The miles you drive from home to your regular workplace are not deductible on your federal tax return. The IRS classifies that trip as personal commuting no matter the distance, the traffic, or whether transit exists. Deducting miles driven to work only becomes possible when the driving qualifies as business travel rather than a commute, and even then, only certain taxpayers can claim it. For most W-2 employees, the deduction has been unavailable since 2018 and is now permanently off the table. For self-employed workers, it remains one of the most valuable write-offs on a Schedule C.
Why the Daily Commute Isn’t Deductible
The IRS treats the trip between your home and your regular place of work as a personal expense. It doesn’t matter whether you drive five miles or fifty, whether you own the car or lease it, or whether you’d rather be doing anything else. Commuting costs are personal, full stop.
Business travel is a different category. It means driving between two points of business activity during the workday: from your office to a client meeting, between two job sites, or to a supplier to pick up materials. The trip has to serve your trade or business, not just deliver you to the place where work happens.
When Driving From Home Does Count
Two situations turn a trip that starts at your house into deductible business travel.
Temporary Work Locations
If you have a regular place of work, you can deduct the round trip from home to a temporary work location in the same trade or business, no matter the distance. The assignment has to be realistically expected to last one year or less, and it actually has to end within a year. The moment your expectation shifts from short-term to indefinite, the deduction stops from that date forward.
People stumble on the “expected to last” part. An 18-month project that wraps up in 10 doesn’t retroactively become temporary if you expected the long timeline on day one. The IRS looks at what you knew when the work started.
A Qualifying Home Office
If your home office is your principal place of business, driving from home to any client, customer, or work site in that same business is a business trip. You’re going from one business location to another, so the commuting rule never applies.
To qualify, the space has to be used exclusively and regularly for administrative or management work, and you can’t have another fixed location where you handle substantial admin for the business. You don’t need to see clients there. A contractor who spends the day on job sites but does scheduling, invoicing, and bookkeeping at a home desk can qualify, and that designation effectively erases the commuting problem.
What W-2 Employees Can Actually Deduct
For most employees, the answer at the federal level is nothing. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated the deduction for unreimbursed employee business expenses starting in 2018. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on August 5, 2025, made that elimination permanent. There is no sunset date.
A narrow group of employees can still deduct qualifying business mileage: Armed Forces reservists, qualified performing artists, and fee-basis state or local government officials. They report the expense on Form 2106 and take it as an adjustment to income on Schedule 1, not as an itemized deduction. Everyone else has to look elsewhere.
Push for an Accountable Plan
Since the federal deduction is closed to most employees, the practical move is a mileage reimbursement from your employer under an accountable plan. Reimbursements paid through an accountable plan stay off your W-2 and aren’t taxable income. The plan requires you to document the business purpose of each trip and return any amount that exceeds your actual expenses.
If your employer pays you for mileage without an accountable plan, that money gets rolled into your W-2 wages and taxed as ordinary income. You still can’t deduct the underlying expense, so the outcome is worse in every direction.
Check Your State Return
A handful of states still let W-2 employees deduct unreimbursed business expenses on the state return, using pre-2018 federal rules. The expense has to qualify as business travel rather than commuting, and it has to be ordinary and necessary for your job. If you drive for work without reimbursement, look up your state revenue department’s rules before assuming you’re shut out entirely.
What Self-Employed Drivers Can Deduct
Self-employed workers, including sole proprietors and independent contractors, deduct business mileage on Schedule C. The deduction reduces both income tax and self-employment tax, because both come off your net business profit. That’s why mileage is often the single most valuable line on a Schedule C return.
The same commuting rule applies in theory: driving from home to your one regular work location is a commute. In practice, most self-employed people run their admin from home, and a qualifying home office makes every business trip from the driveway deductible. Common examples include driving to a client, picking up supplies, meeting a subcontractor, attending a trade show, or making a delivery. A brief personal errand along a business route doesn’t disqualify the business portion, but a grocery stop on the way home from a client doesn’t convert your commute into a business trip either.
How to Calculate the Deduction
Self-employed taxpayers choose between two methods: the standard mileage rate or actual expenses. For 2026, the standard rate is 72.5 cents per mile. Fifteen thousand business miles come out to $10,875 before parking and tolls, which you can add on top.
Standard Mileage Rate
The IRS bundles fuel, maintenance, insurance, and depreciation into one per-mile number. You track business miles, multiply, and add parking and tolls. No fuel receipts, no repair invoices. For most people driving a reasonably efficient car, it produces a solid deduction with minimal paperwork.
Actual Expense Method
Actual expenses means deducting the business-use percentage of every cost tied to the vehicle: gas, oil, tires, repairs, insurance, registration, lease payments, and depreciation. You divide business miles by total miles to get your business-use percentage, then apply it to your total costs. This method often produces a larger deduction on an expensive vehicle, a high-mileage work truck, or a car with modest personal use. It also allows depreciation under MACRS or, for heavier vehicles, Section 179 expensing. The cost is real recordkeeping: receipts for every category, not just a mileage log.
The First-Year Choice Locks You In
If you use the standard mileage rate in the first year the vehicle goes into business service, you can switch between methods year to year afterward. If you use actual expenses that first year, you’re locked into actual expenses for that vehicle for as long as you own it. For a leased vehicle, choosing the standard rate binds you to it for the entire lease, including renewals. Choose the first-year method with the long term in mind.
Records You Need to Keep
The IRS wants contemporaneous records, meaning you log each trip near the time it happens rather than reconstructing the year at tax time. A mileage log, on paper or in an app, is the single most important document a self-employed driver maintains. In an audit, a detailed log is the difference between keeping the deduction and losing it.
For each business trip, capture four things:
- The date of the trip.
- The destination, such as a client name, office address, or job site.
- The business purpose: client meeting, supply pickup, delivery.
- The miles driven for that specific trip.
Record your odometer reading at the start and end of the year. Those totals give you the business-use percentage, and neither calculation method works without it. If you use the actual expense method, keep every receipt for fuel, repairs, insurance, registration, and lease payments, organized by category so year-end totals are straightforward.
Keep mileage logs and supporting documents for at least three years from the date you file the return, which is the general IRS assessment window. Longer is safer.