The Australian Tax Office should redraft its motor vehicle expense benchmarks for small trucking businesses, the ATA has said in this submission to the Board of Taxation’s small business tax impediments review.

The submission said the current motor vehicle expense benchmarks considerably underestimated the vehicle expenses that could be incurred by trucking businesses, which could result in additional expenses and audits for those operators.

The submission also recommends better publicising the statutory cap on the effective life on trucks that is used to calculate depreciation, and raising the small business turnover threshold to $5 million.