To charge mileage for work in 2026, use the IRS business standard mileage rate of 72.5 cents per mile and multiply it by the miles you drove for qualifying business trips. How you actually collect that money depends on your status. If you’re self-employed, you deduct the mileage on Schedule C or bill it to clients directly. If you’re a W-2 employee, your only realistic path is your employer’s reimbursement policy, because federal law now permanently bars most employees from deducting unreimbursed vehicle costs on their own return.
The 2026 Rate and How to Calculate What You Charge
The IRS business mileage rate for 2026 is 72.5 cents per mile, up from 70 cents in 2025. Multiply your qualifying business miles by that rate to get the amount you deduct or invoice. Drive 8,000 business miles in 2026 and the figure comes to $5,800. Parking fees and tolls can be added on top of the per-mile amount.
The rate is the IRS’s own calculation of the fixed and variable costs of running a vehicle, which makes it a defensible number to use whether you’re deducting on your tax return, invoicing a client, or asking an employer to reimburse you.
Which Trips You Can Charge For
Not every drive that touches work qualifies. The IRS separates business mileage from commuting, and the line matters.
You can charge for driving between two work locations in the same day, whether or not the same employer is at both. Trips from your office to a client, supplier, courthouse, job site, or any other destination with a clear business purpose count. Travel to a conference or professional training qualifies when attendance benefits your business.
If you have a qualifying home office that serves as your principal place of business, drives from home to any other work location in the same trade or business are deductible. Without that home-office designation, most trips that start or end at your residence are treated as commuting.
One useful exception: if you have a regular workplace and drive to a temporary work site where the assignment is realistically expected to last one year or less, you can charge the round-trip mileage from home regardless of distance. Once the assignment is expected to run longer than a year, the IRS treats it as indefinite and the drive becomes a nondeductible commute.
Your daily drive from home to your regular workplace is personal. Taking work calls during the drive or carpooling with coworkers to talk shop doesn’t change that.
If You’re Self-Employed
Independent contractors and sole proprietors report business mileage on Schedule C (Form 1040), which calculates profit or loss from the business. The deduction reduces your net profit on line 31, and that lower figure flows into both your income tax and Schedule SE, where self-employment tax is calculated. Every dollar of mileage deduction saves you income tax plus a slice of the 15.3% self-employment tax. Farmers use Schedule F, but the mechanics are the same.
The standard mileage rate isn’t your only option. You can instead deduct actual costs of operating the vehicle for business: gas, oil, insurance, repairs, tires, registration, lease payments, depreciation, and garage rent, multiplied by the business-use percentage. The standard rate is simpler because you skip receipts for every fill-up and oil change. Actual expenses can produce a larger deduction if you drive an expensive vehicle or carry high maintenance costs. Running both calculations in your first year of business use is worth the time.
If you’re billing a client rather than deducting on your own return, the standard rate is the customary figure to use on the invoice. It’s transparent, tied to a published IRS number, and easy for the client to accept.
If You’re a W-2 Employee
For traditional employees, the path runs almost entirely through the employer’s reimbursement policy. Congress permanently eliminated the deduction for unreimbursed employee business expenses through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, so most W-2 workers can no longer write off mileage on their personal return. What your employer pays you is the whole picture.
Accountable Plans Keep the Money Tax-Free
When your employer reimburses mileage under an accountable plan, the payment stays off your W-2 and you owe no income or payroll tax on it. A plan qualifies as accountable only if it meets three requirements: the expenses have a business connection, you substantiate them with adequate records (dates, destinations, mileage, business purpose), and you return any reimbursement that exceeds your documented expenses within a reasonable time.
Non-Accountable Plans Become Taxable Wages
If the arrangement skips any of those three requirements, the IRS treats every dollar as wages. Your employer includes the payments in W-2 gross income and withholds income and payroll taxes on them. Because the unreimbursed-expense deduction is gone, there’s no offsetting write-off on your return anymore. Non-accountable payments are fully taxable, period.
The Narrow Categories That Can Still Deduct
A small group of W-2 employees can still deduct unreimbursed vehicle expenses using Form 2106:
- Armed Forces reservists traveling for reserve duties.
- Qualified performing artists who worked for at least two employers, earned at least $200 from each, had business expenses exceeding 10% of performing-arts income, and had adjusted gross income of $16,000 or less before the deduction.
- Fee-basis state or local government officials compensated in whole or part by fees rather than salary.
- Employees with impairment-related work expenses for disability-related costs that enable them to work.
Outside those four categories, employer reimbursement is the only route.
Records That Will Hold Up
The IRS requires you to record each business trip at or near the time it happens. A log reconstructed months later from memory is the kind of record examiners routinely reject. For each trip, capture:
- The date of travel.
- The destination, including the city or address.
- The business purpose (client meeting, supply pickup, job-site visit).
- Starting and ending odometer readings, or the total miles for the trip.
Using the standard mileage rate simplifies the cost math, not the record-keeping. You still have to substantiate the miles, dates, and business purpose of each trip.
Mileage-tracking apps that use GPS are acceptable, but electronic records must contain enough transaction-level detail to support your return and be available in a usable format if the IRS asks for them. The records need an audit trail linking the app data to the numbers on your tax return. Export your trip data periodically, back it up, and confirm the app is capturing all four required fields rather than just distance.
Keep the records at least three years after you file the return that claims the deduction. That’s the baseline retention period for most situations.
What Weak Records Cost
Claiming mileage you can’t substantiate isn’t just a lost deduction. If the IRS disallows the write-off and you owe additional tax, an accuracy-related penalty of 20% applies to the underpayment when the agency determines you were negligent. Negligence, in IRS terms, means failing to make a reasonable attempt to follow the rules, and claiming deductions without adequate records fits.
A separate 20% penalty applies for a substantial understatement of tax, which for individuals means understating your liability by the greater of 10% of the correct tax or $5,000. The IRS can waive these penalties for reasonable cause and good faith, but “I didn’t keep a log” is a hard sell. Contemporaneous records are the cheapest protection against both lost deductions and stacked penalties.
State Reimbursement Rules
Federal law doesn’t require employers to reimburse mileage at all. The only federal floor is that unreimbursed expenses cannot drop an employee’s effective pay below minimum wage. Some states go further and require employers to cover necessary business expenses, which can include mileage. If your state has such a law and your employer isn’t paying, that’s a labor-law claim rather than a tax matter. Check your state labor department, because scope and enforcement vary significantly.