Australia's sole traders are leaving real money on the road
The ATO lets sole traders claim 88 cents for every work kilometre driven. Most don't track them properly — or at all. Here's what that actually costs.
Interactive calculator
How much are sole traders leaving unclaimed?
fuel bill
Modelling the collective impact
How many sole traders aren't claiming?
Rounded modelled four non-claiming rate assumptions across Australia's 900,000 mobile sole traders. Select a scenario to see what it means for the total unclaimed figure — the per-person saving updates live from the km and income settings in the calculator above.
The national picture
What this means
Every year, Australia's 900,000 mobile sole traders drive to client meetings, job sites, and supplier visits — and most never write down a single kilometre. The ATO will pay them 88 cents for every one of those kilometres, up to 5,000 a year. No receipts required. They just need a record.
A tradie driving 4,000 work kilometres a year who tracks nothing is handing back roughly $1,126 in tax savings. A consultant on $110,000 doing 2,500 kms loses around $704. Across the sole trader economy, the aggregate figure runs to hundreds of millions of dollars — Rounded's modelling puts the upper bound at $608 million.
Trax from Rounded solves this with automatic tracking — no hardware, no manual entry, no excuses. It uses Bluetooth, CarPlay or Android Auto to know when you're driving, logs the full GPS route automatically, and produces an ATO-compliant logbook without a single tap.