If your employer reimburses your mileage, this article is not for you. This is for drivers deducting their own.

Every guide tells you to track your miles. Almost none of them tell you which miles the rules actually allow, and the gap sits at the two ends of your shift — the drive out and the drive home.

The short answer

The drive Deductible?
Home → first pickup No — commuting
Pickup → drop-off Yes
Drop-off → next pickup Yes
Repositioning between orders Yes
Last drop-off → home No — commuting
Home → first pickup, with a qualifying home office Yes

The passage that decides it

Publication 463 works through this exact situation. Not a version of it — this one:

"Example 3. You have no regular office and you don't have an office in your home. In this case, the location of your first business contact inside the metropolitan area is considered your office. Transportation expenses between your home and this first contact are nondeductible commuting expenses. Transportation expenses between your last business contact and your home are also nondeductible commuting expenses. While you can't deduct the costs of these trips, you can deduct the costs of going from one client or customer to another."

Read the middle sentence again. With no regular office and no home office, the IRS treats your first stop as your workplace. Driving to your workplace is what every commuter in the country does, and nobody deducts it.

What this costsA driver making a 12-mile round trip to their zone, 250 days a year, is logging 3,000 miles that are not deductible. At the 2026 rates that is roughly $2,200 of deduction that does not exist.

The one thing that changes it

The same publication, a few lines earlier:

"Office in the home. If you have an office in your home that qualifies as a principal place of business, you can deduct your daily transportation costs between your home and another work location in the same trade or business."

That is the whole exception. With a qualifying home office, the trip stops being home-to-work and becomes work-to-work, and the first and last drives of the day join the rest.

The weight sits on qualifies. Publication 587 decides it, and the test is not whether you own a desk. It turns on regular and exclusive use for the business and on the space being your principal place of business. A corner of the kitchen table where you also eat does not qualify, however much admin you do there.

For a driver who genuinely runs the business from home — accepting offers, reconciling statements, keeping the log — it is worth reading Publication 587 properly rather than assuming either answer.

The metropolitan area line

There is a second route, and it is narrower than people hope:

"No regular place of work. If you have no regular place of work but ordinarily work in the metropolitan area where you live, you can deduct daily transportation costs between home and a temporary work site outside that metropolitan area... You can't deduct daily transportation costs between your home and temporary work sites within your metropolitan area. These are nondeductible commuting expenses."

So driving to a zone two towns over, inside your metro area, is still commuting. Driving to a genuinely different metropolitan area is not. Most delivery work never leaves the metro area, which is why this rarely rescues anybody — but it is worth knowing if you take one-off work further out.

The other direction: your app undercounts

Having read this far you may conclude you have been claiming too much. Many drivers have. But most are also claiming too little, for a different reason.

Platform summaries generally count miles on an active delivery — from accepting the order to completing it. The publication allows more than that: going from one customer to another is deductible, and so is the repositioning you do while logged in between orders.

Source What it captures
Your app's year-end summary Miles on active deliveries only
What the rules allow First pickup through last drop-off, including between orders
What most drivers log Door to door, including both commutes

Three different numbers. Only the middle one is your deduction.

What an entry has to carry

2026 makes this sharper than usual, because there are two rates: 72.5 cents per mile through 30 June and 76 cents from 1 July. An undated total cannot be priced at either.

So each shift needs, at minimum:

  1. The date — because the date picks the rate.
  2. Where the business day started, meaning the first pickup, not your driveway.
  3. Where it ended — the last drop-off.
  4. Total business miles between those two points.
  5. Any trip outside the metro area, noted separately, because that one may reach back to your door.

That is five fields, once a shift. It is the difference between a number you can defend and a number you hope nobody asks about.

And if you have a qualifying home office

Log it the other way round: the day starts when you leave the house and ends when you return, because with a qualifying principal place of business those trips are between two work locations rather than to and from work.

Which means the single most valuable thing a driver can do with an evening is read Publication 587 and find out, definitively, which of those two logs is theirs.

Track it now. Thank yourself in April.

Common questions

Is the drive from my house to the hotspot deductible?
Generally no. Publication 463 gives this exact case: "You have no regular office and you don't have an office in your home. In this case, the location of your first business contact inside the metropolitan area is considered your office. Transportation expenses between your home and this first contact are nondeductible commuting expenses."
What about the drive home at the end of the night?
Same answer. The publication continues: "Transportation expenses between your last business contact and your home are also nondeductible commuting expenses."
So which miles do count?
The ones in between. "While you can't deduct the costs of these trips, you can deduct the costs of going from one client or customer to another." For a delivery driver that is every mile from the first pickup to the last drop-off, including driving between orders and repositioning while logged in.
Is there any way to make the first drive deductible?
One. Publication 463: "If you have an office in your home that qualifies as a principal place of business, you can deduct your daily transportation costs between your home and another work location in the same trade or business." Whether a home office qualifies is decided by Publication 587, not by having a desk.
What if I drive to a zone in the next city over?
That can change it. With no regular place of work, you can deduct daily transportation between home and a temporary work site outside your metropolitan area. Inside it, the publication is explicit: "These are nondeductible commuting expenses."
My app only counts miles on an active delivery. Is that my deduction?
No — it is usually less than your deduction. The app stops counting between orders, but driving from a drop-off to the next pickup is travel between customers, which the publication allows. Your own dated log is the record, not the app summary.
Does this mean I have been claiming too much?
Possibly, if you logged door to door. It also means most drivers claim too little in the other direction, by using the app's figure. Both are fixed by the same habit: a dated log that marks where the business day started and ended.

This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or financial advice. Consult a qualified tax professional about your situation.

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