Mileage Deduction Calculator

How Mileage Tax Deductions Are Calculated

You can deduct vehicle use for business, for medical travel, for charity, and for a military move. The simple way is the standard mileage rate, which rolls fuel, wear, insurance and depreciation into one number per mile.

Deduction Formula: Deduction = Miles Driven × IRS Standard Rate

The rates, and why the box above is a free-text field:

The business and medical rates are recalculated every year and announced in a notice each December, so the current year’s figure will not be in any article written before then. Look it up and type it in. The charitable rate is different: it is fixed in the tax code at 14 cents and has not moved since 1998, which is why volunteers driving for a food bank deduct less per mile than someone driving to a doctor.

Read this before you count a single mile. Commuting is not deductible. Driving from home to your regular place of work is personal, however far it is and however much you resent it. What counts is travel between work locations, out to a client, to a supplier, to the bank for the business, or from a qualifying home office to anywhere work-related. A home office that meets the exclusive-use test turns your driveway into the start of a deductible trip, which is the single biggest reason to claim one.

Worked Example: A freelance consultant drives 8,400 miles to client sites at the 2025 rate of 70 cents.

• Deduction = 8,400 × $0.70 = $5,880
• In the 22% bracket that saves $1,294 of income tax
• It also cuts self-employment tax by 14.13%, another $831
• Total worth: $2,125, or about 36 cents of every deducted dollar

That second line is the one people miss. A business mileage deduction goes on Schedule C, so it reduces the profit that self-employment tax is charged on. A medical or charitable mileage deduction goes on Schedule A instead and does nothing for self-employment tax, and only helps at all if you itemize.

The Actual Expense Method: Deduction = (Business Miles ÷ Total Miles) × Total Vehicle Costs

Total costs mean everything: fuel, insurance, repairs, tyres, registration, lease payments, and depreciation. This usually wins for an expensive vehicle driven few miles, and loses for a cheap reliable one driven a lot. You may switch from standard to actual later, but not the other way round if you started with actual and claimed accelerated depreciation.

Record-Keeping:

• Date, destination, business purpose and miles for every trip. A contemporaneous log is what the IRS asks for, and a reconstruction after the fact is what gets disallowed.
• A logging app records it automatically from your phone’s location.
• Keep it for at least 3 years.
• You cannot use the standard rate on a vehicle you have already claimed accelerated depreciation on.