IRS Mileage Deduction Calculator (2026)

The 2026 rates — and why there are two of them

The IRS normally sets standard mileage rates once, in December, for the following calendar year. Notice 2026-10 did exactly that: 72.5 cents per mile for business (up 2.5 cents from 2025), 20.5 cents for medical and for Armed Forces moving, and 14 cents for charitable driving.

Then fuel prices moved. In Announcement 2026-11, published in Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-29 on July 13, 2026, the IRS revised the rates upward for the second half of the year — the same mid-year adjustment it made in 2022 and in 2011 and 2008 before that. From July 1, 2026, business miles are worth 76 cents and medical and moving miles are worth 23.5 cents. The charitable rate does not move, because unlike the others it is fixed by statute rather than set by the IRS.

Practically, this means your 2026 return needs your miles split into two buckets. If you have been logging by date, the split is trivial. If you have only a total, the calculator's full-year option divides your miles evenly between the two rates, giving a blended 74.25 cents per business mile — a reasonable approximation for someone who drove steadily, but not a substitute for real records.

Standard mileage vs. actual expenses

There are two ways to deduct a car used for business, and you must pick one per vehicle. The standard mileage rate multiplies your business miles by the IRS rate and covers everything the car costs to run: gas, oil, tires, repairs, insurance, registration and depreciation. The actual expense method adds up what you really spent on all of that, then deducts the business-use percentage of the total.

For high-mileage, low-cost vehicles — the classic rideshare or delivery setup, a paid-off sedan or a hybrid running 25,000 miles a year — the standard rate almost always wins, and it wins by a lot, because the rate is calibrated to an average vehicle rather than an efficient one. For an expensive truck or SUV driven relatively few business miles, actual expenses often produce a bigger number, especially in the first year when bonus depreciation is available.

The choice has a lock-in effect worth knowing before you file. If you want the option to switch methods later, you must use the standard mileage rate in the first year the car is in service. Start with actual expenses and you are stuck with actual expenses for that vehicle for as long as you own it. Also note that a few costs sit outside both methods and are separately deductible either way: parking fees and tolls incurred for business, plus the business share of state and local property tax on the vehicle and of loan interest if you are self-employed.

• Standard mileage: miles × the IRS rate. Simple, audit-friendly, usually better above ~15,000 business miles.
• Actual expenses: business-use percentage of gas, maintenance, insurance, depreciation, lease payments.
• Deductible under both methods: business parking and tolls.
• Use standard mileage in year one if you want the freedom to switch methods later.
• You cannot use the standard rate if you claimed a Section 179 deduction or MACRS depreciation on that vehicle, or if you operate five or more cars at the same time.

What counts as a business mile — and what does not

The rule that costs people the most money is that commuting is never deductible. Driving from home to a regular place of work is personal, no matter how far it is or how much you resent it. But the gig economy has an important wrinkle: if your home is your principal place of business — which it is for most rideshare drivers, couriers and freelancers who administer the business from home — then the trip from home to your first business stop is a business mile, not a commute.

For app-based drivers, the practical test is whether the app is on and you are available for work. Driving toward a busy zone with the app on, driving between deliveries, and driving to pick up a passenger are all business miles. Driving home at the end of the shift with the app off is generally a commute, which is why many drivers keep the app running until they are home.

Other clearly deductible categories: travel to a client site or job, trips to the bank or post office for the business, driving to buy supplies, going to a business conference or a client meal, and travel between two work locations on the same day. Errands mixed into a business trip do not disqualify the trip, but the personal detour miles are not deductible.

• Deductible: between clients or deliveries, to a temporary work site, to pick up supplies, to the bank for business, home to first stop when home is your principal place of business.
• Not deductible: home to a regular workplace, personal errands, the personal portion of a mixed trip, driving for a W-2 job that your employer reimburses.
• Medical miles: only deductible as an itemized deduction, and only for the part of total medical costs above 7.5% of AGI.
• Moving miles: since 2018 available only to active-duty Armed Forces moving under orders — and, under the 2026 guidance, certain members of the intelligence community.
• Charity miles: itemized deduction only, and only for driving in service of a qualified organization — not for volunteering your commute.

How to keep a mileage log that survives an audit

Mileage is a heavily audited deduction precisely because it is large and easy to overstate. The IRS wants contemporaneous records: for each trip, the date, the destination, the business purpose and the miles. A reconstruction written in April from memory is the weakest possible evidence, and taxpayers lose these cases regularly.

The efficient answer is an automatic tracking app. Everlance, Stride, MileIQ, Hurdlr and Gridwise all run in the background, detect drives, and let you swipe each one as business or personal — then export an IRS-format report at year end. Stride is free and aimed squarely at gig workers; the others have free tiers with trip caps. Whichever you choose, the important habit is classifying trips weekly rather than letting a thousand unclassified drives pile up.

Two records make everything else easier: photograph your odometer on January 1 and December 31. Total annual mileage is the denominator for your business-use percentage, and having it documented turns a contested deduction into an arithmetic one. If you use the platform's own mileage report — Uber and DoorDash both provide one — understand that it typically captures only on-trip miles and misses the driving you did between requests, which is usually 30-40% of a shift. Your own log will be larger, and legitimately so.

What the deduction is actually worth

A mileage deduction is not a credit — it reduces taxable income rather than tax owed. But for self-employed people it does double duty, because business miles come off Schedule C profit before self-employment tax is calculated. That adds an effective 14.13% (15.3% applied to 92.35% of profit) on top of whatever your income tax bracket saves you.

The table below uses the blended full-year 2026 business rate of 74.25 cents and a 22% marginal bracket. A 22% filer is really saving about 36% of the deduction once self-employment tax is counted — which is why mileage is worth tracking obsessively.

IRS standard mileage rate history, 2021-2026

The business rate has risen 36% since 2021, tracking fuel costs and vehicle depreciation. Two of those six years needed a mid-year correction, both driven by fuel spikes. The charitable rate has been frozen at 14 cents since 1998 because Congress, not the IRS, sets it — a gap that widens every year.

Use the historical rates below if you are amending a prior return or catching up on late filings; you must apply the rate in effect when the miles were driven, not the current one.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• IRS — Standard Mileage Rates
• IRS — 2026 business standard mileage rate at 72.5 cents (Notice 2026-10)
• IRS — Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-29 (Announcement 2026-11)
• IRS — Self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare)
• IRS — Tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2026 (Rev. Proc. 2025-32)

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