What Is IRS Mileage? 2026 Rates, Qualifying Miles, and Deductions

The IRS mileage rate is a per-mile dollar figure the IRS publishes each year that you can multiply by your qualifying miles to calculate a vehicle deduction, instead of tracking gas, insurance, repairs, and every other cost separately. For 2026, the business rate is 72.5 cents per mile, medical and active-duty military moving miles are each 20.5 cents per mile, and charitable driving stays at 14 cents per mile.¹ The rate you use has to match the tax year you’re filing for, because the figures shift annually with fuel, insurance, and depreciation trends.

The 2026 Rates at a Glance

The IRS sets a separate rate for each category of qualifying travel:

Business: 72.5 cents per mile, up from 70 cents in 2025.¹
Medical: 20.5 cents per mile, for trips to and from healthcare providers.
Military moving: 20.5 cents per mile, available only to active-duty service members relocating under a permanent change of station order. Starting in 2026, certain intelligence community employees and new appointees may also qualify.²³
Charitable: 14 cents per mile, a rate fixed by statute that hasn’t changed in over a decade.⁴

The business rate is highest because it’s built to cover the full cost of running a car for work, including a 35-cents-per-mile depreciation component for 2026.¹

What the Rate Covers

The per-mile amount folds in gas, oil, tires, repairs, insurance, registration, and depreciation. Once you choose the standard mileage method, you can’t deduct any of those costs separately.⁵ A new set of tires or a blown transmission is already considered baked into the rate.

Two costs sit outside the rate and can be deducted on top of it: parking fees at a business destination and highway or bridge tolls.⁵ Parking at your own regular workplace is commuting and doesn’t count.

Who Can Actually Deduct Mileage

Not everyone who drives for work can write off miles on a federal return.

Self-employed people, sole proprietors, freelancers, and gig workers are the main users. Business miles go on Schedule C.

Most W-2 employees cannot deduct unreimbursed mileage under current law. Only a few categories of employees still qualify to file Form 2106:⁶

Armed Forces reservists traveling more than 100 miles from home for reserve duties
Qualified performing artists
Fee-basis state or local government officials
Employees with impairment-related work expenses

If you’re a regular salaried or hourly employee and your employer doesn’t reimburse you, the federal deduction generally isn’t available. The practical fix is asking your employer to set up an accountable reimbursement plan, which pays you back tax-free.

Which Miles Qualify

Business Miles

Business mileage covers trips between work locations, client visits, meetings, and business errands like bank or post office runs. If you’re self-employed and your home office is your principal place of business, trips from home to any other work location count.⁷ Travel to a temporary work site expected to last a year or less is deductible even if you have a regular office elsewhere.⁵

Medical Miles

Trips to doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies qualify at 20.5 cents per mile for 2026.¹ The medical mileage figure joins your total medical expenses, and only the portion exceeding 7.5% of your adjusted gross income is deductible.⁸ For most taxpayers with moderate medical costs, that threshold wipes out the deduction.

Charitable Miles

Miles driven while volunteering for a qualified nonprofit are deductible at 14 cents per mile.⁴ Driving to a soup kitchen shift counts. Driving to a fundraiser gala as a guest does not.

Military Moving Miles

Active-duty service members relocating under a permanent change of station order deduct at 20.5 cents per mile.¹ Civilian moving miles are not deductible, whatever the reason for the move.

Commuting Doesn’t Count

Your daily drive from home to your regular workplace is commuting, and it is never deductible, no matter how long the drive is.⁵ Making business calls in the car doesn’t change that. Neither does carpooling with coworkers who talk shop.

A few home-based trips do qualify. If your home office is your principal place of business, trips from home to a client or secondary location are business miles. If you have a regular office but travel to a temporary work site expected to last less than a year, those miles count. And if you have no regular office but work in one metro area, trips to job sites outside that metro area qualify.⁵

Standard Rate or Actual Expenses

The standard rate isn’t the only method. You can instead track actual vehicle expenses (gas, insurance, repairs, depreciation, lease payments, registration) and deduct the business-use percentage. For vehicles with high operating costs or expensive repairs, actual expenses sometimes produce a bigger deduction.

The choice comes with a lock-in rule. If you own the car, you must elect the standard mileage rate in the first year the vehicle is available for business use. After that, you can switch methods year to year. If you start with actual expenses in year one, you’re stuck with actual expenses for that vehicle’s entire business life.⁹

A few other limits on the standard rate:

You can’t use it if you operate five or more vehicles at the same time.⁹
You can’t use it on a vehicle where you’ve claimed Section 179 or bonus depreciation.
You can’t use it on a vehicle depreciated under any MACRS method other than straight-line.

For a reasonably fuel-efficient car without major repair years, the standard rate is simpler and often close to the actual-expense result. Actual expenses tend to pay off when a car has an unusually costly year, or when the vehicle is expensive enough that its true depreciation outruns the per-mile depreciation component.

Tracking Miles the IRS Will Accept

The IRS requires adequate records for every mile you claim.⁹ A mileage log, whether on paper or in an app, needs four things per trip:

Date of the trip
Destination
Business purpose (client meeting, supply pickup, and so on)
Miles driven, from odometer readings or GPS

Publication 463 provides a sample “Daily Business Mileage and Expense Log” with columns for start and stop odometer readings, destination, and business purpose.⁵ You don’t have to use that exact format, but your records need to cover the same information.

GPS-based mileage apps create timestamped, location-verified entries automatically, and they tend to hold up better in an audit than a notebook filled out from memory in April. Records must be contemporaneous, logged at or near the time of the trip. The IRS says outright that you cannot deduct amounts you approximate or estimate.⁵

Where Mileage Goes on the Return

Self-employed filers and sole proprietors report vehicle expenses on Schedule C. If you’re using the standard rate, you complete Part IV, which asks for total business miles, commuting miles, and other personal miles for the year, plus whether you have another vehicle for personal use and whether you have written documentation.⁷

The narrow group of employees who still qualify uses Form 2106 instead, which asks for the date the vehicle was placed in service and total miles broken down by category.⁶

Medical mileage is reported as part of total medical expenses on Schedule A, subject to the 7.5% AGI floor. Charitable mileage is reported as a charitable contribution on Schedule A. Military moving mileage goes on Form 3903.²

Keep your mileage log and receipts for tolls and parking with the rest of your tax records. The strongest protection is a log kept throughout the year rather than one reconstructed at filing time from calendar entries and credit card statements.

1
Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Standard Mileage Rates (Notice 2026-10)
2
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 3903 (2025)
3
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 455, Moving Expenses for Members of the Armed Forces and the Intelligence Community
4
Internal Revenue Service. Standard Mileage Rates
5
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
6
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 2106 (2025)
7
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Schedule C (Form 1040)
8
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 502 (2025), Medical and Dental Expenses
9
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 510, Business Use of Car