How to track mileage for taxes

The mileage deduction is the biggest tax break available to gig drivers, and it's also the one most likely to be challenged. The difference between claiming it confidently and losing it comes down to the quality of your log. Here's exactly what to record, what counts, and how to make the tracking automatic.

1. What the IRS actually requires

There's no official form. What the IRS wants is a record made at or near the time of the trip (it calls this a timely-kept record), not reconstructed later, that establishes these things for each business trip:

On top of the per-trip detail you also need, for each vehicle:

• Total miles driven for the year — all driving, not just business
• Business miles, which gives your business-use percentage
• The date you placed the vehicle in service for business use

That last group is why you should photograph your odometer on 1 January and 31 December every year. It takes ten seconds and it's the piece almost everyone forgets.

2. Deductible vs non-deductible trips

The general test is whether the driving was for business. For gig work the boundaries are usually clear once you know where the line sits:

Being logged in to a driver app is not the IRS test for whether a mile is business. Driving from home to your first stop, and from your last stop back home, is generally commuting. The main exception is when your home is your principal place of business: a home office used regularly and exclusively for the business. Then those first and last trips can count. Trips to a temporary work location can also qualify in some situations. These rules depend on your facts, so if a large share of your claim rests on them, check with a tax professional rather than guessing.

3. Manual vs automatic tracking

Manual logging

A notebook or spreadsheet where you write down odometer readings. It's free and it satisfies the IRS if you're diligent. It also fails in one predictable way: you forget. Miss two trips a shift over a year and you've quietly written off thousands in deductions.

Automatic GPS tracking

An app records distance, timestamps and route once you tap start, or with no tap at all if it detects the drive or starts on your car's Bluetooth. The record is made as you drive, and it's exportable.

The trade-offs are real and worth knowing: GPS tracking uses battery, by an amount that varies with the phone and the app, and an app that tracks continuously in the background is seeing where you go. That second point is why some drivers prefer an app that keeps the data on the device rather than syncing a permanent copy of their movements to a company server.

Which to use

If you drive more than a few hours a week, automatic tracking pays for itself immediately in captured miles alone. Keep a manual fallback for the odd trip the app misses — a business errand in a different vehicle, say — and reconcile at month end.

4. Weak spots in a mileage log

Mileage is large and self-reported, so it's worth making sure your log can answer the obvious questions. These are the patterns that make a log hard to rely on:

None of these mean you did anything wrong, and none should discourage you from claiming every mile you actually drove. We can't tell you how the IRS picks returns to examine; the point is that a detailed, dated, per-trip log answers these questions before anyone asks them.

5. Setting up automatic tracking

Using TripTally as the example, though the principles apply to any tracker:

1. Allow location access. Permission models differ between apps, so follow your tracker's own instructions. TripTally asks for location while the app is in use and doesn't need "Allow all the time": once a trip starts, it keeps recording under a visible notification while Maps or a driver app is in front. Check that the notification is showing on your first few trips.
2. Pair your car's Bluetooth. With Pro, trips then start the moment you connect and stop when you disconnect. This is the single change that most improves capture rate, because it removes the step you're most likely to forget.
3. Turn on the floating bubble. It sits over Uber, DoorDash or Maps so you can start and end trips without switching apps mid-shift.
4. Set your platform. The business purpose is then filled in automatically on every trip — the field the IRS wants and the one manual loggers leave blank.
5. Photograph your odometer on 1 January and 31 December. Your app records business miles; only you can record the annual total.
6. Turn on backups. TripTally keeps data on your device by design, which means a lost phone without a backup is lost records. Back up to your own Google Drive.
7. Export at month end. Check the log looks right while you can still remember the month. Fix gaps immediately, not in April.

TripTally records trips by GPS with auto-stop and fills in the business purpose for your platform. Free on Android with full history and CSV export; optional Pro adds Bluetooth auto-start and PDF reports.

6. Platform-specific tips

DoorDash

Dashers drive between orders and back toward busier zones as well as from restaurant to customer, and all of that is business driving. Check what DoorDash's own figure includes before relying on it. Track from your first pickup rather than from each accepted order, and keep it running through stacked deliveries. If you go online at home, the leg out to your first pickup is usually commuting, so mark that part personal unless an exception applies.

Uber and Lyft

Both platforms may give you a mileage figure, but each decides what it counts, and it may not include driving to a hotspot, waiting in an airport queue or repositioning between rides, all of which can be business miles. Check how your platform defines its figure, track independently, and compare.

