Popular tax deduction on chopping block

Tax deductions for non-compulsory work uniforms could be scrapped under the new proposal, according to Fairfax reports.

Just shy of 500,000 taxpayers claimed deductions of over $100 million for expenditure on non-compulsory uniforms for the 2013-14 tax year.

This proposal has been released in the broader context of the government’s tax reform agenda, which is arguably yet to bear the fruit it originally intended.

It also comes as the ATO continues its push for self-lodgement, which research from H&R Block suggests has resulted in a spate of inaccurate returns being submitted.

Of the sample studied, just over 60 per cent contain errors. About two thirds of those errors favour the ATO and a third favour the taxpayer.

As of mid-October, nearly 7.4 million individuals had lodged their 2016 tax returns, almost 2.5 million of them using the ATO’s online lodgement system myTax.