Doctors can claim AHPRA registration renewals, medical indemnity insurance, college and association fees, CPD and conferences, journals and clinical reference subscriptions, equipment such as stethoscopes and loupes, scrubs and protective clothing plus laundering, and travel between workplaces. What you cannot claim: your commute, your initial registration, HECS-HELP repayments, and ordinary business clothing. But for most employed doctors the deduction list is not where the money is — salary packaging through a public or not-for-profit hospital is usually worth more than every deduction combined, and Division 293 tax quietly takes an extra 15% off super contributions once income passes $250,000.
The deductions, in one place
- Registration and indemnity — AHPRA renewal, medical indemnity insurance, and the annual practising certificate. Note the renewal is deductible; the initial cost of getting registered is not.
- Professional memberships — AMA, your college, specialty societies, and union fees.
- CPD and education — courses, conference registration, travel and accommodation for conferences, exam fees, and self-education that maintains or improves skills in your current role.
- Journals and subscriptions — medical journals, UpToDate and similar clinical databases, textbooks, reference apps.
- Equipment — stethoscope, otoscope, loupes, surgical instruments, a tablet used for clinical notes. Items under $300 can generally be claimed outright; more expensive items are depreciated.
- Clothing — scrubs, theatre shoes, protective equipment, and laundering them. Your ordinary work clothes are not deductible even if you only wear them to work.
- Phone and internet — the work-related percentage, supported by a representative four-week record.
- Home office — running costs at the fixed hourly rate where you genuinely do clinical admin, research or telehealth from home.
- Income protection insurance — premiums are deductible where the policy covers loss of income. Life and trauma cover are not.
- Travel between workplaces — driving from the hospital to your private rooms, or between sites, is deductible.
What you cannot claim, however unfair it feels
Your commute. Home to work is private travel, no matter how far you drive or how unsociable the hour. Being called in overnight does not change this.
Your initial registration and pre-vocational study. Anything incurred getting into the profession sits outside the rules, because it precedes the income it relates to.
HECS-HELP repayments. Never deductible, in any circumstances.
Ordinary clothing. Business shirts and shoes are private, even where a dress code requires them.
Self-education for a different career. Study must relate to your current income-earning activity.
The strategy that is usually worth the most: salary packaging
If you are employed by a public hospital, a not-for-profit hospital or a public ambulance service, you have access to something most high earners do not: an FBT exemption that lets you pay certain personal expenses out of pre-tax income.
Currently that allows roughly $9,010 of everyday living expenses per FBT year (1 April to 31 March) plus a separate meal entertainment cap of around $2,650. Eligible expenses are genuinely broad — mortgage or rent payments, utilities, groceries, school fees, credit card and personal loan repayments, private health insurance.
For a doctor on the top marginal rate, packaging the full amount is worth several thousand dollars a year. Over a decade in the public system, it is a very large number, and it requires nothing more than filling in a form with the hospital’s packaging provider.
Registrars and residents often assume it is not worth the paperwork on a junior salary. It is.
The trap inside salary packaging that catches people out
Here is the part the packaging providers tend to gloss over. The benefits you package are recorded as a reportable fringe benefits amount, and that amount does not disappear from your tax picture. It is counted when working out:
- Your HELP repayment income — so packaging can push you into a higher compulsory repayment rate.
- The Medicare levy surcharge thresholds.
- Your Division 293 income.
- Family assistance and child support assessments.
This does not make packaging a bad idea — for most doctors it remains clearly worthwhile. But the benefit is smaller than the headline suggests if it tips you over one of those thresholds, and it is worth modelling rather than assuming. This is precisely the sort of interaction that gets missed when the packaging decision is made in isolation from the tax return.
Division 293: the extra 15% most doctors meet eventually
Once your income plus your concessional super contributions exceeds $250,000, an additional 15% tax applies to those contributions. In effect the concessional rate on your super moves from 15% to 30%.
It arrives as a separate assessment, often a year after the fact, which is why it surprises people. You can elect to pay it from your super balance rather than personally.
