How do you turn your rent, mortgage, electricity bills and renovations into tax deductions?
Become a federal politician.
A little-known tax ruling from 1999 allows our MPs to claim all expenses related to properties they own in Canberra - including electricity, mortgage payments and renovations - as tax deductions.
That's on top of the $273 tax-free allowance they get for every night spent in the nation's capital.
And neither major party is likely to dump the perk any time soon.
Every politician asked about it on Sunday emphasised that their pay and entitlements were determined by an independent remuneration tribunal, while the tax office laid down deduction rules.
"That is how it is and that's how it should be and how it has been for a very long time," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters in Sydney.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten doesn't own any property in Canberra, just his house in Melbourne's Moonee Ponds, so didn't know of the perk.
"I expect all MPs, not just Labor MPs, to stick within the rules," he told reporters.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann refused to confirm whether he claimed tax deductions for his Canberra unit, insisting he complied with the rules.
"I don't make the rules," he told ABC TV.
"None of us as politicians make the rules, we are just expected to comply with them."
Opposition finance spokesman Tony Burke, who's been in federal parliament since 2004, also said he wasn't aware of the tax rules.
"Politicians are the last people who should be determining what the rules for politicians are," Mr Burke told the Nine Network.
