If you are an employed veterinarian in Australia, your 2026–27 tax return has a new headline act: the $1,000 standard deduction for work-related expenses, applied automatically with no receipts needed. But for most vets it is not the best deal on the table. A mixed-practice vet driving to farm visits, paying Australian Veterinary Association (AVA) membership and attending CPD will usually save far more by itemising — in the worked example below, $1,754.88 more than the standard route. This guide lists everything you can claim, prices both routes, and flags the traps that catch vets specifically.
The three ATO rules still sit underneath everything: you must have spent the money yourself without reimbursement, the expense must directly relate to earning your income, and you need a record to prove it. That last rule got stricter this year — more on that below.
First, the vet difference: state boards, not AHPRA
Veterinarians are not registered with AHPRA. Unlike doctors, nurses and physiotherapists, vets are registered with their state or territory Veterinary Practitioners Board (for example, the Veterinary Practitioners Board of NSW or the Veterinary Surgeons Board of Victoria). It matters for two reasons. First, your annual board renewal fee is deductible — it is a cost of staying registered in your current job. Second, your first registration — the one that qualified you to enter the profession — is not deductible, because it enabled you to get the job rather than relating to income you already earn. Renewals yes, initial registration no. If a checklist ever tells you to claim an “AHPRA fee” as a vet, it was written for a different profession.
What you can claim: the full list
Car and travel — usually a vet’s biggest claim
Farm visits, home visits, after-hours call-outs and driving between two clinics are all work travel. For 2026–27 you can claim it two ways. The cents per kilometre method pays 91 cents per work kilometre, up to 5,000 km per car — a maximum of $4,550 — and the rate already covers fuel, registration, insurance, servicing and depreciation, so you cannot add those on top. The logbook method claims your actual car costs at your work-use percentage, and wins when your work driving blows past 5,000 km, which is common for rural mixed-practice vets. Keep a diary or calendar of client visits to show how you worked out your kilometres either way.
What you cannot claim is the ordinary drive from home to your regular clinic — that is private travel. The exceptions that help vets are travel between two workplaces on the same day (morning clinic to afternoon farm calls counts), travel to a second job, and travel while carrying bulky equipment that cannot be left at work — a portable ultrasound unit and a full call-out kit is the classic vet example. Overnight travel for conferences or distant clients can include accommodation and meals; meals on overtime are only deductible if you were paid an overtime meal allowance under an award or agreement, not simply because the shift ran long.
Clothing, laundry and protective gear
Scrubs and surgical caps count as occupation-specific clothing — the ATO’s own vet guide names them. So do compulsory uniforms with a logo or a written uniform policy, and protective clothing: aprons, smocks, non-slip shoes, gloves and steel-capped boots for large-animal work. Sun protection — sunscreen, a hat and sunglasses — is deductible when you are required to work outdoors, which covers equine and farm vets. Laundry on those items is claimable at $1 per load if the load is work clothes only, or 50 cents per load for a mixed load. What fails is conventional clothing: jeans, a nice shirt or runners you would wear anywhere are private, even if you only wear them at the clinic.
Registration, AVA membership and CPD
Your state board renewal and your AVA membership are both deductible, and AVA membership has a special advantage in 2026–27 (see the next section). Current AVA individual tiers are Connected $266, Flexi $488 and All Access $888 per year, and Special Interest Group memberships sit inside those tiers. CPD is deductible too: conference fees, courses, seminars, travel to them, and the journals and textbooks that keep your current skills up to date. A course that qualifies you for a new role — say, a qualification to move into a specialist field you do not yet practise in — is a different story and generally not deductible, so keep CPD tied to your current work.
Equipment and tools
Stethoscopes, otoscopes, diagnostic tools, surgical instruments and their repairs are deductible, as is the work-related share of a laptop or phone. The old $300 instant write-off threshold is gone as a record-keeping exception (see below), but the depreciation logic still applies: cheaper items are claimed outright, pricier equipment is depreciated over its effective life. If the clinic provides the equipment, you cannot claim it — only gear you paid for yourself counts. Vets who operate X-ray equipment should also check whether their state requires a radiation user licence; where it is required for your job, the licence fee is a work expense.
