RyeDC

The car logbook for rideshare drivers

If you drive for Uber, DiDi or another platform, your car is the business, and the logbook method is how you claim its running costs in proportion to that business. This guide follows the ATO's rules in order: the 12 weeks, what every journey records, which trips are business, and what to keep for five years. General information, not tax advice.

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History in RyeDC: detected drives, shifts and odometer readings in one list

Two methods, and a cap

The ATO gives a car's owner two ways to claim its expenses. The cents per kilometre method pays a set rate for each business kilometre, up to 5,000 kilometres per car per year, with no receipts and no logbook. The logbook method claims the business share of what the car actually cost to run: fuel, electricity, servicing, registration, insurance and the decline in value, each multiplied by a percentage your logbook establishes. You can use a different method for each car, and change method from one year to the next.

Once a car's business kilometres for the year pass 5,000, the cents per kilometre method can claim nothing for the rest of them. That is why this guide is about the logbook method. The two are compared, with the current rate, on Logbook or cents per kilometre.

The 12 weeks

The Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 asks for a logbook that covers a continuous period of at least 12 weeks throughout which you held the car (section 28-120). The ATO adds that it must be broadly representative of your travel. Three things follow from the Act's wording:

  • The period may overlap the start or end of an income year, so long as it includes part of the year. If you began driving less than 12 weeks before 30 June, the ATO's business page says you can continue the logbook into the next year.
  • If you held the car for less than 12 weeks, the period is the whole time you held it.
  • If you use the logbook method for two or more cars in the same year, their logbooks must cover the same weeks.

A logbook is valid for five years. If your circumstances change so that it no longer represents your work-related use, you need a new one. The ATO's examples are a change of job or of home, and, on its business page, a change in the type of work your business does.

Which 12 weeks? Not the best ones. RyeDC's Logbook periods screen tests each stretch of your records against the rest of your year and names the one that represents it: Your representative car logbook period.

What every journey records

Section 28-125 of the Act and the ATO's logbook pages list what a logbook holds. For the car: its make, model, engine capacity and registration number. For the period: when it began and ended, the odometer reading at each end, the total kilometres, the business kilometres and the percentage. For each business journey:

  • the day it began and the day it ended;
  • the car's odometer reading at the start and the end of the journey;
  • how many kilometres the car travelled;
  • why the journey was made, which the ATO's page calls the reason and purpose, and its destination.

The record must be made at the end of the journey or as soon as possible afterwards. Two or more business journeys in a row on the same day can be recorded as one. The Act asks for an entry for each business journey; private driving is the rest of the odometer span, which is how RyeDC's logbook works out the private distance. The Act also notes that a business journey left out lowers the percentage the logbook shows.

In RyeDC, each drive the app detects, and each shift you log from the dash, is a journey with its odometer readings, its distance, its destination suburb and its reason, and the logbook prints them with the time each entry was made. The ATO logbook page shows each requirement beside where the export answers it.

Which trips are business

The ATO's ride-sourcing pages say you can claim expenses to the extent that they directly relate to providing ride-sourcing services, and that a car used for both has its expenses apportioned. Its worked examples draw the line:

  • Driving to a day job with the app on is private, even on a day you accept no jobs. On a day you accept one, business travel starts when you accept it and ends when you complete it: driving to collect the passenger and taking them to their destination. The drive on to the day job afterwards is private again.
  • Leaving home on a Saturday night to find work, driving around the city for three hours and coming home is business travel from door to door, because the only purpose of the trip was to earn ride-sourcing income. If business is slow and you meet friends instead, nothing after that point counts.
  • Parking paid while you wait for a job in a place you drove to for that purpose is deductible. Parking paid during your own errands is not, even with the app on.

The purpose of a trip decides, and only you know it. RyeDC files a drive in your car as business by default and leaves the decision to you: a swipe moves a personal one, and the app never files a drive as personal on your behalf. A drive the app was not sure about is left uncategorised for you to decide, and Reminders can ask about drives still waiting.

Odometer readings, this year and the next four

The logbook period needs the car's odometer reading at its start and at its end. In each of the four years after that, while you rely on the logbook, you keep the readings at the start and end of the time you held the car in that year, with the business kilometres and the percentage for the year worked out from the logbook. RyeDC's Update odometer takes the reading off the dash and checks it against its own records, and Reminders can ask for one at the turn of the tax year.

Section 28-100 of the Act adds that before you lodge your return you record, in writing, your estimate of the car's business kilometres for the year and its business use percentage. RyeDC's Logbook periods screen works that estimate out and the logbook prints it on its first page.

Receipts, and how long to keep everything

The logbook method also needs the car's costs: receipts for fuel and oil, or a reasonable estimate from the odometer readings at each end of the year, your car's fuel consumption and the average price of fuel; receipts for registration, insurance, lease payments, servicing, tyres, repairs, electricity and interest; and the purchase price and the method you use for the decline in value. An electric car keeps receipts from commercial chargers and evidence of what charging at home costs, in place of fuel receipts.

RyeDC does not keep receipts. It keeps the logbook and the odometer readings, which the ATO says to retain for five years after the end of the latest income year you rely on them for. Its ride-sourcing pages say the same of every record: five years following the lodgment of the return.

Correcting an entry

A logbook is a record made at the time. In RyeDC you can correct an entry freely for a week after it is recorded. After that you still can, but the logbook lists the change: what the entry said before, what it says now, and when you changed it.

Related guides

Logbook method or cents per kilometre? compares the two methods with the current rate. Tax basics for rideshare drivers covers the ABN, GST, tax invoices and the return. A car logbook template is the same logbook as a blank PDF, with the rule behind each field.

This page is general information, not tax advice. The ATO's pages below are the source; a registered tax agent can say how they apply to you. Uber and DiDi are named because their drivers use RyeDC. RyeDC is not affiliated with either.

Sources

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