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 that is contemporaneous — created at or near the time of the trip, not reconstructed later — and that establishes four 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:

Commuting rules have nuances — for example, if your home genuinely qualifies as your principal place of business, the first and last trips may be treated differently. If a large share of your claim depends on that, get professional advice 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 detects the drive and records distance, timestamps and route without you doing anything beyond a tap — or nothing at all, if it starts on your car's Bluetooth. The record is contemporaneous, precise, and exportable.

The trade-offs are real and worth knowing: GPS uses battery (roughly 2% an hour for most tracking apps), 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. What triggers a closer look

Mileage is one of the more frequently examined deductions on a Schedule C, simply because it's large and self-reported. Things that tend to attract attention:

None of these mean you did anything wrong, and none should discourage you from claiming every mile you actually drove. The point is simply that a detailed, timestamped, per-trip log answers all of these questions before they're asked.

5. Setting up automatic tracking

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

1. Grant background location. Choose "Allow all the time." Tracking only while the app is open means every mile you drive with Maps in front — which is most of them — goes unrecorded.
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.

6. Platform-specific tips

DoorDash

Dashers accumulate significant unpaid mileage between the restaurant and the customer, and again driving back toward a busier zone. DoorDash's own summary reports only cover part of what you actually drive. Start the trip when you go online, not when you accept an order, and keep it running through stacked deliveries.

Uber and Lyft

Both provide an annual mileage figure, but it typically reflects on-trip miles — from accepting a request to dropping off. It generally excludes driving to a hotspot, waiting in an airport queue, or repositioning between rides, all of which are deductible. Drivers who rely only on the platform's number often under-claim substantially. 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: start the trip when you leave for the station and end it when you finish the block. Include the drive to the delivery station — you're travelling to a work location for a scheduled shift, not commuting to a fixed workplace. Route density means high mileage in a short window, so the deduction 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.

A log rebuilt from other evidence is weaker than a contemporaneous one, but it isn't nothing — provided it's built from real records rather than guesswork. Reasonable sources include:

• Platform trip histories, which give dates, times and often on-trip distance
• Bank and card statements showing fuel purchases on specific days
• Service records with dated odometer readings, which bracket your total mileage
• Phone location history, if you have it enabled
• Toll and parking transaction records

Document how you reconstructed it and keep the underlying evidence. Then start tracking properly from today — the fully documented portion of the year strengthens the whole return. 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's a floor, not a total.
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

GPS tracking with auto-stop, Bluetooth start, automatic business purpose per platform, and IRS-ready PDF or CSV export. Free to start, no account, data stays on your phone.

Related: Gig worker tax deductions: the complete list · Best mileage tracker apps for gig drivers