Where home is your principal workplace (for example you while you cannot attend your office), you can also claim occupancy costs.

Check out the table below for the expenses you can claim as well as the three ways you can work at home:

If you work from home, you can claim the work-related proportion of your running expenses. These include:

There are two ways to calculate your running expenses:

Instead of recording all of your actual expenses for heating, cooling, lighting, cleaning and the decline in value of furniture, you can claim a deduction of 52 cents for each hour you work from home.

This rate is based on average energy costs and the value of common furniture items used in home business areas.

To claim using this method keep records of your actual hours spent working at home for the year, or keep a diary for a representative four-week period to show your usual pattern of working at home.

You need to separately work out all other home work area expenses, such as:

To calculate actual expenses if you have a dedicated work area, you:

You must also take into account the use of this area by other members of your household, if applicable and apportion your expenses accordingly.

If you don't have a dedicated work area, your expenses for heating, cooling and electricity should be calculated by determining the actual cost of running each unit you used per hour and multiplying that by the hours you worked from home. The amount of the additional expense is generally small. This will particularly be so where there are other people using the area at the same time you are working. In those circumstances there is no additional cost for lighting, heating or cooling.

You can only claim the work-related proportion of your occupancy expenses if:

• the space in the home is a place of business, and not suitable for domestic use – for example, a doctor or dentist surgery or a hairdresser studio in the home; or
• no other work location is provided to an employee by an employer and the employee is required to dedicate part of their home to their employer's business as an office – you can claim the portion of these costs that relate to a clearly identified place of business.

Occupancy costs include:

If you claim occupancy expenses, you don't qualify for the capital gains tax (CGT) main residence exemption for the part of your home that you use for work. If you use your home as a place of business there may be CGT implications when you sell it.

If you are eligible to claim occupancy expenses, you can work them out by calculating the:

(e.g. If the area you use for work takes up 15% of your home and you used it for work for the whole of the year, you can claim 15% of your occupancy expenses.)

You can claim a deduction for work-related proportion of your phone and internet expenses. You must have paid for these costs and have records to support your claims.

There are two ways to calculate your phone and internet expenses:

You need to keep records for a four week representative period in each income year to claim a deduction of more than $50.

If your work use is incidental and you are not claiming a deduction of more than $50 in total, you may make a claim based on the following, without having to analyse your bills. The rates you can use to work out the cost for your work calls are:

If you have a phone or internet plan where you received an itemised bill, you need to determine your percentage of work use over a four-week representative period that you can then apply to the full year.

You need to work out the percentage using a reasonable basis. This could include:

If you have a bundled or non-itemised plan, you need to identify your work use for each service over a four-week representative period during the income year that you can then apply to the full year.

You must keep records of your expenses, such as: