What School Should Have Taught You
Aug 26, 2026 · 9 min · 9 segments
Working from home might be costing Australians more than they realise, not in expenses but in deductions they've been counting on. A landmark Federal Court ruling has just gone against a Melbourne…
If you've been working from home thinking that you can just claim tax deductions that you have been doing in the last couple of years, you're gonna be wanting to listen to this because there's some major changes on the horizon that's currently happening in the federal court with the ATO and this specific individual.
Now, this is a case which is going to create some significant changes to the way that working from home is claimed, which could be saving the ATO billions and billions of dollars per year, effectively more money in our back pockets, but less deductions that we can claim.
So I wanna just share with you what's going on at the moment in the federal court and how this might impact you.
At present, the ATO has won a case with an ABC broadcaster who's claimed deductions for rent and travel when working from home during the pandemic period.
He rented a two-bedroom apartment knowing that he had to work from home, and he designated one of the rooms for work purposes, full work purposes.
He had his laptop, his desks, working there during the pandemic period, during the shutdown.
He claimed a portion on a pro rata basis of the square meterage of the actual rental apartment itself, and he claimed that in his tax return, roughly equating to around about nearly six grand worth of deductions.
We're talking about six grand, which would have yielded him roughly about, say, two to two and a half thousand dollars of refund.
But what's happened is the Australian Taxation Office has won a major case against a Melbourne worker who claimed part of his rent and transport as expenses and tax deductions in his tax return.
If you've been working from home thinking that you can just claim tax deductions that you have been doing in the last couple of years, you're gonna be wanting to listen to this because there's some major changes on the horizon that's currently happening in the federal court with the ATO and this specific individual.
Now, this is a case which is going to create some significant changes to the way that working from home is claimed, which could be saving the ATO billions and billions of dollars per year, effectively more money in our back pockets, but less deductions that we can claim.
So I wanna just share with you what's going on at the moment in the federal court and how this might impact you.
At present, the ATO has won a case with an ABC broadcaster who's claimed deductions for rent and travel when working from home during the pandemic period.
He rented a two-bedroom apartment knowing that he had to work from home, and he designated one of the rooms for work purposes, full work purposes.
He had his laptop, his desks, working there during the pandemic period, during the shutdown.
He claimed a portion on a pro rata basis of the square meterage of the actual rental apartment itself, and he claimed that in his tax return, roughly equating to around about nearly six grand worth of deductions.
We're talking about six grand, which would have yielded him roughly about, say, two to two and a half thousand dollars of refund.
But what's happened is the Australian Taxation Office has won a major case against a Melbourne worker who claimed part of his rent and transport as expenses and tax deductions in his tax return.
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