Tax deductions you never knew you could make

Making sure you claim everything you’re legitimately eligible for can have a big impact on your annual discretionary income. But do you know what you can claim?

What is tax deductible?

When completing your tax return, bear in mind that there are a number of tax deductions you can claim against expenses related to your work. What each person can claim will vary depending on their occupation. To make a deduction for a work-related expense, you need to have spent the money yourself without being reimbursed by work, and the cost needs to directly relate to earning your income. You’re also going to need a record to prove the expense, usually a receipt.

While travel expenses, home office expenses, education and mobile phone expenses are commonly claimed, there are a number of deductions often overlooked that you may be able to claim when completing your tax return.

Artwork

Regardless of why you bought your latest artwork, the Australian Taxation Office views artwork as both an investment and a depreciating asset, meaning you can claim it as a tax deduction. How much you can claim will be determined by the size of your business and whether you are an employee.

If you work from home, you can claim a deduction for your artwork up to the value of $300 as part of your home office expenditure. Small and medium sized business owners can make a much higher claim for artwork.

An apartment in another city

Investment properties purchased away from your home that you stay in when travelling for work can be claimed.

Under ATO guidelines, if you’re required to work away from home and you choose to rent or buy an apartment in the other work location rather than relying on hotel accommodation, you can claim a deduction for the work-related costs that apply to the apartment. This includes rent or interest on the mortgage.

Work handbag

Each year, you are allowed to claim a bag that you use for work. This could be a laptop bag or backpack used for carrying work-related items, but claiming a designer luxury handbag, may raise a few eyebrows at the ATO. If you carry your laptop, tablet and paperwork in a bag for work, then claim it. If you’re using it for gym equipment or your lunch, don’t.

COVID tests

The ATO will let you claim the cost of a COVID test if it was used to see whether you are sick and therefore unable to attend work. This is particularly the case if you’re in a customer-facing role and you need to purchase the test to stop the spread of the disease.

Man’s best friend

In some limited circumstances, you may be able to claim a deduction for the cost of buying and caring for a dog if they assist in your occupation. The two most common scenarios for this claim are farming and security reasons.

A caravan

The ATO allows for travel expense claims and there have been instances where taxpayers have claimed a caravan — and it was accepted. If you travel extensively for work and a caravan is saving you from paying for a hotel room, you may be able to apportion the deduction if it is used for work, rather than private use.

Meals away from home

If you’re travelling for work, you can claim the cost of meals when you travel and stay away from home overnight. You may also be able to claim a deduction for the cost of a meal you buy and consume when working overtime.

Media subscriptions

Many media publications are now subscription-based and can be deductible if they relate to your profession. This includes subscriptions to newspapers, professional magazines and podcasts that are linked to your profession.

Desk lamps and stationery

You don’t have to be running a business from home to make work-related claims. If you have a dedicated workspace at home where you’re doing a few hours of work at home a week, you can claim a number of related items, including lamps, stationery, a shredder and printer cartridges.

Protective clothing

If it’s related to your work, you can claim
the cost of buying items like fire resistant clothing, steel-capped boots, hi-vis vests or sun protection. This can apply to people working directly on site, like construction workers, but also related industries, such as engineers and architects who visit.

Depending on your industry, you can claim items that relate to your work, including a bullet proof vest if you’re a police officer or anything used that relates to your performance if you’re a professional athlete. Media professionals can also claim sunglasses if they are required to be out in the sun in the course of their work.

While you’re at it, you may also be able to claim the costs to clean occupation-specific clothing, so ask your tax accountant.

Tax accountancy fees

Last but not least, the fees you pay for the preparation of your annual tax return if you used a tax agent to prepare and lodge your tax return can be claimed on this year’s tax return.

The ATO has a number of online tools and calculators to help you calculate your deduction correctly, including work from home, self-education and car expenses.

Visit the ATO website and type ‘calculators’ into the search bar.

Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.

The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.

Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.

Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.

Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.

These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.

Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.

Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.

Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.

“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.

“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.

Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.

“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.

That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.

“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.

They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.

An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.

What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.

One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.

But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.