It is not something to avoid by contributing less — even at 30%, concessional contributions still beat the 47% you would pay on the same money as salary. But it does change the arithmetic when weighing extra contributions against paying down a mortgage or investing outside super, and it is worth knowing the threshold is measured on a combined figure that includes reportable fringe benefits.
If you contract rather than being employed
Many doctors work through a company or trust, particularly in private practice, as a VMO or on locum contracts. Two things matter enormously here.
Personal services income. If your income is mainly a reward for your personal skill and effort, the PSI rules can attribute it back to you personally regardless of what entity received it — which defeats the point of the structure. Whether you pass the results test, the 80% rule and the unrelated clients test is a technical question that turns on how your contracts are actually written. Getting this wrong is expensive and common.
Structure. Where PSI does not apply — a genuine practice with staff, premises and multiple income sources — a company or trust can offer real advantages in retained profit, asset protection and flexibility. Where it does apply, the structure adds cost without benefit. We cover the general comparison in our article on business structures, but for medical income the PSI question comes first.
Strategies by career stage
Intern, resident and registrar. Salary package from day one. Keep every receipt for exam fees and courses, which are substantial at this stage. Consider whether income protection is worth starting early, when it is cheap and you are insurable.
Newly qualified consultant. This is when income steps up sharply and Division 293 arrives. It is the right moment to look at structure before private billing begins, and to think about whether investments should sit in your name, a partner’s or a trust — decisions that are far cheaper to make before assets are acquired than after.
Practice owner. Structure, service entity arrangements, employing a spouse at a commercial rate for genuine work, and succession planning. Also the point at which your business becomes an asset with a sale value, which changes how you should hold it.
Locum and VMO. PSI is the dominant question. Also watch GST — most medical services are GST-free, but administrative, medico-legal and some cosmetic work may not be, and the $75,000 registration threshold can arrive unexpectedly.
The mistakes we see most in medical returns
Claiming the commute. Persistently attempted, reliably denied.
Treating conference travel as a holiday. A genuine conference is deductible; extending the trip is not, and the private portion must be apportioned. Keep the programme.
Not packaging at all. By some distance the most expensive omission we see, and the easiest to fix.
Setting up a company because a colleague did. If PSI applies to your income, it achieves nothing except compliance cost.
Forgetting the prior-year return. Tax agent fees, income protection premiums and the cost of managing your tax affairs are deductible in the year paid — they belong in next year’s return, and they are routinely dropped.
Quick answers
Doctors can claim AHPRA registration renewals, medical indemnity insurance, college and professional association fees, CPD courses and conferences, medical journals and clinical subscriptions such as UpToDate, equipment including stethoscopes and loupes, scrubs and protective clothing plus laundering, the work-related portion of phone and internet, home office running costs, income protection premiums, and travel between workplaces. Commuting, initial registration, HECS-HELP repayments and ordinary business clothing are not deductible.
Yes, if employed by a public hospital, not-for-profit hospital or public ambulance service. These employers are FBT-exempt, currently allowing around $9,010 of everyday living expenses per FBT year plus roughly $2,650 of meal entertainment to be paid from pre-tax income. Eligible expenses include mortgage or rent, utilities, groceries, school fees and private health insurance. For most employed doctors this is worth more than all their work-related deductions combined.
Division 293 applies an additional 15% tax on concessional superannuation contributions once your income plus those contributions exceeds $250,000, effectively doubling the concessional rate from 15% to 30%. Many doctors cross this threshold as consultants. It arrives as a separate assessment, often a year later, and can be paid from your super balance rather than personally. Reportable fringe benefits from salary packaging count towards the threshold.
No. Compulsory and voluntary HECS-HELP repayments are never deductible, regardless of profession. Note also that salary packaging increases your HELP repayment income, because reportable fringe benefits are included in that calculation, which can push you into a higher compulsory repayment rate.
It depends first on whether the personal services income rules apply. If your income is mainly a reward for your personal skill and effort, PSI can attribute it back to you personally regardless of the entity, making the structure pointless. Where PSI does not apply — a genuine practice with staff, premises and multiple income sources — a company or trust can offer real benefits in retained profit, asset protection and flexibility. The PSI question should be answered before the structure is chosen.
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