Phone, internet and working from home
Claim the work-related percentage of your phone and internet — client calls, telehealth follow-ups, rostering and records. A one-month diary of work versus private use is the usual way to set the percentage. If you do admin from home — reports, certificates, client emails — the fixed rate method pays 70 cents per hour worked from home, covering energy, phone, internet and stationery in one bundled figure. The catch: you cannot then claim phone or internet again on top of the fixed rate. Pick one method for those running costs, not both, and keep a record of your actual hours — estimates are not accepted.
Insurance, tax agent fees and donations
Professional indemnity insurance premiums you pay yourself are deductible. So are income protection premiums paid outside super (premiums paid through super are not), your tax agent’s fee for preparing last year’s return, and donations of $2 or more to deductible gift recipients. These four sit outside the standard deduction entirely, which is why they matter in the comparison below.
The 2026-27 standard deduction, priced for a vet
From 2026–27, eligible employees automatically receive a standard deduction of up to $1,000 for work-related expenses — no spending, no receipts. But every work expense you claim that is covered by it reduces it dollar for dollar. Car, laundry, CPD, uniform and working-from-home claims all reduce it. What does not reduce it is the good news for vets: professional association memberships (your AVA fee), union fees, donations, tax agent fees and income protection premiums are all claimed on top, in full.
So the real question for a vet is never “$1,000 or nothing”. It is “$1,000 plus my AVA fee and insurance, versus everything itemised plus those same extras”. For a vet with farm kilometres, the itemised side wins by a wide margin. For a city clinic vet with almost no travel, the standard route usually wins — and costs nothing in record-keeping.
Worked example: Sarah, mixed-practice vet, $98,000
Sarah is a hypothetical employed vet in Wagga Wagga, NSW, on a $98,000 salary, splitting her week between the clinic and farm calls. She is in the 2026–27 30% bracket ($45,001–$135,000), so every deduction dollar saves her 30 cents of tax plus 2 cents of Medicare levy — 32 cents. All expenses below are self-paid and unreimbursed; the board renewal figure is illustrative because fees are set state by state.
Itemised route. Car: 3,200 work kilometres × 91 cents = $2,912. Scrubs, protective gear and laundry: $410. CPD conference, course fees and travel: $1,650. Stethoscope and small instruments: $290. Phone and internet at a 40% work share: $520. Home office, 160 hours × 70 cents: $112. State board renewal: $450 (illustrative). Journals: $140. That is $6,484 of claims that reduce the standard deduction to nil. On top, in full: AVA All Access $888, income protection premiums outside super $1,150 (illustrative), tax agent fee $240 — another $2,278. Total deductions $8,762, tax saved $2,803.84.
Standard route. The automatic $1,000, plus the same $2,278 that sits outside it: $3,278 total, tax saved $1,048.96.
Advantage of itemising: $8,762 − $3,278 = $5,484 extra deductions × 32% = $1,754.88 extra tax saved. Sarah’s farm kilometres alone ($2,912) are nearly triple the standard deduction — that is the whole story for mixed-practice vets.
The losing case. Tom is a part-time city clinic vet with no farm visits: $720 of itemisable claims (scrubs, laundry, a short course). If he itemises, his standard deduction drops to $280 and his total is $720 plus his extras. If he takes the standard route, he gets $1,000 plus the same extras — $280 × 32% = $89.60 better off, with zero record-keeping. For Tom, the standard deduction is the right answer, and claiming less is claiming smarter.
Want to check your own numbers? Run your salary through the income tax calculator and compare the two routes before you lodge.
Common mistakes veterinarians make
Claiming your own pet. Your dog’s food, vaccinations and surgery are private expenses, even though you are a vet and even if you treat the animal yourself. The “working dog” deduction belongs to farmers and security workers whose dogs are tools of their trade — not to a vet’s family pet. This is the most-shared vet tax myth online, and the ATO has called the home-guard-dog version of it “simply absurd”.
