DoorDash mileage deduction: which miles count
The miles from a pickup to the customer and on to the next order count. The drives to your first pickup and home from your last drop-off are a question Publication 463 does not answer for delivery apps. The rules, the 2026 rates, the log to keep and a year worked through.
If you deliver for DoorDash as an independent contractor, your business miles go on Schedule C, line 9, at the IRS standard mileage rate for the day of each drive: 72.5¢ a mile through June 30, 2026 and 76¢ from July 1, plus business parking and tolls. The miles from a pickup to the customer and on to the next order count. The drives from home to your first pickup and back from your last drop-off are less simple, so log them either way. The mileage figure DoorDash emails you is the platform’s summary, not the log the IRS asks you to keep.
Why the miles are yours to deduct
DoorDash’s tax page says: “A 1099-NEC form summarizes Dashers’ earnings as independent contractors in the US.” (DoorDash) The IRS counts “Drive a car for booked rides or deliveries” as gig work, and an independent contractor files Schedule C, Profit or Loss from Business, with Schedule SE for self-employment tax (Manage taxes for your gig work). What is a 1099 contractor? covers the rest of what that changes.
On Schedule C the car shows up twice: what it cost on line 9, and its business, commuting and other miles in Part IV (car expenses on Schedule C). At the standard mileage rate, line 9 is your business miles times the rate, and the rate stands in for the cost of running the car. Publication 463: “You can’t deduct depreciation, lease payments, maintenance and repairs, gasoline (including gasoline taxes), oil, insurance, or vehicle registration fees.” Line 9 adds only business parking and tolls to the miles: “In addition to using the standard mileage rate, you can deduct any business-related parking fees and tolls.” Two other car costs are deducted outside line 9 even at the standard rate. The first is the business share of interest on a car loan: “if you are self-employed and use your car in your business, you can deduct that part of the interest expense that represents your business use of the car.” The second is the business share of personal property tax on the car. Both go on lines of their own in Schedule C.
2026 has two business rates. Notice 2026-10 set 72.5¢ a mile, and Announcement 2026-11 raised it to 76¢ for drives on or after July 1. Each drive is priced at the rate on its own date (the 2026 rates).
The standard rate is a choice, and it comes with a timing rule. Publication 463: “If you want to use the standard mileage rate for a car you own, you must choose to use it in the first year the car is available for use in your business. Then, in later years, you can choose to use either the standard mileage rate or actual expenses.” Some cars can’t use the rate at all. That covers a car you have depreciated with MACRS or any method other than straight line, or written off with a section 179 deduction or the special (bonus) depreciation allowance. It also covers a leased car you have deducted at actual cost. The other method, the business share of what the car actually cost, is in car expenses on Schedule C.
The miles between orders
This is the easy part. Publication 463 lists the transportation a business can deduct, and the first two items describe a dash:
- “Getting from one workplace to another in the course of your business or profession”
- “Visiting clients or customers.”
Even in its strictest case, someone with no regular office and no home office, Publication 463 still allows the miles between stops: “you can deduct the costs of going from one client or customer to another.” So the drive to a restaurant for a pickup, on to the customer, and from that drop-off to the next pickup is business. The same goes from a DoorDash drop-off to an Uber Eats pickup.
The first and last drive of the day
Commuting, the drive between home and your regular place of work, is never deductible: “You can’t deduct commuting expenses no matter how far your home is from your regular place of work.” Working on the way does not change it.
Publication 463 does not mention app-based delivery, so it does not say which of its rules fits the first and last drive of a dash. Two rules bear on them:
- 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.” Daily trips between home and temporary work sites inside it are “nondeductible commuting expenses.” In Example 3, with no regular office and no home office, “the location of your first business contact inside the metropolitan area is considered your office,” so the drive to it and the drive home from the last contact are commuting.
- A home office that is your principal place of business. “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.” Publication 587 says a home office qualifies as your principal place of business if you use it “exclusively and regularly for administrative or management activities of your trade or business,” and have “no other fixed location where you conduct substantial administrative or management activities” of it.
How they apply to a Dasher’s day is worth one question to a tax professional. Log those drives either way. A logged drive can be left out of the deduction later; one never logged has to be rebuilt from other evidence, if it can be. Commuting miles still go on the return, on Part IV, line 44b.
