Short answer. Most Australian employers hold a professional development budget that is never fully spent. The obstacle is rarely money — it is that “I want to improve my English” does not read as a work expense to the person approving it. Change what the course is called and what the invoice says, and the same request starts getting approved. Below: the ATO rules in plain terms, the one test that decides everything, and an email you can copy.
General information only, current at 11 September 2026. We are not tax agents and this is not tax advice — tax advice in Australia is regulated by the Tax Practitioners Board. Whether a particular expense is deductible for you is a question for your own registered tax agent. Sources are linked at the end.
The one test that decides everything
The ATO allows a deduction for self-education expenses where there is a sufficient connection to earning income from your current employment. In practice that means the course either maintains or improves specific skills you use in the job you have now, or it increases the income you earn from that job.
There is no deduction where the expense:
- has no sufficient connection to your current work;
- is incurred while you are not working;
- helps you get a new job or change occupation — the ATO's own example is a nurse studying to become a doctor;
- is only generally related to your work.
That last bullet is where most English courses die. “Improve my English” is the textbook definition of generally related.
Two other things worth knowing: the old $250 threshold was removed for expenses from 1 July 2022, so the full amount counts. And if your employer pays directly, the same test decides whether they face fringe benefits tax — under the otherwise deductible rule, no FBT arises where the employee could have claimed the expense themselves. One test, two doors.
Why the course title is the whole game
The title is the first and often the only thing a manager or an accountant reads. A course named after a language level invites the question “is this work?”. A course named after a task you perform at work answers it.
| Reads as personal | Reads as work |
|---|---|
| General English — Intermediate | English for Healthcare Workers |
| Conversational English | Business Writing for Client-Facing Roles |
| English for living in Australia | Professional Communication for Engineers |
| English for social media | Producing English-language video content for customer acquisition |
The teaching can be identical. The framing is not.
A real example
A registered health professional came to us with a narrow problem: she was fully competent clinically, but communication with elderly Australian patients — idiom, indirectness, hearing loss, family in the room — was the part of her job she found hardest.
We built her a one-to-one course and named it for the task: Communication with Aged Australians for Medical Professionals. The invoice carried that title, the dates and the amount, and the course description listed the work situations it addressed. She took that to her accountant, who treated the $1,700 as a business expense.
We are not telling you that your expense will be treated the same way — that is between you and your own tax agent, and it depends on your role. The point is narrower and more useful: a course called “General English Intermediate” does not survive that conversation, and a course named after the task you actually do at work has a chance to.
Three things you need from the school
- A course title that names a professional skill, not a language level. This is the line your manager or accountant reads.
- An invoice carrying that title, with dates and amount. Without a document there is no conversation.
- A course description that names the work tasks it improves. This is what you paste into the training request.
If a school cannot give you all three, the request is much harder to make — whoever ends up paying.
The email to your manager — copy this
Subject: Training request — [course title]
Hi [name],
I would like to ask about using professional development budget for a short course.
The course is [course title], delivered one-to-one online, [N] sessions, [total] AUD. It targets the part of my role I find hardest: [name two or three concrete work situations — handover notes, client calls, presenting at the team meeting, writing incident reports].
Concretely, after the course I expect to [one measurable thing: write handover notes without a colleague checking them / run the monthly client call unaided / present the quarterly update myself].
The provider issues an invoice in the company's name with the course title and dates. Where a course maintains or improves skills used in an employee's current role, employer-paid training of this kind is generally treated as work-related — our finance team can confirm the treatment.
Happy to do it outside core hours. Can I send you the course outline?
[name]
Two notes on that email. First, it never says “improve my English” — it names tasks. Second, it offers a measurable outcome, because a training budget is approved against an outcome, not against goodwill.
If your employer says no
You can still pay yourself and raise it with your tax agent at the end of the financial year — the same connection test applies, and the full amount counts. Keep the invoice with the course title on it.
Sources
- ATO — Self-education expenses
- ATO — Reducing your FBT liability (otherwise deductible rule)
- ATO — TR 2024/3 — income tax: deductibility of self-education expenses
Green School builds one-to-one courses named for the work they support — and issues invoices that say so. If you want to talk through how to frame your own, tell us what your job involves.