Commuting Miles for Self-Employed: Home Office, Trips, and Records

For self-employed people, commuting miles — the trips between your home and your regular work location — are personal expenses that the IRS does not let you deduct, no matter how far you drive or what business you conduct along the way. Miles you drive between business stops during the day, trips to temporary work sites, and drives from a qualifying home office are a different story: those are deductible business miles, worth 72.5 cents each under the 2026 standard mileage rate.¹ Where you draw that line determines how much of your driving actually reduces your tax bill.

What the IRS Counts as Commuting

Any drive between your home and your main or regular place of work is a personal commute. The distance does not matter. Neither does what you do during the trip. The first drive of the day from home to a work location and the last drive home at the end of the day are always commuting.²

This applies whether your regular workplace is a rented office, a co-working space, or a client’s site you visit on a set schedule. The IRS treats your commute as a personal cost of choosing where to live. If you operate out of a fixed location outside your home, every trip between the two is personal mileage.

Parking and tolls follow the same rule. Parking at your regular work location is a non-deductible commuting expense. Parking and tolls paid during a deductible business trip — visiting a client, running to a supplier, driving between job sites — are deductible on top of your mileage deduction, whichever method you use.²

How a Home Office Changes Everything

A qualifying home office is the single biggest factor in how much of your driving is deductible. When your home is your principal place of business, the IRS treats it as the starting point of your workday. Every drive from your home office to a client, supply store, or job site becomes deductible business mileage instead of a personal commute.³

To qualify under 26 U.S.C. § 280A, you need a dedicated space used regularly and exclusively for business.⁴ The space must be where you perform your most important business functions or where you spend most of your working time. A freelance photographer who edits, invoices, and manages bookings from a spare bedroom but shoots on location would generally qualify.

You can claim the home office deduction using either the regular method (actual expenses allocated to the office space) or the simplified method, which gives you $5 per square foot up to 300 square feet.⁵ Either method works for treating your home as your principal place of business for mileage purposes. What matters is that the space meets the exclusive-and-regular-use test; the calculation method you pick does not affect whether your drives from home count as business miles.

Without a qualifying home office, the first trip from home to any work site and the last trip back are commuting. You can still deduct driving between business stops during the day, but the bookends of your day are lost.

Driving Between Business Stops

Once you reach your first work site of the day, the commute is over. Every business-related drive after that is deductible. A consultant who meets one client in the morning and another across town in the afternoon can write off the miles between the two.²

The same goes for driving from your office to the bank for a business deposit, to a shipping center for work deliveries, or to a store for supplies. If you make a personal stop along the way, subtract the extra miles the detour added. Only the business portion counts.

If you work two separate jobs or run two businesses, the drive between them on the same day is deductible even when the two workplaces have nothing to do with each other.² The commuting bookends still apply unless a qualifying home office starts your day.

Temporary Work Sites

The IRS treats short-term assignments differently. Under Revenue Ruling 99-7, if you have at least one regular work location away from home, you can deduct the mileage for trips between your home and any temporary work site, even a nearby one.³ A location counts as temporary when you realistically expect the work to last one year or less, and it actually does.

This helps contractors and project workers who bounce between sites. A contractor hired for a six-month renovation at one address can deduct the daily drive there, provided the job is expected to finish within a year.

The one-year test needs ongoing attention. If your expectation changes — say a six-month project extends to 18 months — the site stops being temporary on the date your expectation shifts, not when the job actually crosses the one-year line. From that date forward, drives to the site become non-deductible commuting.⁶ Any assignment you expect from the start to run longer than a year is treated as indefinite, and trips to it are never deductible.

Things That Do Not Turn a Commute Into a Business Trip

Three common beliefs cause self-employed taxpayers to claim commuting miles they cannot legally deduct.

Hauling tools or equipment. Carrying tools, supplies, or instruments in your car during your regular commute does not make the mileage deductible. You can, however, deduct the extra cost that the equipment specifically causes, such as renting a trailer to tow behind your car.²

Advertising on your vehicle. Putting advertising on your car does not change its use from personal to business, according to the IRS. A branded wrap or logo on a commuter vehicle does not convert those miles.²

Working during the drive. Business calls, dictated notes, or work discussions with a passenger do not change the purpose of the trip. The IRS looks at where you are going, not what you do on the way.²

Calculating the Deduction on Your Business Miles

Once you know which miles qualify, you have two ways to calculate the deduction.

Standard Mileage Rate

Multiply your business miles by 72.5 cents for 2026.¹ The rate covers gas, insurance, repairs, depreciation, and wear. Business-related parking and tolls are deductible on top.

To use the standard rate, you have to choose it in the first year the car is placed in service for business. If you start with the actual expense method, you cannot switch to the standard rate for that vehicle later. The standard rate is also off-limits if you operate five or more vehicles at once, have taken accelerated depreciation or a Section 179 deduction on the car, or have claimed actual expenses on a leased car after 1997.⁷

Actual Expense Method

Track every cost of operating your vehicle — gas, oil, tires, repairs, insurance, registration, licenses, depreciation or lease payments — and deduct the percentage that matches your business use.⁷ Drive 20,000 total miles with 12,000 for business, and 60 percent of your vehicle costs are deductible.

Actual expenses often win for expensive vehicles or high operating costs, since depreciation alone can exceed what the standard rate produces. The paperwork is heavier: receipts for each category, not just a mileage log. If you started with the standard rate and later switch, you must depreciate the car using straight-line rather than the accelerated schedules otherwise available.⁷

Records You Have to Keep

For every business trip, you need to document the mileage, date, destination, and business purpose. Records have to be contemporaneous — logged at or near the time of the trip, not reconstructed at tax time.⁸ GPS-based mileage apps handle this well because they capture the details automatically.

Schedule C asks you to report three separate mileage totals: business, commuting, and other personal.⁹ Sorting your trips into those categories as you go makes filing straightforward and keeps you from guessing in April.

Poor documentation carries real cost. If your mileage deductions are disallowed, the IRS can assess a 20 percent accuracy-related penalty on the resulting underpayment.¹⁰ Hold on to your mileage logs and supporting records for at least three years from the date you filed the return, or two years from the date you paid the tax, whichever is later.¹¹

1
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Sets 2026 Business Standard Mileage Rate at 72.5 Cents Per Mile
2
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 463 (2024), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
3
Internal Revenue Service. Rev. Rul. 99-7
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 280A – Disallowance of Certain Expenses in Connection With Business Use of Home
5
Internal Revenue Service. Simplified Option for Home Office Deduction
6
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 511, Business Travel Expenses
7
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 510, Business Use of Car
8
eCFR. 26 CFR 1.274-5 – Substantiation Requirements
9
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Schedule C (Form 1040)
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 6662 – Imposition of Accuracy-Related Penalty on Underpayments
11
Internal Revenue Service. How Long Should I Keep Records