What Can You Claim on Tax — and Where Are the Receipts?

The ATO lets you claim up to $300 in total work-related expenses without written evidence such as receipts — but you must have actually spent the money, the expense must relate to earning your income, and you must be able to explain how you worked out the figure. The $300 cap does not include car, meal-allowance, award transport-payment or travel-allowance expenses. If your total work-related claim is more than $300, you need written evidence for the whole amount. Even under $300, a bank or card statement, calendar note or invoice makes the claim easier to defend — which is exactly what ExpenseBot rebuilds for you from your Gmail. Educational information, not tax advice.

The Australian financial year runs 1 July to 30 June. If you lodge your own return, the deadline is 31 October (if that falls on a weekend, the next business day applies). If you use a registered tax agent, you generally get a later lodgment date — but you have to be on the agent's client list before 31 October to qualify. ExpenseBot doesn't lodge your return; it gets your deductions and the receipts behind them organised so lodgment is quick.

Most receipts you need are already in your Gmail — supplier invoices, subscription charges, ride and travel confirmations, online orders. ExpenseBot scans your inbox across the whole financial year (1 July–30 June), pulls out the receipts you forgot, reads the amount, GST and vendor from each, and drops them categorised into a Google Sheet you own. Older years can be recovered with a Deep Scan. Instead of hunting through a shoebox and a camera roll the night before you lodge, you rebuild the year in an evening.

Common categories Australians claim include work-related expenses (tools, equipment, union fees, subscriptions), working-from-home running costs, car and travel for work, self-education directly related to your current work, and gifts to deductible-gift-recipient charities. Each has its own ATO rules and record-keeping requirements — the constant is that you need to have incurred the cost for work and be able to prove it. Always check the current rules on ato.gov.au or with a registered tax agent for your situation.

No. ExpenseBot is not a tax agent and does not lodge returns or fill in an ATO form for you. What it does is turn a year of scattered receipts into a categorised, deduction-annotated year-end report — with a Tax Form Summary that organises your figures against ATO expense categories — so you (or your accountant) can lodge quickly and confidently. You keep the receipts, the Sheet and the report in your own Google Drive.

Yes. As a sole trader your deductible business expenses reduce your taxable income, and they sit alongside your business income on your return. ExpenseBot tracks both — it captures your expenses from Gmail and photos, records income from Stripe, PayPal, invoices and cash, and shows your real profit. At year end it produces a deduction-annotated report for Australia so your sole-trader figures are organised the way the ATO expects. It does not lodge the return.