Most landscapers I know have had this conversation with a business partner, employee or with themselves. Should I just buy a skid steer instead of hiring one every other week? Or a decent trailer, or a second ute so the guys can split across two sites? Now that the $20,000 asset write-off is permanent, plenty of us will be having that conversation again.
So I'll say this upfront. I'm a landscaper, not an accountant, and none of this is tax advice. Your accountant handles the claim. What I want to talk about is the part they won't do for you: making sure the machine actually earns its keep on every quote you send.
What the $20,000 asset write-off actually changed
According to the Australian Taxation Office, the Government announced in the 2026–27 Budget on 12 May 2026 that the instant asset write-off for small businesses would be permanently set at $20,000 from 1 July 2026, and that measure is now law. It's for businesses with aggregated turnover under $10 million. The limit is per asset, so you can write off more than one thing as long as each one comes in under $20,000. The ATO says anything at $20,000 or more can go into the small business pool, which depreciates at 15% in the first year and 30% each year after that.
The ATO's instant asset write-off page has a few details worth knowing before you go shopping. You claim it in the year the asset is first used or installed ready for use. Only the business portion of the cost is deducted, but the full cost has to be under the limit. Their example is a $40,000 ute used 40% for business: the business share is $16,000, but it can't be instantly written off because the ute itself costs more than $20,000. If you're registered for GST and can claim the full credit, the GST isn't counted in the cost. Second-hand gear qualifies as well as new, and you need to be using the simplified depreciation rules.
Utes have an extra wrinkle. The ATO says a car limit applies to passenger vehicles designed to carry fewer than nine passengers and a load under one tonne. 42 Advisory, an accounting firm, says many commercial utes with a load capacity of one tonne or more fall outside the "car" definition. Whether yours does is a question for your accountant, not me. 42 Advisory also suggests keeping invoices, proof of first use and business-use records for five years, which is worth raising with your accountant too.
Two more that matter for landscapers. The ATO's assets and exclusions page says assets leased out more than 50% of the time are excluded from the simplified rules, so if you're planning to hire the machine out when you're not using it, talk that through first. And later additions are treated differently. Only the first addition after the write-off year can be immediately deducted, and only if it's under the limit. After that, additions go into the pool. If you're eyeing an auger or a trencher down the track, ask before you buy.
A deduction isn't a charge-out rate
Here's where I reckon people will get caught. You buy a second-hand skid steer, it's written off, and in your head the machine is now free. So it stops showing up on quotes. The guys use it on every job and cost is never passed onto the client.
The write-off changes when you claim the cost. It doesn't change what the machine costs to run. Tracks still wear out, it still needs servicing, hoses still blow at the worst possible moment, and one day you'll have to replace it. If none of that is in your price, it's coming out of your margin.
A machine has its own overheads, and if you don't add them up, nobody will.
Working out what your machine costs per hour
This is a made-up example to show the method, not a rate to copy.
Say you pay $18,000 ex GST for a second-hand skid steer. You reckon it'll do 300 hours a year on your own jobs for five years, and you'll sell it for $6,000 at the end. That's $12,000 of machine used up over 1,500 hours, or $8 an hour just to stand still. Then add what it costs each year to keep it going: servicing, tracks, repairs, insurance, the trailer to move it. Say that's $4,500 a year. Over 300 hours, that's another $15 an hour. Before fuel and before whoever's driving it, the machine is costing you $23 an hour.
Now say it only does 150 hours a year. Same machine, same costs, but it's now $16 an hour to replace and $30 an hour to run. That's $46 an hour, double, because it's sitting in the yard.
That's the number people skip. When we grew to nine guys, we had more utes and a bigger warehouse, and looking back it was the wrong call. More gear meant more overheads, not more profit. Buy a machine because you'll keep it busy, not because the deduction makes it feel cheap. And remember the operator is labour. Price their hours separately.
Price it like you'd hired it
A good sense check is to look at what a hire company would have charged you, because all of that is now your cost to cover.
Hire Seeking says wet-hire travel is usually charged as one hour at the hire rate when the depot is under 30 km from site, minimum hire is usually three to four hours, and floating a skid steer runs $250 to $300 including drop-off and pick-up. iseekplant shows $200 to $600 for dry-hire delivery, attachments charged on top (a bucket at an average of $25 to $35 an hour, ex GST), and Sunday work at double the standard rate. These are marketplace averages, not what you should charge, but they show what the client would be paying if you didn't own the gear.
The client doesn't care whether you own the machine or hire it. They care that the job gets done well. So on your next quote, give the machine its own line items: machine hours, float or transport, attachments, a minimum charge for short jobs, and a loading if they want you there on a weekend.
This is exactly the stuff that falls through the cracks at 9pm on the laptop. It's part of why we built Ask Willow to prompt for hidden costs like access, slope, skip bins and soil expansion during the site walk, before the proposal goes out. It's not perfect and you still check the numbers, but tight access is a lot harder to forget when something asks you about it.
The takeaway
If a skid steer, trailer or ute makes sense for your business, get your accountant to sort out the claim. Then work out what that machine costs you per hour on the hours it'll really do, and put it on every quote as if the write-off didn't exist. The deduction helps your cashflow at tax time. Your charge-out rate is what pays for the next machine.
Sources
- $20,000 Instant Asset Write-off | Australian Taxation Office
- Instant asset write-off for eligible businesses | Australian Taxation Office
- Assets and exclusions | Australian Taxation Office
- Instant Asset Write-Off 2026-27: What Tradies Can Claim
- Instant Asset Write-Off | business.gov.au
- Skid steer or Bobcat Hire Rates | With/Without Operator
- Skid Steer Hire Rates & Suppliers Near Me - Get Multiple Quotes in Minutes