Gardner – Tax Court finds that car travel expenses between a home office and the employer offices were deductible

A cosmetics sales rep, who did most of her work based out of her home office but travelled around once or twice a week to the company offices 72 kilometres away (where no office was set aside for her) for meetings with the sales team or her boss, was found to be able to deduct (with the requisite Form T2200 employer certification) her “commuting” expenses of around $13,000 for the year, as they thus were incurred in the course of her employment. Russell J noted that Campbell (which he had argued for the taxpayer) “established that when the work circumstances reasonably require that the worker have an office, and an office is not provided by the employer, then the worker can locate the required office somewhere including in their home and have it regarded as an employment location.”

Neal Armstrong. Summary of Gardner v. The Queen, 2020 TCC 108 under s. 8(1)(h.1).