Courses, conferences, short courses and degrees can all be deductible — but only when the study is tied tightly enough to the job you have now. Here is the test the ATO applies, what you can claim, and the FEE-HELP trap.
Checked against ATO guidance, July 2026.
A self-education expense is deductible when it has a sufficient connection to your current employment: it maintains or improves the specific skills or knowledge you use in your current duties, or it is likely to increase your income from your current job. An enrolled nurse studying a Bachelor of Nursing passes. A teacher’s aide studying to become a teacher does not — that course creates a new job, not a better version of the current one.
You also cannot claim study you do while not employed, or courses that relate to your work only in a general way, like a salesperson doing a personal development course.
Course, tuition, conference and seminar fees for a full fee-paying place, including fees you defer through FEE-HELP or a VET Student Loan. Textbooks, stationery, student union fees, academic journals, internet and data (not connection fees), phone calls and printer ink. Equipment like a laptop or desk: under $300 you claim it in full this year (apportioned for private use); over $300 you claim its decline in value over its effective life.
You can claim the trip from home to your place of study and back, and from work to study and back. If you go home to study to work — or work to study to home — only the first leg counts. Parking at your place of study is claimable too.
Deferring tuition through FEE-HELP does not stop the fees being deductible — you incur them at the census date. But repayments of any study loan, compulsory or voluntary, are never deductible, and neither are the student contribution amounts for a Commonwealth supported place.
Receipts for fees, books and equipment, and evidence of the link between the course and your current duties. If your total work-related claims pass $300, written evidence is mandatory. Keep records for five years.
Where Nomo fits: snap the receipt for a course, textbook or laptop the day you pay for it, tag it as self-education, and the whole claim is sitting there ready in July.
General information only, not tax advice. Rules change and everyone’s situation is different, so check ato.gov.au or talk to a registered tax agent before you lodge. Nomo is a record keeping tool and does not lodge returns.