The deduction most drivers get wrong

Every driver hears “you can write off your mileage.” Almost nobody hears the part where you have to choose how — and the choice is worth real money, not a rounding error.

Two methods, one choice per vehicle

The IRS gives you two ways to deduct vehicle costs for gig work:

• Standard mileage rate. Track every business mile, multiply by the IRS rate for the year, done. No receipts for gas, no receipts for oil changes.
• Actual expenses. Track every real cost — gas, insurance, repairs, depreciation — then deduct the business-use percentage of the total.

You pick one per vehicle, and for most vehicles, once you pick actual expenses in year one you’re stuck with a less favorable depreciation method going forward. That’s the part that trips people up: this isn’t a decision you make once a year, it’s a decision that can lock in for as long as you drive that car.

Why most drivers default to mileage without checking

Standard mileage is simpler, and simple wins by default when you’re doing this at 11pm after a shift. But “simpler” and “better for you” aren’t the same thing. A driver in an older, cheap-to-run compact car is often better off on standard mileage. A driver in a newer vehicle with a car payment, full insurance, and real depreciation to claim can sometimes come out ahead on actual expenses — but only if the records exist to prove it.

That’s the actual rule: the better method is whichever one you can actually document. A theoretically-better deduction you can’t back up with records is worth nothing in an audit.

What the standard mileage rate is actually worth

For 2026, the IRS standard mileage rate is 72.5¢ per business mile — and there’s no cap on it. If the miles are legitimate business miles, all of them count, however many you drive:

Business miles/year	Deduction
10,000	$7,250
20,000	$14,500
26,000 (≈500/week)	$18,850
40,000	$29,000

That rate is built to cover gas, maintenance, insurance, and depreciation together — which is exactly why you can’t also deduct those same costs separately on top of it. Pick mileage, and mileage is the number.

What this means this week

Whichever method you land on, the deduction only exists on paper until you can back it up. A mileage log needs the date, start and end point, business purpose, and total miles for every trip — not a monthly guess reconstructed from memory in March.