How to Charge for Travel Time: Billing, Contracts, and IRS Rules

To charge for travel time, pick a billing method that covers both the hours you spend driving and the cost of running your vehicle, write the rate and the free-travel threshold into your service agreement, and show each trip as its own line on the invoice with the date, destination, and rate. The 2026 IRS standard mileage rate of 72.5 cents per mile is a useful benchmark for vehicle costs, but it doesn’t compensate you for the hours you lose behind the wheel, so most self-employed professionals combine a mileage figure with an hourly travel charge.¹

Pick a Billing Method

Four approaches cover almost every situation. The right one depends on how far you typically drive, how predictable your routes are, and what your industry treats as standard.

Full hourly rate. You bill travel at the same rate as on-site work. This fits when driving to a client blocks you from doing other billable work.
Reduced hourly rate. You bill travel at a percentage of your normal rate, often around 50 percent. A consultant charging $200 per hour might bill $100 per hour of driving, which signals that travel is less intensive than on-site work while still valuing the time.
Flat trip fee. A fixed amount per visit, typically $50 to $150 depending on service type and distance. Clients get cost certainty and you avoid haggling over small route changes.
Mileage-based fee. A per-mile charge, often anchored to the 72.5-cent IRS rate for 2026. This works best when distances vary widely from one client to the next.¹

Many providers combine two methods so both time and vehicle costs are covered. A common blend is 72.5 cents per mile plus half your hourly rate for driving time. Ask yourself which expense hurts more, the wear on your vehicle or the productive hours you give up, and weight the formula toward that side.

Tiered Zone Pricing

If your clients are spread across a wide area, distance bands simplify the conversation. You set flat fees for each zone measured from your office:

0 to 25 miles: no travel charge, included in the service fee
25 to 50 miles: $35 flat fee
50 to 100 miles: $125 flat fee

Clients get a predictable number to budget for, and you skip the mileage math on short trips. A hybrid version includes the first 25 or 30 miles free and then adds a per-mile rate beyond that. Publishing the tiers on your website lets prospective clients self-select before they reach out.

Decide When the Meter Starts

Being clear about when travel becomes billable prevents the charge from feeling arbitrary. There are three common ways to draw the line.

A distance threshold defines a service radius, often 20 to 30 miles from your office, inside which travel is free. Anything past that radius triggers the fee. Easy to explain, easy to verify with mapping software.

A commute-subtraction method deducts your normal commute time from each trip. If you usually spend 20 minutes getting to your own office, a 50-minute drive to a remote job becomes 30 minutes of billable travel. Clients pay only for the extra transit your business absorbs on their behalf.

A portal-to-portal approach starts the clock the moment you leave your office and stops when you return. The concept is borrowed from employment law, where federal rules distinguish an ordinary commute (not compensable) from travel that is part of the workday itself.² It captures every minute of a client engagement but can feel aggressive to price-sensitive clients. Whichever line you draw, put it in writing before work begins.

Write It Into the Contract

A written service agreement is the single most important tool for collecting travel charges without friction. If the contract is silent on travel, a client who disputes the charge has a reasonable argument that it was never part of the deal.

The contract should spell out:

The billing method and the exact rate or flat amount
The threshold or free zone inside which no travel fee applies
What counts as travel: driving only, or also waiting time, loading time, and airport delays
What documentation will accompany each invoice, such as mileage logs, GPS reports, or timestamps
When travel charges are due, usually on the same schedule as your service fees

Get the client to sign or formally acknowledge these terms before the work starts. If a charge is later questioned, the signed agreement is your primary evidence that it was authorized.

Document Each Trip

Good records justify the charge to the client and protect your tax deduction if you’re ever audited. For every trip, capture four things:

Start and end locations, using full street addresses so the client can verify the route
Departure and arrival times, which support hourly billing
Mileage, from an odometer reading or GPS log
The client or project ID, so the trip lands on the right account

GPS mileage apps automate almost all of this. The IRS accepts electronic records as long as they contain enough transaction-level detail to support your return and can be retrieved and printed on request.³ In practice, your logs need to show each trip individually rather than as a monthly summary, and the data has to be exportable. Recording trips weekly or more often is considered timely; a log reconstructed from memory months later carries far less weight.⁴

Present It on the Invoice

Travel belongs on its own line, separate from labor and materials. A bundled total hides the cost and invites questions; a dedicated line showing the date, destination, and rate lets the client cross-reference the charge against the contract.

If you promised supporting documentation, attach it. Digital invoices sent through accounting software can include GPS logs or mileage reports as file attachments. Paper invoices should carry a printed trip summary. Deliver the evidence with the charge so the client never has to ask.

Before sending, confirm that the rate on the invoice matches the rate in the agreement. Even an innocent rounding error gives the client a reason to delay payment.

Overnight and Long-Distance Trips

When an engagement requires an overnight stay, your billing has to cover lodging, meals, and incidentals as well as transit. The federal government’s per diem rates are a useful benchmark. For fiscal year 2026, the standard CONUS rate for locations without a special designation is $110 per night for lodging and $68 per day for meals and incidental expenses, with higher figures in high-cost cities.⁵

Referencing the GSA numbers in your contract gives clients an objective, government-published figure rather than an amount that looks arbitrary. Some professionals bill actual lodging plus a per diem for meals; others use the full GSA per diem as a flat daily reimbursement. Whatever approach you use, overnight terms deserve their own section in the agreement: who books the room, whether airfare is billed at cost, and whether meals are included or capped. Handling this before the trip prevents the kind of billing surprise that damages a client relationship.

What the IRS Does With What You Bill

Every dollar you charge a client for travel counts as gross income, whether it’s a flat fee, an hourly charge, or a mileage reimbursement. Independent contractors can’t use the accountable plan rules that shelter employee reimbursements from income. Instead, you report the full amount as business revenue on Schedule C and then deduct your actual travel costs as a business expense.⁶

Standard Mileage Rate or Actual Expenses

You can deduct vehicle costs one of two ways. The standard mileage rate lets you multiply business miles by 72.5 cents for 2026, a single figure that covers gas, depreciation, insurance, and maintenance.¹ The actual expense method requires you to track every vehicle cost (fuel, oil changes, tires, repairs, insurance, registration, depreciation) and then apply the business-use percentage based on total miles driven.⁶ Parking fees and tolls related to business travel are deductible under either method.

Records for Your Return

The IRS expects four elements for every travel expense: the amount, the date, the place, and the business purpose.⁴ If you use the standard mileage rate, each trip still needs its date, destination, business purpose, and miles driven. The same GPS logs you attach to client invoices can double as your tax records, so keeping one system does both jobs.

1
Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Standard Mileage Rates
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 U.S. Code 254 – Relief From Liability and Punishment Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
3
Internal Revenue Service. Automated Records
4
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
5
U.S. General Services Administration. GSA Releases FY 2026 CONUS Per Diem Rates for Federal Travelers
6
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 510, Business Use of Car