Real estate agent mileage deduction: showings, listings and open houses
Drives to showings, listings and open houses are deductible. The drive to your own office usually is not, and whether the first and last drives of the day count depends on where you work from. The rule, the 2026 rates and a year worked through.
If you are paid on commission under a written agreement that says you will not be treated as an employee for tax purposes, your business driving goes on Schedule C, line 9: 72.5¢ a mile for drives up to June 30, 2026, 76¢ a mile from July 1, plus business parking and tolls at what you paid. Showings, listing appointments, open houses, inspections and closings count. Whether the drive from your home to the first stop of the day counts depends on where you work from: a brokerage office you work at regularly, a home office that qualifies as your principal place of business, or neither. That rule is the middle of this piece.
Why it is your deduction to take
The tax code backs this up: a qualified real estate agent “shall not be treated as an employee” (26 U.S.C. § 3508). The IRS lists licensed real estate agents among the statutory nonemployees, who “are treated as self-employed for all federal tax purposes” when two things are true:
- “Substantially all payments for their services as direct sellers or real estate agents are directly related to sales or other output, rather than to the number of hours worked”, and
- “Their services are performed under a written contract providing that they will not be treated as employees for federal tax purposes.”
If all or nearly all of your pay is commission and your written agreement with the brokerage says you will not be treated as an employee for federal tax purposes, you meet both. The brokerage reports what it paid you on a 1099-NEC (for $2,000 or more in a year) instead of a W-2, and your car costs go on your own Schedule C, against your own commission.
For agents as a group, the car is the largest category of business expenses. In the National Association of Realtors’ 2025 member profile, the median member’s business expenses were $8,010, and “the largest expense category continues to be the cost of operating a vehicle for business.” (NAR)
Three setups move the car off your own Schedule C:
- A W-2 from the brokerage, salary or commission. The deduction is not yours: Publication 463 says the cost of using your car as an employee “will no longer be allowed to be claimed as an unreimbursed employee travel expense.” What you need then is a log for your employer’s reimbursement.
- Your own S corporation, or an LLC taxed as one. The IRS treats an officer who works for the corporation and is paid for it as its employee, so the car is the corporation’s expense, usually paid back to you per mile under an accountable plan, not a line on your own Schedule C. A one-person LLC that has not chosen to be taxed as a corporation still files Schedule C, so nothing here changes for it.
- A team LLC with two or more members. The IRS treats it as a partnership: “A domestic LLC with at least two members is classified as a partnership for federal income tax purposes unless it files Form 8832 and elects to be treated as a corporation.” The business, the car included, goes on the partnership’s return rather than your Schedule C, so ask your tax professional how your agreement handles car costs.
Drives that count, and drives that don’t
A drive is business when it is for the business: a client, a property, a deal, the brokerage’s work.
The detour is Publication 463’s rule for any stop 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.”
Parking follows the same line. Publication 463 lets you add “any business-related parking fees and tolls” on top of the mileage rate, and says the opposite about parking at your own office: “Parking fees you pay to park your car at your place of work are nondeductible commuting expenses.” The garage at a downtown closing counts; your monthly spot at the brokerage does not.
The first and last drive of the day
Commuting is the drive between home and your regular place of work, and it is never deductible — however far it is, and even when you work on the way: “You can’t deduct commuting expenses even if you work during the commuting trip.” Your name on the car door doesn’t change it either. Advertising on your car “doesn’t change the use of your car from personal use to business use.”
For an agent, the question is what counts as a regular place of work. Publication 463, chapter 4, gives three answers, and which one applies to you decides whether the first and last legs of a day count.
You work at the brokerage regularly
If you work at the brokerage office on a regular basis, and your home office does not qualify (the next case), the office is your regular work location, so home to the office is commuting. But a house you show, list or hold open is somewhere you work for days or weeks, not years — what Publication 463 calls a temporary work location, one “realistically expected to last (and does in fact last) for 1 year or less.” And for those it says:
If you have one or more regular work locations away from your home and you commute to a temporary work location in the same trade or business, you can deduct the expenses of the daily round-trip transportation between your home and the temporary location, regardless of distance.
So a day that starts at a showing and ends at a listing appointment counts from your driveway to your driveway. A day that starts at the office counts from the office.
Your home office is your principal place of business
This case comes first when it applies: Publication 463’s chart of the commuting rules says “Don’t use this chart if your home is your principal place of business.” With a home office that qualifies, the commute rule hardly touches you: “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.” The brokerage office is another work location too, so home to the office counts as well.
Qualifying is a test of its own, in Publication 587. You must use the space “exclusively and regularly for administrative or management activities” of the business, and have “no other fixed location where you conduct substantial administrative or management activities.” A desk at the brokerage where you do your paperwork every morning can fail the second half. Having one that you choose not to use does not: Publication 587 says a home office still qualifies when “you have suitable space to conduct administrative or management activities outside your home, but choose to use your home office for those activities instead.”
Neither
No regular office and no qualifying home office is the strictest case. Publication 463’s examples of deductible transportation put it this way (Example 3): “the location of your first business contact inside the metropolitan area is considered your office. Transportation expenses between your home and this first contact are nondeductible commuting expenses. Transportation expenses between your last business contact and your home are also nondeductible commuting expenses.” Everything between the first stop and the last still counts.
