Home office and mileage: when the first drive of the day counts

If you work for yourself and your home office qualifies as your principal place of business, the drive from home to your first client of the day, and back from the last one, is business mileage. It goes on Schedule C, line 9, at 72.5¢ a mile through June 30, 2026 and 76¢ from July 1. Without a qualifying office or another regular place of work, those two drives are usually commuting, and only the drives between clients count.

This piece is for people who file Schedule C: consultants, cleaners, photographers, tradespeople, home health aides paid on a 1099, real estate agents. An employee cannot deduct unreimbursed work driving on a federal return, apart from a few groups such as Armed Forces reservists. Notice 2026-10 says the 2025 tax law “made permanent the disallowance” of miscellaneous itemized deductions, “including unreimbursed employee travel expenses.”

Why the drive from home is usually commuting

Driving between home and your main or regular place of work is commuting, and Publication 463, the IRS guide to car expenses, is plain about it: “You can’t deduct commuting expenses no matter how far your home is from your regular place of work. You can’t deduct commuting expenses even if you work during the commuting trip.”

If you work at clients’ places and have no office anywhere, the publication picks your office for you. In Example 3 under Examples of deductible transportation, with no regular office and no office at home, “the location of your first business contact inside the metropolitan area is considered your office.” The drives from home to that contact and from the last contact back home are, in its words, “nondeductible commuting expenses.”

The drives from one client to the next still count. On a day with one or two clients, though, the first and last legs can be most of the miles.

The home office rule

The same chapter of Publication 463 has the rule that changes this:

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.

Its Example 2 applies it to clients: “You can deduct the cost of round-trip transportation between your qualifying home office and your client’s or customer’s place of business.” Figure B, the publication’s chart of the commuting rules, is not for this case: “Don’t use this chart if your home is your principal place of business.”

The Schedule C instructions list this drive among those that are not commuting (Part IV, line 44b), and name the test:

Your home is your principal place of business under section 280A(c)(1)(A) (for purposes of deducting expenses for business use of your home) and the travel is to another work location in the same trade or business, regardless of whether that location is regular or temporary and regardless of distance.

Four things follow.

• The test comes from the home office deduction. Section 280A(c)(1)(A) is the tax code’s rule for a home office that is your principal place of business, and Publication 587 explains it. The drive rule turns on the office qualifying.
• Only the principal place of business. Publication 587 has other ways for a home office to qualify for its own deduction, such as a room where you regularly meet clients. The drive rule names only this one.
• Regular clients count. The words “regular or temporary” mean a client you have seen every week for years counts the same as a new one.
• Only for the same business. The rule covers drives to “another work location in the same trade or business.” A home office for your weekend photography business does not make the weekday drive to an employer’s office business miles; that drive is still commuting. If you run two businesses, Publication 587 tests the office “separately for each of your trade or business activities.”

When a home office is your principal place of business

Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home, starts with two things to weigh: “The relative importance of the activities performed at each place where you conduct business” and “The amount of time spent at each place where you conduct business.” If your paid work happens at clients’ places, both can point away from home. That does not settle it for an office used for the business’s paperwork. The publication goes on to give two requirements, and an office that meets them qualifies even if the paid work is done somewhere else:

Your home office will qualify as your principal place of business if you meet the following requirements.

• You use it exclusively and regularly for administrative or management activities of your trade or business.
• You have no other fixed location where you conduct substantial administrative or management activities of your trade or business.

The Form 8829 instructions give the same two requirements, and the rule behind them is section 280A(c)(1) of the tax code.

Its examples of administrative or management activities are “Billing customers, clients, or patients”, “Keeping books and records”, “Ordering supplies”, “Setting up appointments” and “Forwarding orders or writing reports.” Admin done “at places that are not fixed locations of your business, such as in a car or a hotel room” does not count against the office.

Example 1 under Principal Place of Business is Sid, a self-employed plumber who spends most of the time at customers’ homes and offices, with a small office at home used “exclusively and regularly for the administrative or management activities of the plumbing business, such as phoning customers, ordering supplies, and keeping the books.” A bookkeeping service does the billing. The verdict: “Sid’s home office qualifies as a principal place of business for deducting expenses.”

Exclusive use

“To qualify under the exclusive use test, you must use a specific area of your home only for your trade or business.” It does not have to be a whole room: “The area used for business can be a room or other separately identifiable space. The space does not need to be marked off by a permanent partition.” But it fails “if you use the area in question both for business and for personal purposes,” like the publication’s attorney who writes briefs in a den the family also uses for recreation.

So the kitchen table, where the family also eats, does not qualify, and neither does a laptop on the sofa. A desk in the corner of a room can, if that corner is used for the business and nothing else.

Regular use

“Incidental or occasional business use is not regular use,” and the publication has you consider “all facts and circumstances.” A space you sit in now and then to pay an invoice does not pass.

No other fixed place for the paperwork

This is where a second workplace can fail the test, but only if the paperwork happens there. If you have a shop, a rented studio or a desk at someone else’s office, and you do the scheduling and the books there, the office at home does not qualify this way. Doing the work itself there is fine. Publication 587 says the office still qualifies if “You conduct substantial nonadministrative or nonmanagement business activities at a fixed location outside your home,” if you “occasionally conduct minimal administrative or management activities” there, or if you “have suitable space to conduct administrative or management activities outside your home, but choose to use your home office for those activities instead.” When the office at home qualifies, the shop or studio is just another work location, and the drive from home to it counts too. For real estate agents with a desk at the brokerage, the realtor piece goes through it.

