Beyond the information on the ATO website, could an ATO representative please tell me what percentage can be claimed for business in this hypothetical scenario when most trips have a mixed use.
Let's assume 3 or 4 adults live in the same house 25km out of town. A shared car drives into town twice a week (100km total per week, which is around 5000km annually). If everyone in the house is mostly unemployed, except one person in the house just works at home as self-employed, but requires 2 boxes of business items delivered weekly to a depot or store in the same town (which is 25km away from home).
If the self-employed person splits those 2 boxes into 1 box per trip into town, does this mean they can claim 100% of the car's expenses as a tax deduction for their self-employed business, since every trip to town technically has a purpose for their business, and therefore can both trips be classed as work-related?
Now, let's say 1 out of every 5 trips skips a box delivery, on average for the year, as per their logbook records. This would mean 80% is claimable for their business, would that be correct?
Since everything is fairly close together in the same town, the amount of kilometres is practically the same, whether a box is needed to be delivered on that trip, or not. Because the town is always about 25km from home, so the total distance driven hardly changes at all.
If 100% (or 80%) is not claimable, how should this self-employed person accurately calculate the business portion of each trip that has a box delivery?
Should the number of hours parked at a certain location in town be used to calculate the private/business portions? For example, on each 50km trip (25kms both ways), if the car is parked at a football stadium in town for 5 hours, while the driver spends those 5 hours at the stadium for private purposes, then walks across the street (or drives say 1 km away for example) to a depot/store to deliver a box or two for the self-employed person's business at home, and just spends 15 minutes delivering that box, then drives 2 km away to a grocery store and spends 2 hours to buy groceries for the house, does this mean only 3.5% is claimable as a business deduction for car expenses for this trip? Or can you claim 100% for this trip, since technically the 8-hour 50km trip had a 15-minute business use, and therefore the 50km trip is considered work-related for a 100% claim?
And let's say every 83 out of 104 trips are the same as this for the entire year, with a logbook recorded as such. Can 80% of the car's expenses be claimed as a business deduction?
Or in this situation, can the self-employed person choose how much they wish to claim, anything between 3.5% and up to 80%, as much as they would like to claim, anywhere between those percentages, at their discretion, or even 0% (i.e. fully private) if they wish to?
This is a special case where everything is fairly close together in the same town, with the major kilometres being the huge distance between home and town, so its different from most common situations where the whole trip is entirely business or entirely personal and you can work out percentages based on kilometres travelled. That simply is not the case here as you can see - it is quite a grey area, and would love some input.
Also does it matter who's name the car is in? Since the usage wouldn't change regardless of who's name it's in, or even if it was a company car or something like that, the use would still always be the same. I would assume if it were a company car that only had a 3.5% business use, the shared house occupants would have to reimburse the company 96.5% of the car expenses, right? Same goes if 80% was claimable, house would have to reimburse 20%, or if 100%, reimbursement 0%, right?
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