The exception is a stop outside the metropolitan area where you live and normally 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.”
If your home office qualifies, use its row even if the brokerage gives you a desk:
If you are not sure which row you are in, that is the question to take to your tax professional, before the year’s log is built on the answer.
A year, worked through
Dana works at her brokerage’s office three mornings a week, and her home office does not qualify. In 2026 her log shows 5,400 business miles from January through June and 6,100 from July through December. The rate changed on July 1, so each half is priced at its own rate:
| Period | Business miles | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1 – June 30 | 5,400 | 72.5¢ | $3,915 |
| July 1 – December 31 | 6,100 | 76¢ | $4,636 |
| Parking at closings and showings | — | at cost | $180 |
| Tolls | — | at cost | $96 |
| Line 9 | 11,500 | $8,827 |
Her 1,900 miles between home and the office are not in it. They still go on the return: Schedule C, Part IV asks how many miles the car did for business, for commuting and for everything else. Car expenses on Schedule C walks through those lines, and the mileage calculator splits a year at July 1 for you.
The $8,827 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 — what a deduction is worth explains the arithmetic.
The standard rate is a choice, not the only way. Instead you can deduct the business share of what the car actually cost, and Publication 463 sets one condition that catches people later: “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.” If you start on actual costs, you cannot switch to the rate for that car afterwards.
The log an agent needs
Publication 463, Table 5-1, asks for the same four things for every business drive: the date, where you went, the business purpose and the miles. For the car itself it asks for what it cost and any improvements, “the date you started using it for business” and its total miles for the year. Write them down as you go: “A timely kept record has more value than a statement prepared later when there is generally a lack of accurate recall,” and a log kept weekly counts as timely.
For an agent the purpose is the line that does the work. It turns “drove 14 miles” into a drive that plainly belongs to a client or a listing:
| Drive | A purpose line |
|---|---|
| Showing | Showed 412 Oak St to the Marsh family |
| Listing appointment | Listing appointment — 88 Birch Ln (Walker) |
| Open house | Open house at 19 Cedar Ct — signs and hosting |
| Inspection | Buyer’s inspection, 412 Oak St (Marsh) |
| Closing | Closing at the title company — Marsh purchase |
| Broker tour | Broker tour, new Eastside listings |
Name the client or the property, and the line will still mean something in April. What to write as the business purpose of a drive has more on it.
An agent’s mileage log
- every business drive: date, from, to, miles and a purpose that names the client or the property
- commuting kept apart from business: home to the brokerage, unless your home office qualifies
- parking and tolls written down with the drive they belong to
- for each car you drive for work: what it cost, the date it went into business use, its odometer at the start and end of the year, and which drives were in it
- kept every week, not rebuilt from the calendar in April
Where OdoTax fits
OdoTax records each drive on its own, with both addresses and the miles; there is no start button. If you work at the brokerage regularly, name your home and the office as places of the kinds Home and Work, and drives between them are offered as Commute, kept out of the deduction and counted for Part IV. If your home office qualifies, leave the office as an ordinary place: those drives are business.
Add Showing, Listing appointment and Open house once as your own purposes, and a showing then gets its purpose in a couple of taps. The address is already on the drive, and a client’s name can go in its note. A drive you repeat between two work places, such as the office to the title company, can carry its purpose as a frequent drive.
The report is a PDF laid out by Schedule C, line 9 and the Part IV questions, with a CSV of the same drives, and you can email it to your accountant from the app. The free plan covers 35 drives a month; Pro removes the limit, at $7.99 a month or $74.99 a year.
The bottom line
If you are paid on commission as an independent contractor, your business driving is an expense on your own Schedule C. Every drive between showings, listings, open houses and closings counts. The first and last legs of the day count if you work at the brokerage regularly or have a home office that qualifies; with neither, they count only to a stop outside your metro area. Home to the office is a commute unless your home office qualifies. Write the purpose the same week, and price each half of 2026 at its own rate.
Sources
- 26 U.S. Code § 3508 — a qualified real estate agent is not treated as an employee.
- IRS, Statutory Nonemployees — licensed real estate agents, and the two conditions for being treated as self-employed.
- IRS, Publication 463: Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses — chapter 4, Transportation: Figure B, Commuting expenses, Parking fees, Advertising display on car, Temporary work location, No regular place of work, Two places of work, Office in the home, Examples of deductible transportation (Example 3), Car Expenses (the cost of using your car as an employee), Choosing the standard mileage rate, Parking fees and tolls; chapter 5, Table 5-1 and Timely kept records; chapter 6, Accountable Plans.
- IRS, Publication 587: Business Use of Your Home — Principal Place of Business, Administrative or management activities.
- IRS, Instructions for Schedule C — line 9 and Part IV, line 44b, commuting miles.
- IRS, Instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC — the $2,000 reporting threshold for payments made after 2025.
- IRS, S corporation employees, shareholders and corporate officers and Single member limited liability companies.
- IRS, Notice 2026-10 and Announcement 2026-11 — the 2026 business rates, 72.5¢ and then 76¢ from July 1.
- National Association of Realtors, Income Steady, Even as Market Slows: 2025 Member Trends — median gross income and business expenses, and the vehicle as the largest category.
This article is general information, not tax advice. Tax situations vary — check with a qualified professional before you file.