Three cases, side by side

Publication 463 has an answer for each setup:

Where you work from	Home to the first stop, last stop to home	Between stops
A home office that is your principal place of business	Business, to any work location in the same business, regular or temporary, however far	Business
A regular workplace away from home, such as a shop or a studio, and no home office that qualifies	Business to a temporary work location, however far; home to the regular workplace is commuting	Business
Neither	Commuting, unless the stop is a temporary work site outside the metropolitan area where you live and normally work	Business

If you have both, the first row wins. With a home office that qualifies, home to your shop or studio is business too: the Schedule C instructions count travel to another work location in the same business “regardless of whether that location is regular or temporary.”

A temporary work location is one where the work is “realistically expected to last (and does in fact last) for 1 year or less.” A client you have worked for every week for years, or expect to keep for more than a year, is not one. In the second and third rows, the drive from home to that client is commuting, and only a qualifying home office makes it business. With no regular place of work, Publication 463 allows only “daily transportation costs between home and a temporary work site outside that metropolitan area.”

A year, worked both ways

Rosa runs a cleaning business on her own. Her spare bedroom is her office and nothing else: she books clients, sends invoices, orders supplies and keeps the books there, and nowhere else. She uses the standard mileage rate. A typical day is home to the first client, 9 miles; on to the second, 6 miles; and back home, 11 miles. The first and last legs are 20 of its 26 miles.

In 2026 her log shows 96 such days from January through June and 100 from July through December:

• January to June: 96 × 20 = 1,920 miles to and from home, and 96 × 6 = 576 between clients.
• July to December: 100 × 20 = 2,000 miles to and from home, and 100 × 6 = 600 between clients.

With her office qualifying, all of it is business. If it did not qualify, with no other regular workplace and every client inside her metropolitan area, the first and last legs would be commuting:

On Schedule C	Her office qualifies	It does not
Business miles, January 1 – June 30	1,920 + 576 = 2,496	576
Business miles, July 1 – December 31	2,000 + 600 = 2,600	600
Line 9	2,496 × 72.5¢ = $1,809.60, plus 2,600 × 76¢ = $1,976.00: $3,785.60	576 × 72.5¢ = $417.60, plus 600 × 76¢ = $456.00: $873.60
Line 44a, business miles	5,096	1,176
Line 44b, commuting miles	0	3,920

The difference is the first and last drives: 1,920 × 72.5¢ = $1,392.00, plus 2,000 × 76¢ = $1,520.00, which is $2,912.00 of deduction for the year. The mileage calculator splits a year at July 1 for you.

That is a deduction, not money back. It lowers the profit she is taxed on, and on Schedule C that profit is also what self-employment tax is figured on. The office’s own costs are a separate deduction, on line 30, figured on Form 8829 or with the simplified method.

What to log, and where it goes

Log every drive that starts or ends at home, whichever case you are in. For each business drive, Publication 463’s Table 5-1 asks for the date, your business destination, the business purpose and the miles; for the car, it also asks for the total miles for the year. What the IRS wants in a mileage log has the detail.

When your office qualifies, the first and last legs are business miles: priced on line 9 and counted on line 44a. When it does not, they are commuting miles on line 44b, unless one of the other two cases in the table makes them business. Part IV splits the car’s year into business, commuting and other miles. Car expenses on Schedule C walks through those lines.

For the office itself, Publication 587 says “You do not have to use a particular method of recordkeeping,” but your records must show “The part of your home you use for business” and that you use it exclusively and regularly as your principal place of business.

The bottom line

A drive from home to a client is commuting unless something makes it business. A home office that is your principal place of business does: a space used only and regularly for the business’s admin work, with no other fixed place where you do substantial admin work for it. With it, the first and last drives of the day are business. Without one, the first and last drives count only in the cases the table shows. Log them either way.

Sources

• IRS, Publication 463: Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses (2025) — chapter 4, Transportation: Figure B, Temporary work location, No regular place of work, Commuting expenses, Office in the home, Examples of deductible transportation (Examples 2 and 3); chapter 5, Table 5-1.
• IRS, Publication 587: Business Use of Your Home (2025) — Exclusive Use, Regular Use, Principal Place of Business, Administrative or management activities (Example 1, Sid), Place To Meet Patients, Clients, or Customers, Recordkeeping.
• 26 U.S. Code § 280A — subsection (c)(1): a home office as the principal place of business, and the rule for administrative or management activities.
• IRS, Instructions for Schedule C (Form 1040) (2025) — line 9, line 30, and Part IV, line 44b: travel that is not commuting.
• IRS, Instructions for Form 8829 (2025) — Principal Place of Business: the same test as in Publication 587.
• IRS, Notice 2026-10 — the 72.5¢ business rate for 2026, and the permanent end of the itemized deduction for unreimbursed employee travel.
• IRS, Announcement 2026-11, I.R.B. 2026-29 — the 76¢ business rate from July 1, 2026.

This article is general information, not tax advice. Tax situations vary — check with a qualified professional before you file.