Waiting for orders, and stops of your own
Driving while you wait for an order. Publication 463 has no rule written for miles driven with no order to go to, such as heading toward a busier part of town. Log them as drives of their own, with a purpose that says what they were, and ask about them too.
A stop for yourself. Lunch between two orders does not break the business use: “Minimal personal use, such as a stop for lunch on the way between two business stops, isn’t an interruption of business use.” A detour is different. Between two work places, “if for some personal reason you don’t go directly from one location to the other, you can’t deduct more than the amount it would have cost you to go directly from the first location to the second.” Errands and days off are personal miles, the ones Part IV calls other.
| Drive | Does it count? | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| Home to the first pickup | Ask a tax professional; log it either way | Commuting, no regular place of work, or a home office |
| Pickup to the customer | Yes | Visiting clients or customers |
| Drop-off to the next pickup | Yes | One workplace to another |
| Lunch on the way between two orders | Yes, the drive still counts | Minimal personal use |
| A detour to the bank between orders | Only the direct route | Two places of work |
| Toward a busier area, with no order | No rule written for it; log it and ask | — |
| Last drop-off to home | Ask a tax professional; log it either way | As the first drive |
| Errands and days off | No | Personal |
DoorDash’s mileage number is not your log
DoorDash does put a number on your miles. Its tax page says it “will send mileage estimate emails by January 31 to US & Canada Dashers active during the year who dashed by Car and had on-delivery mileage.” That figure is the platform’s summary. The record Publication 463 asks for is yours.
Table 5-1 says what it holds: for each business use, the date, “Your business destination”, the business purpose and “the mileage for each business use”; for the car, “the total miles for the year”, its cost and “the date you started using it for business.” Write it down “at or near the time”: “If you maintain a log on a weekly basis that accounts for use during the week, the log is considered a timely kept record.” What the IRS wants in a mileage log goes through each rule.
A run of deliveries need not be logged order by order: Publication 463 lets “uninterrupted business use” go in “a single record.” One purpose line is enough when it says what the driving was for: Online for DoorDash — deliveries, or Online for Uber Eats — deliveries when the drive is for another app. What to write as the business purpose of a drive has more.
DoorDash’s records still help. Where a log falls short, Publication 463 counts delivery records as evidence: “Invoices of deliveries establish when you used the car for business.” DoorDash’s delivery records and its mileage estimate are supporting evidence, not the log.
A year, worked through
Andre delivers for DoorDash most evenings. In 2026 his log shows 6,200 business miles from January through June and 6,800 from July through December, all between pickups and drop-offs, and $138 of tolls and parking on deliveries:
| Period | Business miles | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1 – June 30 | 6,200 | 72.5¢ | $4,495.00 |
| July 1 – December 31 | 6,800 | 76¢ | $5,168.00 |
| Tolls and parking on deliveries | — | at cost | $138.00 |
| Line 9 | 13,000 | $9,801.00 |
The $9,801 is a deduction, not money back. It lowers the profit Andre is taxed on, and on Schedule C that profit is also what self-employment tax is figured on: 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare, 15.3% in all, on 92.35% of net earnings (Topic 554):
- $9,801.00 × 92.35% = $9,051.22
- $9,051.22 × 15.3% = $1,384.84
His line 9 takes about $1,385 off his self-employment tax, and income tax comes down too, at his own rate. (Social Security’s part stops at a yearly maximum set by law.)
His 2,000 miles from home to the first pickup and back from the last drop-off, 950 of them through June 30 and 1,050 from July 1, are logged as drives of their own and left out of the table. If his tax professional says they count, they add 950 × 72.5¢ = $688.75 and 1,050 × 76¢ = $798.00, or $1,486.75. If they are commuting, they go on line 44b. The mileage calculator splits a year at July 1 for you.
1099s and tips for 2026
The forms. A business that pays you $2,000 or more for your work in 2026 has to send you a 1099-NEC; through 2025 the threshold was $600 (Instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC). A payment app or online marketplace sends a 1099-K when it paid you “more than $20,000, and the total number of transactions is more than 200” (FS-2026-07). Neither form decides what you owe: “Taxpayers must report all income when they file their tax return regardless of whether they receive a Form 1099-K or other information return.”
