Commuting vs. Business Miles: Which Drives Can You Deduct?
Commuting miles aren't deductible, but business miles are. Here's exactly where the IRS draws the line, plus the home-office and gig-driver exceptions.
The difference comes down to one question: does the trip have a business purpose beyond simply getting to work? Driving from home to your regular workplace is commuting, and it's never deductible. Driving between job sites, to clients, or to a temporary work location is a business mile, and at the 2026 IRS rate of 72.5 cents per mile, it's money back at tax time. Getting the two straight is one of the most common ways people either lose deductions or overclaim them.
What counts as commuting (not deductible)
The IRS treats the trip between your home and your regular place of business as a personal expense, no matter how far it is. That includes:
- Home to your main office or workplace, and back
- Stopping for coffee or running a personal errand on the way
- The first drive of the day to your usual work location
It doesn't matter if you take work calls in the car or the commute is two hours. If the trip is fundamentally about getting to your regular workplace, it's commuting.
What counts as a deductible business mile
Business miles are trips driven for work once you're already on the job, or that don't involve a regular commute at all:
- Driving between two work locations in the same day
- Trips to meet clients, customers, or vendors
- Driving to a temporary work location (a site you expect to work at for a year or less) outside your normal area
- Errands for the business, like a supply run or a bank deposit
For the rules on the rate itself, see how the mileage deduction works and the 2026 IRS mileage rate.
The home-office exception
This is the big one. If your home is your principal place of business, the commuting rule mostly disappears. Trips from your home office to other work locations, clients, or job sites become deductible business miles, because you're traveling from one workplace to another rather than commuting to a regular office.
How it works for gig drivers
Rideshare and delivery drivers don't have a regular workplace, so the commute concept works differently. Generally, your business miles begin once you're online and available and run through your last drop-off, including the miles between rides or deliveries. The drive from home to the area where you start, and the drive home after you go offline, are still treated as personal commuting. We cover this in detail in the gig driver mileage and tax guides.
Track them separately, automatically
The only way to defend your business miles is to keep them cleanly separated from your commute, with a contemporaneous log. Smart Miles detects every drive automatically and lets you classify each one as business or personal with a swipe, so your commute never sneaks into your deduction and no business mile gets missed. Want to see what your business miles are worth? Run the 1099 tax calculator.
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