Claiming the home-to-clinic drive. Ordinary commuting is never deductible, even if you are on call that night. What counts is travel between workplaces, to a second job, or with bulky equipment.
Claiming 100% of a phone bill. A personal phone used partly for work needs a work-use percentage backed by a diary. Claiming the full bill is the fastest way to have the whole claim questioned.
Double-counting phone and internet. If you use the 70-cent working-from-home fixed rate, phone and internet are already inside it. Claiming them again separately is double-dipping.
Assuming the old $300/$150 exceptions still apply. They do not. From 1 July 2026 the record-keeping exceptions for work expenses under $300 and laundry under $150 were removed. In 2026–27 you need written evidence for every work expense you claim — receipts, invoices or bank records. The $1 laundry-per-load and 50-cent mixed-load figures are still accepted for working out the laundry amount, but the diary behind them still needs to exist.
Mixing employed and ABN locum work. The standard deduction only applies to labour income (salary and wages). Locum shifts paid to your ABN are business income: no standard deduction on that income, and your car and expense rules run through the business side instead. If you mix both, keep the two income streams — and their records — strictly separate.
Claiming the clinic’s gear. If the practice bought the ultrasound, the drugs or the instruments, you did not spend the money, so you cannot claim it — no matter how much you use it.
Tips for a clean 2026-27 return
Photograph every receipt into the ATO app’s myDeductions tool as you go; in 2026–27 there is no small-claims shortcut anymore. Keep a simple kilometre diary — date, destination, purpose, odometer — because farm-visit kilometres are your biggest claim and the easiest to lose. Renew your AVA membership and board registration from a personal account so the payment trail is clean, and file your CPD certificates with your return records. If your work driving is anywhere near 5,000 km, run the logbook comparison before assuming cents per kilometre is best. And if your itemisable claims land under $1,000, take the standard deduction and enjoy the year off record-keeping — it exists precisely for that case.
Frequently asked questions
Can I claim my own dog’s vet bills on tax?
No. Pets are private, even when you are the vet treating them. The working-dog deduction applies to dogs that are tools of another trade, such as farm dogs and security dogs, not to a veterinarian’s own pet.
Is AVA membership tax deductible?
Yes. Membership of a professional association is deductible, and in 2026–27 it does not reduce your $1,000 standard deduction — you claim it on top. Current tiers are Connected $266, Flexi $488 and All Access $888.
Can I claim driving to farm visits?
Yes, at 91 cents per kilometre up to 5,000 km under the cents per kilometre method, or at your work-use percentage under the logbook method. The drive from home to your regular clinic is not deductible; travel between workplaces, to a second job, or carrying bulky equipment is.
Are scrubs deductible but normal clothes not?
Yes. Scrubs and surgical caps are occupation-specific clothing, and aprons, gloves and steel-capped boots are protective clothing. Conventional clothes you could wear anywhere are private, even if you only wear them at work.
Do I still need receipts for small claims in 2026-27?
Yes. From 1 July 2026 the $300 work-expense and $150 laundry record-keeping exceptions were removed. If you claim more than the standard deduction, you need written evidence for every work expense. If you take the standard deduction and claim nothing else, you need no records for it.
I work employed shifts and ABN locum shifts. Do I get the standard deduction?
Only on your labour income. The standard deduction applies to salary and wages, not to business income from ABN locum work. Keep the two streams separate, and get advice on the business side if your locum income is substantial.
For the full checklist across every profession, see our Australian tax deductions checklist, and for the standard deduction in detail, our guide to the $1,000 standard deduction. Doctors face a similar AHPRA-versus-board distinction in reverse — see tax deductions for doctors — and if you work from home regularly, the working-from-home rules are worth a separate read. Official sources: the ATO’s cents per kilometre method and standard deduction pages, and the AVA’s membership options.
