Trucks, tools, and what you can actually deduct

Vehicle costs — fuel, insurance, repairs, lease or loan interest — are deductible in proportion to business use. The proportion comes from one place: a mileage log. Date, destination, purpose, kilometres. No log means the percentage is a guess, and in a review the CRA's counter-guess wins.

The log doesn't need to be fancy — the notes app counts, and our portal has a trip tracker built in. What it needs to be is contemporaneous: reconstructed-in-April logs read exactly like what they are.

Equipment isn't an expense like fuel — it's capital, written off over years through capital cost allowance (CCA). Different gear depreciates at different CRA-set rates: vehicles, heavy equipment, computers, and small tools each land in their own class, and low-cost tools can often be written off immediately.

What that means practically: track every equipment purchase with its date and cost, and let your accountant map it to the right class. Buying near year-end? Timing affects how much you claim in year one — worth a five-minute conversation before a big purchase, not after.

Card statements alone don't prove a deduction — they show that you spent, not what you bought. Keep the itemized receipt. Photos are fine; the CRA accepts digital records, and a photo taken at the counter beats a shoebox archive every time.

Six years is the retention rule. If your receipts flow into your books monthly (snap, upload, categorized), an audit is an attachment, not an excavation.

Commuting from home to a regular shop isn't business mileage. Clothing that isn't protective gear isn't deductible because you wear it to work. The personal half of a family phone plan stays personal. Claiming clean and defensible beats claiming everything — the deductions above are worth more, every year, than any of these stretch.