Homeschool Tax Deductions in Australia: What You Can and Can't Claim

The short answer is no — Australia does not have a direct tax deduction for homeschooling expenses. The longer answer is more nuanced, and most home-educating families are leaving legitimate deductions unclaimed because they assume everything related to their child's education is non-deductible.

Understanding what the ATO actually allows, and how it interacts with the reality of home education, helps you make accurate claims without the risk of an audit problem.

Why Home Education Costs Are Not Deductible as Self-Education

The ATO's self-education deduction (Section 8-1 and 34-1 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997) applies specifically to education that directly relates to your current work or maintains/improves the skills required in your existing occupation. The ATO does not consider the cost of educating your child to be self-education for you.

Even though you are doing the teaching, you are not the student, and the expense is not producing income for you or maintaining an employment skill. This rules out:

• Curriculum packages (Saxon Maths, Beestar, My Homeschool, etc.)
• Online learning subscriptions (Mathletics, Reading Eggs, Khan Academy premium)
• Textbooks and workbooks purchased for your child's learning
• Educational software and apps
• Co-op membership fees
• Excursion and field trip costs
• Science equipment and art supplies used for home education

These are all personal expenses under the ATO's framework — costs of raising and educating a child, not deductible under any standard ATO provision.

What You Can Legitimately Claim: The Exceptions

1. Home office expenses (if you also work from home)

If you work from home AND homeschool from home, you can claim a portion of your home office costs. The key is that the home office deduction applies to the income-earning use of your home, not the educational use. If you have a dedicated study used for both paid work and home education, you can claim the proportion attributable to your work — but not the educational component.

The ATO's practical difficulty here is that most home educators use the same space for everything. If your home office is genuinely used for income-earning work (freelancing, running a business, employed remote work), the home office deduction calculation should exclude the hours used for home education. Using the actual cost method or the fixed rate method, you calculate based on hours of income-earning use, not total hours the space is occupied.

2. Qualified teacher tutoring business

This is a narrow but real scenario. If you are a registered teacher who provides private tutoring as a business — and you use some of your teaching materials within that business — those materials are potentially deductible as business expenses. The overlap with your own child's education creates an obvious integrity concern for the ATO, so the claim needs to be supported by evidence that the materials were genuinely used in your business (e.g., with paying clients), not solely for your child.

If you operate a microschool or learning pod with paying enrolled students, and you use curriculum resources across those students, the same principle applies — business use creates deductibility.

3. Professional development as an educator

If you derive income from home education-related work — selling curriculum materials, running paid workshops for home educators, providing tutoring or educational consulting services — your professional development costs may be deductible. Attending a home education conference, purchasing a guide on effective teaching methods, or subscribing to an educational resource you use in your paid work would fall under this category.

The underlying rule is always: the expense must relate to income you are earning, not to your child's personal education.

4. NDIS-funded therapy that overlaps with learning

This is not a tax deduction, but it functions similarly by reducing out-of-pocket costs. NDIS plan funding for speech pathology, occupational therapy, and other therapeutic supports is not income, not taxable, and covers expenses that many home-educating families carry as part of their educational approach. If your child has a disability and you are not yet using NDIS, the cost savings from appropriate plan funding can exceed several thousand dollars per year — considerably more than any tax deduction would yield.

State-Level: No WA Education Tax Offset

Western Australia, like all Australian states, does not have its own income tax system. There are no WA-specific education tax credits or offsets for home educators. This is distinct from some Canadian provinces or US states, where home education credits exist at the sub-national level.

Private School Rebate Does Not Apply

The federal education tax rebate that used to apply to private school fees was abolished in 2012. It no longer exists. Home educators do not have access to any equivalent mechanism.

Claiming the Education Tax Offset: Not Available

There is no current general education tax offset for primary or secondary education expenses in Australia. The old Education Tax Refund was discontinued in 2012-13. Claims sometimes surface in home educator forums based on outdated information — these are not valid.

Practical Approach: Keep Records Anyway

Even though most homeschool costs are not deductible, maintaining records of your educational spending is still useful for two practical reasons:

Budget tracking: Knowing what you actually spend on home education each year helps you make informed decisions about curriculum, subscriptions, and resource investments.

If your circumstances change: If you transition to part-time or full-time tutoring work, running a microschool, or providing educational services as a business, your record of educational materials becomes potentially relevant to your deductibility claims from that point forward. The ATO requires records going back five years.

If you are unsure whether a specific expense in your situation is deductible — particularly if you do derive income from educational work — a registered tax agent familiar with small business or education-sector clients is worth consulting. The ATO's own online tools and phone service can also provide guidance on specific scenarios.

For the broader question of what WA home education costs overall and which legitimate subsidies and supports are available, see homeschool funding in WA.

See more Australia homeschool guides →