The tips deduction. From tax year 2025 through 2028, eligible workers can deduct up to $25,000 of qualified tips per return a year from their taxable income. It covers the occupations on an IRS list made final in April 2026 (IR-2026-49); “Goods Delivery People” are on it, with “app/platform-based delivery person” among the examples (T.D. 10044). For the self-employed, the deduction cannot exceed the net income of the business the tips came from, and “tips must be reported on Form 1099-MISC, 1099-NEC, or 1099-K to be eligible for the deduction” (FS-2026-07). It phases out above $150,000 of modified adjusted gross income, $300,000 on a joint return. Only voluntary tips count, and to claim the deduction you must put your Social Security number on the return and, if you are married, file jointly (FS-2025-03).
A Dasher’s mileage log
- every dash as one record, or each drive in it on its own: the date, where you went, the miles and a purpose such as Online for DoorDash — deliveries
- the drive to the first pickup and home from the last drop-off, logged as drives of their own every day: business miles if they count, Part IV, line 44b if they are commuting
- personal detours kept apart, so only the direct route is claimed
- tolls and parking written down with the drive they belong to
- the car’s odometer at the start and end of the year, and the date it went into business use
- kept every week, not rebuilt at tax time
Where OdoTax fits
OdoTax notices the car moving and records the trip from the first mile, with no start button anywhere. The drive to your first pickup and the drive home are in the log whatever the answer to the commuting question turns out to be. If they are commuting, mark them Commute: they stay out of the deduction and are counted for Part IV.
Add Online for DoorDash — deliveries once as your own purpose, then pick it once in the app by pressing and holding Business while you sort drives. After that, a tap on Business files each drive with it. Every drive is priced at the IRS rate for its date, so 2026 adds up in two halves on its own.
The report is a PDF laid out by Schedule C, line 9 and the Part IV questions, with a CSV of the same drives. The free plan covers 35 drives a month. OdoTax keeps recording after that, but the 36th drive and every one after it arrives locked: it can’t be sorted and stays out of the totals and reports. Pro removes the limit.
The bottom line
Your business miles go on your own Schedule C, at the standard mileage rate, 72.5¢ a mile through June 30, 2026 and 76¢ from July 1, if your car can use it. Every mile between a pickup, the customer and the next order counts. The first and last drives of the day depend on rules not written for delivery apps, so log them and ask. DoorDash’s mileage estimate can back your log up; it does not replace it.
Sources
- DoorDash, Dasher Guide to Taxes — the 1099-NEC and Dashers as independent contractors, and the mileage estimate emails.
- IRS, Manage taxes for your gig work — deliveries as gig work; Schedule C and Schedule SE for an independent contractor.
- IRS, Publication 463: Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses (2025) — chapter 4, Transportation: the list of transportation expenses, Figure B, No regular place of work, Two places of work, Commuting expenses, Office in the home, Examples of deductible transportation (Example 3); Standard Mileage Rate: Choosing the standard mileage rate, Standard mileage rate not allowed, Interest, Personal property taxes, Parking fees and tolls; chapter 5, Table 5-1, Timely kept records, What if I Have Incomplete Records? and Car expenses under Separating and Combining Expenses.
- IRS, Publication 587: Business Use of Your Home (2025) — Principal Place of Business.
- IRS, Instructions for Schedule C (2025) — line 9 and Part IV, line 44b.
- IRS, Notice 2026-10 and Announcement 2026-11 — the 2026 business rates, 72.5¢ and then 76¢ from July 1.
- IRS, Topic 554, Self-employment tax — 12.4% and 2.9%, on 92.35% of net earnings, and the Social Security maximum.
- IRS, Instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC — the $2,000 threshold for payments made after 2025.
- IRS, FS-2026-07, The Working Families Tax Cuts: What gig economy workers should know — the 1099-K threshold, reporting all income, and the tips deduction: up to $25,000, 2025 through 2028, the net income limit and the 1099 requirement.
- IRS, IR-2026-49 and Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-18, T.D. 10044 — the final list of occupations that receive tips, with Goods Delivery People (TTOC 804).
- IRS, FS-2025-03, Tax deductions for working Americans and seniors — the income phase-out of the tips deduction, voluntary tips only, and the Social Security number and joint-return requirements.
This article is general information, not tax advice. Tax situations vary — check with a qualified professional before you file.
