ATO Rideshare Driver Tax Guide 2026-27: Car Expenses and the BAS Calendar

Two obligations, one financial year

Driving rideshare in Australia creates two distinct tax obligations that run on the same 1 July to 30 June financial year. The first is income tax: your fares are assessable income, and your business car expenses are deductible against them. The second is GST: rideshare is the one gig-economy activity where GST registration is mandatory from the first dollar of income, so you charge GST on fares, claim GST credits on expenses, and lodge a BAS.

The GST registration requirement is a rideshare-specific carve-out and is covered in full on our Australian rideshare GST registration page. This guide focuses on the car-expense deduction and how the BAS calendar fits alongside it; it does not repeat the GST registration mechanics.

The car-expense claim: cents-per-km or logbook

Cents-per-km: 91 cents per business kilometre for 2026-27 (from 1 July 2026), capped at 5,000 km per car per financial year. The maximum deduction is 5,000 x 0.91 = $4,550. No receipts for fuel, insurance, or maintenance are required under this method; the rate is treated as covering those costs. The 2025-26 rate was 88 cents (a $4,400 maximum) and applies only to trips before 1 July 2026.

Logbook: a representative 12-week log of all trips plus receipts for actual vehicle expenses over the full year, with no kilometre cap. Full-time rideshare drivers routinely cover far more than 5,000 business km a year and are almost always better off on the logbook method. Our cents-per-km versus logbook comparison shows where the crossover happens.

The ATO's cents-per-km rate is published at ato.gov.au. Whichever method you use, rideshare car expenses are claimed as business deductions on your myTax business schedule, not on the employee work-related car expenses section (D1).

Worked example: the $4,550 cap in practice

A part-time Uber driver covers 6,200 business kilometres in the 2026-27 financial year. Under the cents-per-km method the claim is capped at 5,000 km: 5,000 x 0.91 = $4,550. The 1,200 kilometres above the cap produce no further deduction under this method, so those kilometres are effectively unclaimed.

If that same driver had kept a 12-week logbook establishing, say, an 80 percent business-use percentage, and their total annual car costs (fuel, insurance, registration, servicing, and depreciation) were $9,000, the logbook deduction would be 9,000 x 0.80 = $7,200 - well above the $4,550 cap. Any driver whose business kilometres exceed 5,000 in the year should run the logbook numbers, because the cents-per-km cap leaves money on the table.

The BAS calendar for 2026-27

Registered rideshare drivers lodge a Business Activity Statement reporting the GST collected on fares and the GST credits claimed on expenses. Most sole-trader drivers lodge quarterly. The standard ATO quarterly BAS due dates are 28 October (July-September quarter), 28 February (October-December quarter), 28 April (January-March quarter), and 28 July (April-June quarter). Drivers who lodge through a registered tax or BAS agent may have later concessional dates.

Some drivers elect to lodge GST annually rather than quarterly if eligible; the annual GST return aligns with the income-tax return. Keep your fare statements from Uber, Ola, and DiDi and your expense receipts organised by quarter so each BAS is straightforward. The ATO's BAS due dates are published at ato.gov.au.

Records that serve both obligations

A single contemporaneous trip log serves both the income-tax car-expense claim and the GST side. Each entry needs the date, destination or area, business purpose, and kilometres. For the logbook method you also record odometer readings and keep expense receipts for the year, which double as the source for GST credit claims on your BAS.

An auto-tracking app that logs every trip from the moment you go online captures the full deductible distance - including the drives to pick up passengers and repositioning between fares - which the platform's own kilometre summary typically understates. This is general information about the ATO rules and not personal tax advice; a registered tax agent can confirm the treatment for your circumstances.