Mileage log
The IRS allows a car deduction only for the miles you can prove, and a log is the simplest proof: for each business drive, its date, its miles, where you went and why. OdoTax records the first three on its own and turns the year into one report.
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The report OdoTax makes at tax time: the deduction by form, the drives by form, the trip log itself, and the questions Schedule C asks about the car.
Page 1 of 4 · Deduction by form
OdoTax records when and where you drove. Why is yours to add, and at tax time the year is one report.
OdoTax notices the car moving and records each drive from the first mile, with no start button to press.
The drives wait until you have a free minute. A route you drive often can be saved with its category and purpose, and files itself.
At tax time the year is one report, in the form the IRS asks for, ready for you or your accountant.
Four things for every business drive, and two for each car once a year.
Every rule, with the law and the IRS publication it comes from: What the IRS actually wants in a mileage log.
What does not countAnd what happens to it
Commuting. Driving between home and your regular place of work is personal, however far it is. Keep it in the log as commuting all the same: Schedule C asks for the year's miles split into business, commuting and other. A drive from home to a client or a temporary job site can be business; the cases are listed here.
A drive you cannot prove. Its deduction is not allowed, and no part of it can be allowed on an estimate instead. A penalty can come on top: 20% of the tax underpaid through negligence, and failing to keep adequate records counts as negligence. Schedule C asks you directly whether you have written evidence for the miles you claim.
Free template
For a car you drive without your phone, or the weeks until you start with OdoTax: a trip log, one line a drive, filled in while you still remember each one, and a year page for what Schedule C asks about each car.
Two pages, US Letter, landscape. Page one is the year for each vehicle, page two a trip log with 25 lines. Print as many trip pages as you need.
Open the PDFThe trip log's columns as a header row, for Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers: date, from, to, business purpose, odometer start and end, miles, parking and tolls.
Download the CSVWhy each column is there, and how to fill it in. Months already behind you are a different case: a log rebuilt after the fact.
Questions
Yes. The regulation names an account book, a diary, a log or trip sheets, and says a record of a car's business use kept with a logging program on a computer is an adequate record too. Paper, a spreadsheet and an app all count, as long as each drive has its date, miles, destination and purpose. Paper, a spreadsheet and an app compared.
At or near the time, while you still remember it. That does not mean the same day: a log filled in once a week counts. A list written the next April is not an adequate record; it counts only as your own statement, as far as evidence from the time backs it up.
Not for each drive: nothing in the rules requires them. The simplest proof of a year's total miles, though, is the odometer on January 1 and on December 31. In OdoTax you add them under Settings, and the report shows each car's odometer at the start and the end of the period (how).
No. The rules look at each drive, so the weeks you logged still stand. The drives from the weeks you missed have to be proved some other way: your own detailed statement, backed by things you kept at the time, such as calendar entries, invoices or receipts.
A log rebuilt months later is not an adequate record, and the IRS does not take an estimate for car expenses. It can only count as your own statement, drive by drive, as far as other evidence from the time backs it up. Rebuilding is a right only when records were lost to something like a fire or a flood.
For a fee of $75 or more, yes: a receipt, a bill or similar evidence, unless none is readily available. Below $75, the entry in your log is the record. Parking at your regular place of work is part of the commute, and does not count.
At least 3 years from the date you file the return that claims the deduction (a return filed early counts as filed on the due date). Some cases run longer: 6 years if you leave out income of more than 25% of the gross income shown on the return, and as long as depreciation can still be recaptured if you depreciate the car. Standard-rate miles lower the car's basis too, so keep each year's business miles until 3 years after you file for the year you sell the car. Every case, in a table.
It can be one. The regulation lets a round trip, or one uninterrupted business use, be recorded as a single entry, and a stop for lunch between two business stops does not interrupt it.
General information, not tax advice. Tax situations vary; check with a qualified professional before you file.
OdoTax records each drive from the first mile, with its date, route and miles, and totals the year at the rate for each date.
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