with 60 per cent for work claims 60 per cent of fuel, insurance, registration, servicing, and depreciation.
You can switch between the two methods year to year. There’s no long-term commitment either way.
Entering the Claim and Keeping the Evidence
In myTax, go to the work-related car expenses section under “Deductions.” Select the cents per kilometre method and enter your total business kilometres (the system won’t let you exceed 5,000 per car). The rate applies automatically.5Australian Taxation Office. myTax 2025 Work-Related Car Expenses On a paper return, the equivalent is label D1. Write the number of business kilometres and the deduction amount from multiplying kilometres by the rate. 3,500 kilometres at 88 cents comes to $3,080. Check the arithmetic; a wrong total invites a manual review.
Keep every piece of supporting evidence for five years from the date you lodge.6Australian Taxation Office. Records You Need to Keep Digital copies of diary notes, calendar printouts, map screenshots, and rosters are fine. If the ATO reviews your return and you can’t produce reasonable evidence, the deduction is disallowed. You then owe the tax shortfall plus interest from the original due date, with a possible penalty on top. The ATO has flagged car expenses as an area where it “often sees errors made,” so inflated or unsupported claims attract more attention than people expect.2Australian Taxation Office. Deductions for Motor Vehicle Expenses Claiming exactly 5,000 kilometres year after year with no records is one of the oldest red flags in Australian tax, and the ATO knows it.