The 2026 IRS Mileage Rate Is 72.5 Cents — But You Only Get It If You Keep the Log

The IRS has set the 2026 business standard mileage rate at 72.5 cents per mile, up 2.5 cents from 2025. If you drive for your business — to clients, job sites, suppliers, the post office, the bank — that number is quietly one of the most valuable lines on your tax return. And it comes with a condition that catches people every year: the deduction is only as good as the records you keep.

At 72.5 cents a mile, the math gets serious quickly. Drive 5,000 business miles and that’s a $3,625 deduction. Drive 12,000 and it’s $8,700. For a lot of small business owners and self-employed people, mileage is among the single biggest write-offs they’re entitled to. It’s also among the most commonly lost — not because people don’t drive, but because they don’t log it.

What the New Rate Covers

Starting January 1, 2026, the 72.5-cent rate applies to business use of cars, vans, pickups, and panel trucks — gasoline, diesel, hybrid, and fully electric alike. The standard mileage rate is designed to cover the deductible cost of operating the vehicle for business, so you don’t have to itemize gas, maintenance, insurance, and depreciation separately.

Using the standard rate is optional; you can instead calculate actual vehicle expenses. But there are rules about switching. If you own the vehicle, you must use the standard mileage rate in the first year the car is available for business to keep the option open in later years. For a leased vehicle, you must use the standard rate for the entire lease period. Either way, you need your mileage recorded to make the comparison and claim the deduction.

The Part That Trips People Up: “Contemporaneous” Records

Here’s the requirement that turns a valid deduction into a disallowed one: the IRS expects contemporaneous records — meaning you record trips as they happen, not reconstruct them from memory in April. For each business trip, your log should show:

• Date of the trip
• Miles driven
• Destination
• Business purpose

A spreadsheet, a dedicated app, or even a handwritten log all satisfy the requirement, as long as the records are accurate and complete. What doesn’t satisfy it is a guess. “I probably drove about 8,000 miles this year” is not a record, and if questioned, it won’t hold up — even if you really did drive those miles.

This is why mileage is the deduction people most often earn and least often claim. The driving is real. The documentation isn’t. And the gap between the two is thousands of dollars.

Build the Habit Now, Not in April

The businesses that capture the full mileage deduction treat it as a two-minute habit: after a business trip, log the date, the miles, where you went, and why. Kept alongside the rest of your bookkeeping, that log sits right next to your income and expenses, so at tax time your total business miles are already summed and ready to multiply by 72.5 cents.

That’s also the safest way to handle it. A mileage log that lives in the same place as your other business records — dated, categorized, and complete — is exactly the kind of documentation that makes the deduction defensible.

Keep Your Mileage Where the Rest of Your Books Live

The easiest way to never lose a mile is to track it in the same system that already holds your income and expenses. Our Small Business Bookkeeping Spreadsheet gives every business cost — including vehicle and travel expenses — a home with the date, amount, and IRS Schedule C category the deduction requires. Its expense tracker and tax summary tab keep your records organized and totaling automatically across nine tabs and 836+ formulas, in Excel or Google Sheets. Pair it with a simple per-trip mileage habit and the 72.5-cent deduction stops being the one that got away.

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