Firstly, we need to understand that the tax laws do not consider a bicycle to be a car for the purposes of claiming a tax deduction. This is important because it means that you can’t apply the same deduction methods, such as the ‘cents per kilometre’ method, that you can for a car. Legislation defines a car to mean a “motor vehicle (except a motorcycle or similar vehicle) designed to carry a load of less than 1 tonne and fewer than 9 passengers, and “motor vehicle” means any motor-powered road vehicle (including a 4 wheel drive vehicle)”.
So, if a bicycle is not a car, can I claim a tax deduction for my bicycle? There are generally two ways you could claim the cost of your personal bicycle:
- You could claim it as a work-related expense if you bought the bicycle specifically for work. You might have a job outdoors that requires you to get around and a bicycle is the best way to do it. Assuming your employer hasn’t provided one, then a bicycle could be a great tool to get the job done. There was a private ruling issued where a teacher required one to deliver rider training to school kids and the cost of this bike (left at work) was held to be deductible as a work-related expense.
- Or you could claim it as a travel expense. This could work if you were using the bike to get between jobs or visiting clients. The idea here is that you’re doing it rather than catching a taxi or some other form of public transport for travel that is deductible under the usual travel deduction rules.
Regardless of the method you will need to make an apportionment for any private usage. A basic log book would help here to prove what the private vs business use was.
As for what costs can be included, it works like any other deduction. You can claim both the cost of the bike (depending on your circumstances this may be a single deduction or the bicycle may need to be depreciated over it’s useful life) and the running costs (e.g.tyres, servicing, etc.) which could be claimed as they are incurred.
