The Commissioner may need to revise the ATO’s administrative approach to claims for meal expenses by long-distance truck drivers following the recent tribunal decision, the association has said.

The Institute of Financial Professionals Australia (IFPA) has written a letter to Commissioner Rob Heferen, urging the ATO to review the way it administers the tax law in relation to meals expenditure claimed by truck drivers.

This follows the recent Tribunal decision, Shaw and Commissioner of Taxation (Taxation) [2025] ARTA 224, which saw the Tribunal rule in favour of a long-haul truck driver who had claimed $32,782.50 in meal expenses in his tax return.

The expenses had been calculated by multiplying the number of days he was away from home by the maximum reasonable daily allowance, which was $105.75 in the voluntary disclosure. The driver was away for a total of 310 days. The maximum reasonable daily allowances are set out under Taxation Determination TD 2020/5.

The truck driver and his accountant assumed that they were not obliged to provide receipts or other documentary evidence to back up his claim because it fell within the limits set in TD 2020/5.

IFPA explained that while Shaw was not able to provide full substantiation for even a short representative period, the tribunal was prepared to accept an arbitrary basis for apportioning his grocery shopping between purchasing provisions for his on-the-road meals and private purchases.

In doing so, the tribunal pointed out that there is publicly available information about grocery shopping spending patterns that the Commissioner could have relied on.

The tribunal also accepted the bank statements provided and took account of Shaw’s evidence about his eating and spending habits in deciding that, on balance, he had incurred the relevant expenditure on meals.

The ATO plans to appeal the tribunal decision in the Federal Court.

"These cases come up more often than they should, and the Commissioner should perhaps consider changing his approach to administering the law in relation to these sorts of claims," IFPA said in the letter.

The IFPA acknowledged that while the truck driver was likely lucky to have a tribunal member willing to take a practical approach to the matter, the ATO may need to change the way it administers the law in this area.

"The reasonable travel allowance caps that are published every year don’t seem excessive and most drivers seem happy to keep their claims within those limits," the IFPA said.

"The caps can result in claims of up to around $30,000, and while the Commissioner might not welcome such large claims, meals purchased while travelling overnight for employment reasons have always been a legitimate tax deduction."

IFPA said it would not be unreasonable for the Commissioner to accept claims based on fatigue management records, which establish the number of nights away from home, which are then applied to the Commissioner's reasonable travel allowance caps.

"Such an approach would operate much like a statutory cap which, although not part of the law, would be well within the Commissioner’s power of general administration," the association said.

It noted that in the Shaw case, the Commissioner did not give much thought to the potential application of s900- 200 by establishing whether Shaw had a reasonable expectation that he could safely claim any daily amount that fell within the Commissioner’s published guidelines.

"This is an important part of the substantiation rules and it should not have been left to the Tribunal to rectify that oversight."

The letter said the reasonable expectation rule in s900-200 is a further reason for the Commissioner to accept, under a fair and practical approach to tax administration, that drivers restricting their claims for meal expenditure to the annual caps published by the ATO are taken to have incurred that level of expenditure for s8-1 purposes.

"Anything less risks perpetuating an unwarranted “gotcha” approach to tax compliance that does not reflect well on the ATO," it said.

The IFPA also warned that unless and until the ATO’s approach to claims for meal expenses is changed, drivers and advisers need to be aware of the requirement to maintain proper written evidence of meal expenditure for at least a two-week representative period each year to demonstrate how much has been incurred for the full year of income.

"The s900-50 exception to the requirement to maintain written evidence can then be applied to the balance of the claim," it said.