Any single work item costing $300 or less is deductible in full in the year you buy it, rather than depreciated over years. Boots, knives, secateurs, hard hats, high visibility shirts, tool belts and hand tools all qualify.
What are the three conditions?
All three have to hold together, and it is the second and third that break claims. Most people check the price and stop there, which is why the set rule catches so many otherwise genuine deductions.
The item must cost $300 or less on its own, not $300 in total across everything you bought. It must be used predominantly to earn assessable income. And it must not form part of a set that together costs more than $300.
Six kitchen knives bought together for $450 is a set, and no individual knife in it counts as a sub $300 item, so the whole thing is depreciated. The same chef buying one knife at $80 in October, another at $90 in January and a third at $100 in March has three separate deductible items, because those were genuinely separate purchases rather than a set split up on paper.
What actually qualifies in the work backpackers do?
Almost anything you had to buy in order to do the job, and the list is longer than most people claim. What the ATO expects to see on a farm return differs from a construction or hospitality one.
- Farm and horticulture: picking buckets, secateurs, pruning shears, gloves, work boots, high visibility shirts, broad brimmed hats and sun protection
- Construction: steel capped boots, hard hats, tool belts, hand tools, measuring tapes, gloves
- Hospitality: kitchen knives, chef whites, slip resistant shoes, aprons
- Delivery and rideshare: delivery bags, phone mounts, dash cams, bike accessories
- Cleaning: protective gloves, equipment and consumables
Sun protection is genuinely deductible for outdoor work and almost nobody claims it. A season picking in the Riverland or Bundaberg involves real spending on hats, sunscreen and long sleeved protective clothing.
What does predominantly for work mean?
That the item's main use is the job; where it is not, the claim is limited to the work proportion. Items absurd to use otherwise are the easy cases: high visibility clothing, a hard hat, chef whites, steel caps. Those are a full claim.
Mixed use items are where judgement applies. Boots you also wear socially, a backpack that carries picking gear and also goes travelling, a phone mount used for rideshare and personal navigation. Each is claimable at the work percentage, and that percentage needs a basis you could explain.
What evidence do you actually need?
A receipt showing the cost, the date, the supplier and what was bought, plus a basis for the work use if it is not obviously 100%. Photographs of receipts are accepted, and digital records are as good as paper.
Without evidence the deduction is not claimable however genuine it was, and this is where seasonal workers lose most. Farm and site purchases are frequently cash, at a rural hardware or farm supply store, on days when paperwork is the last thing on your mind. A bank card statement, a photograph of the item in use or written confirmation from the supplier can support a claim, but they are weaker than a receipt and contested more often.
Photographing the receipt at the counter and mailing it to yourself takes ten seconds and survives a washing machine, which a paper receipt in a work trouser pocket does not.
What if an item cost more than $300?
Nothing is lost, it is just claimed over time. Items above the threshold are depreciated over their effective life, generally three to five years for hand tools and small power equipment, so a $400 chainsaw is claimed across several years rather than in one.
That interacts with the new rule from 1 July 2026, which raises the immediate deduction threshold to $1,000 and changes the arithmetic for anyone buying a decent power tool or an e-bike. The $1,000 instant deduction rule sets out how the two work together.
Where do good purchases fail this rule?
The $300 rule sounds simple and fails on details rather than on principle.
- Whether items were bought as a set or genuinely separately, which is the difference between an immediate deduction and depreciation.
- Whether you kept receipts, which decides whether an honest expense is a claimable one.
- Whether the item is used only for work, or also personally, and whether you can justify the split.
- Which financial year the purchase falls in, since the threshold changed from 1 July 2026.
- Whether you are an employee or on an ABN, which changes where the expense is claimed and what else can be claimed alongside it.
- What industry you worked in, since farm, site and kitchen work each have a different set of items the ATO expects to see.
Deductions are claimed through your working holiday tax return, and you can estimate your tax refund once you have added up the year's work spending.