Quick Reference Guide for deducting your expenses

There are 2 alternative ways to get deductions for your travel expenses due to work. Depending on the purpose of your trip, costs are tax-deductible either:

  1. As commuting, meaning trips from home to work and back, where the deductible amount is always based on the least expensive means of transportation; or
  2. As expenses for the production of income, which allows you to deduct the same amounts as you paid. Employees are only permitted to deduct the expenses that their employer has not reimbursed. 

The table below is a quick reference guide for claiming deductions.

Description of
the work-related travel		 Deductible as commuting expenses, assuming the least expensive means of transportation Deductible as expenses for the production of income – actual amounts
Commuting (trips from home to work and back) Yes No
Going home for the weekend from the location of your primary place of work – individual taxpayer with a family1  Yes No
Going home for the weekend from the location of your primary place of work – no family2 No No
Travelling to a secondary place of work No Yes
Commuting between the secondary place of work and your place of accommodation Yes No
Working in a special sector: travelling to the locations where work is done No Yes
Going home for the weekend during an assignment or job Yes No
Going home for the weekend at the end of an assignment or job No Yes
Working as an itinerant worker: travelling to the location of the primary place or work Yes No
Working as an itinerant worker: travelling to the varying locations where work is done No Yes

1 and 2

Deductions are based on different rules depending on if you have or don't have a family. For tax purposes, you are treated as having a family if:

  • You are married or in a registered partnership.
  • You live together with someone, and this person and you have a child together, or the two of you had a child together in the past.

Otherwise, you are treated as having no family.

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Page last updated 9/21/2022