Jury duty mileage is generally not taxable when the court pays it as a separate reimbursement for your travel costs. The daily attendance fee is taxable and must be reported on your federal return, but a mileage allowance calculated on round-trip distance to the courthouse functions as repayment of an expense you incurred, not compensation for your time. The split between those two payments is what decides the tax question.
How Courts Split Your Jury Pay
Courts pay jurors in two buckets. The first is an attendance fee, a flat daily rate for showing up. In federal court that fee is $50 per day.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1871 – Fees State courts set their own rates.
The second bucket is expense reimbursement. Federal courts pay a mileage allowance based on round-trip distance between your home and the courthouse at a per-mile rate set by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1871 – Fees Some courts also cover parking, tolls, and meals, and jurors kept overnight may receive a subsistence allowance for lodging and food.
The federal statute reinforces the divide: attendance fees sit in one subsection and travel allowances in another, treated as fundamentally different types of payments.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1871 – Fees That statutory separation is why courts typically leave the mileage portion out of the taxable amount they report to you at year-end.
When Mileage Reimbursement Could Still Be Taxable
Not every court handles the split cleanly. Some smaller state courts issue a single lump-sum payment without breaking out the fee from the mileage. If that happens and the court reports the full amount as taxable income, you generally have to report whatever appears on the tax form you receive.
Check the payment breakdown on any documentation the court provides. If mileage was paid separately and does not appear on your 1099, you do not need to add it to your taxable income.
Reporting the Taxable Part of Your Jury Pay
The attendance fee is taxable, no matter how small. The IRS treats it as “other income” you must include on your return even if you never receive a tax form for it.2Internal Revenue Service. Publication 525 – Taxable and Nontaxable Income There is no exemption for low amounts or short service, and the rule applies to both federal and state court fees.
Report the fee on Schedule 1 (Form 1040). The 2025 form has a dedicated line: Line 8h, “Jury duty pay.”3Internal Revenue Service. Schedule 1 (Form 1040) 2025 – Additional Income and Adjustments to Income Enter the compensation the court paid you for service; do not include mileage or other expense reimbursements that were paid separately.
If your total jury payments reach $600 or more in a calendar year, the court is required to send you Form 1099-MISC reporting the amount as other income.4Internal Revenue Service. About Form 1099-MISC, Miscellaneous Information Below $600 you likely will not get a form, but the income is still reportable.
If You Turned Your Jury Pay Over to Your Employer
Some employers keep paying your regular salary during jury service on the condition that you hand over the attendance fee. When that happens, you report the full jury pay as income on Line 8h and then claim a matching deduction on Line 24a of Schedule 1, which is designated for jury duty pay remitted to an employer.3Internal Revenue Service. Schedule 1 (Form 1040) 2025 – Additional Income and Adjustments to Income The deduction cancels out the income so you are not taxed on money you did not keep.
This deduction is available whether you take the standard deduction or itemize. Keep a pay stub notation or receipt from your employer showing the amount you turned over in case the IRS asks.
You Cannot Deduct Your Own Unreimbursed Jury Costs
If you drove to the courthouse, paid for parking, or bought your own meals and the court did not reimburse you, there is no federal deduction for those out-of-pocket costs. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended the miscellaneous itemized deduction category that once covered them starting in 2018, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 made the elimination permanent. For most jurors the impact is small, but on a long trial without full expense reimbursement it is a real gap.