Instacart

Shopping trips involve driving to the store, occasionally between stores for a single order, and then to the customer. The in-store shopping time isn't mileage, but every leg of driving is. Multi-batch orders can mean several customer stops per trip — let the tracker run for the whole batch rather than stopping and starting.

Amazon Flex

Block-based work makes this the easiest to track cleanly: the block has a clear start at the delivery station and a clear end at your last drop. The drive from home to the station is the tricky part. For many drivers it is ordinary commuting. It may count as business if your home is your principal place of business, or if the station is a temporary work location under the IRS rules (for example, one outside your metro area). Log that leg separately so it's easy to include or exclude once you know which applies. Route density means high mileage in a short window, so the deduction from the block itself is usually substantial.

Driving for several platforms

If you run two apps at once, you don't split the miles between them — a mile driven is a mile driven, deducted once. Log the trip under whichever platform you were primarily working, and keep earnings separate for your income reporting.

Multi-apping does make one thing harder: judging which platform is actually paying. Because the miles are shared, per-platform earnings alone overstate profitability for whichever app you happen to attribute the driving to. The honest comparison is total earnings against total miles and hours for the session, then per-platform revenue within that. Most drivers who run this calculation discover the ranking isn't what they assumed.

Grocery, courier and non-driving gigs

The same rules apply to any self-employed work involving a vehicle — courier runs, mobile pet grooming, handyman calls, catering drop-offs. The travel between jobs is business mileage; the trip from home to the first job of the day usually isn't. If you also do non-driving gig work, keep that income separate in your records even though it lands on the same Schedule C, because it has no mileage attached and mixing it makes your per-mile figures meaningless.

What if you've already missed months?

Plenty of drivers start tracking properly halfway through a year. That's not a lost cause, but be honest about what the earlier record is worth.

Be clear about what the IRS accepts. Rebuilding a log after the fact is only treated as a substitute when records were lost to something beyond your control, like a fire or flood. Otherwise, for months without an adequate log, you need your own detailed statement backed by corroborating evidence, and it may not support every mile you believe you drove. Evidence of the driving itself is what helps:

• Platform trip histories, which give dates, times and often on-trip distance
• Bank and card statements showing fuel purchases on specific days (these show you were driving, not how far)
• Service records with dated odometer readings, which bracket your total mileage
• Phone location history, if you have it enabled
• Toll and parking transaction records

Keep the underlying evidence and a note of how you used it. Then start tracking properly from today. A well-kept log for part of the year can help support the rest only if that period is shown to be representative of the whole year (Publication 463 gives a sampling example), so don't assume it automatically covers the gap. If a large deduction rests on a reconstructed period, that's a good moment to involve a professional rather than making the judgement call yourself.

Using more than one vehicle

Mileage is tracked per vehicle, not per driver. If you swap between two cars you need separate totals for each, and each vehicle has its own method election — you could use the standard rate on one and actual expenses on the other. Record which car each trip was in; most trackers let you tag it, and without that tag the year's log can't be split afterwards.

How long to keep the log

Keep mileage records for at least three years from the date you file. If a vehicle is being depreciated under the actual expense method, keep its records for as long as you own it plus the retention period. Digital exports are fine — what matters is that you can produce the detail, not that it's on paper. Storing a copy somewhere other than the phone that created it is the practical version of this advice.

7. Five mistakes that cost real money

1. Relying on the platform's mileage summary. It may not include all of your business driving, and it isn't your own record.
2. Forgetting the annual odometer readings. Without them you can't establish business-use percentage, which weakens the entire claim.
3. Not recording business purpose. Distance alone isn't a compliant log.
4. Letting personal trips into the log. Stop the trip for the school run. One clearly personal trip in the record undermines confidence in the rest.
5. Never exporting. A log you've never successfully exported is a log you may not have when you need it. Test it early.

Make the log automatic

Free: unlimited trips, full history, CSV export and import, and receipt photos. Optional Pro: auto-start, receipt scanning, recurring expenses, PDF reports and Trends. No account required; records stay on your phone. Android only.

Sources

1. IRS Publication 463: commuting and the standard mileage rate (ch. 4), recordkeeping (ch. 5)
2. IRS Revenue Ruling 99-7: travel to temporary and regular work locations
3. IRS: Standard mileage rates
4. IRS Notice 2026-10 (rates from 1 January 2026)
5. IRS Announcement 2026-11, Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-29 (rates from 1 July 2026)

IRS pages checked 3 October 2026.

Related: Common tax deductions for US gig drivers · Best mileage tracker apps for gig drivers