Mileage tracking for contractors

Yes, if the work is your own business: you take jobs from your own customers, or you sub for a contractor who pays you for the job and leaves the how to you, with no tax taken out, on a 1099 or in cash, and you own the business alone. Your business miles go on Schedule C, line 9, at the IRS standard mileage rate or as the business share of the truck's running costs, such as gas, repairs and insurance, plus business parking and tolls. Three limits apply. The drive between home and your regular place of work is commuting and doesn't count unless a home office is your principal place of business. You need a record of each business drive, kept as you go. And the mileage rate is open to a truck you own only if you used the rate for that truck's first year in your business, so if you've worked out of the same truck for years without claiming it, ask a tax preparer which method it can use now. You don't need an LLC; a one-owner LLC files Schedule C too, unless you chose to have it taxed as a corporation (contractor mileage guide).

Not on your federal return. An employee can't deduct driving the employer doesn't pay back, and the 2025 tax law made that permanent, apart from a few named groups such as Armed Forces reservists (IRS Notice 2026-10). What you can do is ask your employer to pay the miles back. Under an accountable plan, where you show the employer the miles and return anything paid over, that money isn't income to you. An OdoTax report made with your employer's rate per mile prints as a mileage reimbursement claim (who can use the business rate).

Only the drives for your own jobs, and the first-and-last-drive rules apply to the side business on its own. In the same year you can be an employee at the job and self-employed for the side work, and only the side work is a business on your return. On a Saturday, home to your first weekend job and back from the last one are commuting, unless your side business has a home office that qualifies or the job is a temporary one outside your metro area. Publication 463 says the drive “between home and a part-time job on a day off from your main job” is commuting. The drives between weekend jobs count. On a weekday, a drive straight from your W-2 job to a side job counts too: Publication 463 lets you deduct “the expense of getting from one workplace to the other”. The drive from home to your employer's site never counts, and a home office for the side business doesn't change that, because the home office rule covers only drives in the same business. The side work also has to be done for profit “with continuity and regularity”: the Schedule C instructions say “a sporadic activity, a not-for-profit activity, or a hobby does not qualify as a business.”

Yes, and the income still goes on your return: Publication 334, the IRS's tax guide for small business, says to report “all income you receive from your business, including income not reported to you on a Form 1099”. Your business costs, the miles included, come off that income on Schedule C the same way. A business has to send a 1099-NEC only if it paid you $2,000 or more in 2026 ($600 through 2025) in the course of its business. A homeowner paying for work on their own house doesn't send one at all (“Personal payments are not reportable”), so plenty of jobs never get one (where the 1099 comes from).

Usually not on your own Schedule C. If you work in your S corporation, the IRS treats you as its employee and your pay as wages, so the usual route is for the corporation to pay you back for business miles under an accountable plan, and that payment isn't income to you. An LLC with two or more owners is taxed as a partnership unless it chose otherwise, so the business's costs generally go on the partnership's return, not on a Schedule C of yours. Either way the same mileage log backs the numbers; set it up with your accountant.

If you work from a shop or yard: the shop to a job site, site to site, the shop or a site to the supply house, and out to a customer's place for an estimate. Publication 463 lists “Visiting clients or customers” among deductible trips, and its example of business use includes trips to “meet with suppliers and other subcontractors”. Home to the shop and back is commuting however far it is, unless your home office qualifies (below), and driving for your own house or family is personal. Whether the drive from home straight to a job counts depends on where you work from, which is the next question (drives that count).

It depends on where you work from. With a shop or yard you work at regularly, home to a temporary job site and back counts at any distance, but home to the shop doesn't. With a home office that qualifies as your principal place of business, home to any job site counts, and so does home to the shop. With neither, the first drive of the day and the last are commuting, unless the site is a temporary one outside your metro area; the drives between sites count in every case (the first and last drive).

Unless your home office qualifies, Publication 463 treats your first stop as your office: “the location of your first business contact inside the metropolitan area is considered your office.” So home to the first job and the last job back home are commuting, and every drive between them is business, supply runs included. Home to a temporary job outside your metro area, and back, counts. The IRS gives no distance in miles for a metro area, only “the area within the city limits and the suburbs that are considered part of that metropolitan area”, so for a job near the edge, ask your tax preparer (no shop, no home office).

A job site is temporary when the work is “realistically expected to last (and does in fact last) for 1 year or less.” A job expected from the start to run more than a year “isn't temporary, regardless of whether it actually lasts for more than 1 year”, and home to it is a commute. If a job you expected to finish within a year turns out to run longer, it stays temporary until the day you realize that: the drives from home before that date count, and the ones after it are commuting (shop or yard).

It can, if that space is your principal place of business. Two things decide it: you use a specific area only and regularly for the business's paperwork (estimates, billing, ordering, the books), and you have no other fixed place where you do a substantial part of that paperwork. Publication 587, the IRS's guide to business use of your home, gives the example of Sid, a self-employed plumber who works at customers' homes and keeps the books in a small home office; his office qualifies. A kitchen table the family also eats at fails, and so does a home office if you do the books at a desk in the shop. A shop used only to store, cut and load materials doesn't count against you. When the office qualifies, every drive from home to a job site counts, and so does home to the shop (the home office test).

No. Publication 463: “Hauling tools or instruments in your car while commuting to and from work doesn't make your car expenses deductible”; only an extra cost of hauling them, such as renting a trailer, is. Advertising on the truck “doesn't change the use of your car from personal use to business use.” Taking business calls on the way, or talking business with someone riding along, doesn't either: Publication 463's example names both and says they “don't change the trip from personal to business” (tools in the back).

A lunch stop doesn't break it: Publication 463 says “Minimal personal use, such as a stop for lunch on the way between two business stops, isn't an interruption of business use.” A real detour is different. If for a personal reason you don't go straight from one job to the next, you “can't deduct more than the amount it would have cost you to go directly”, so count the direct route's miles (round trips and routes).

Schedule C, Profit or Loss From Business, is the part of your federal return where a business you own by yourself, with or without employees, reports what it took in and what it cost; what's left is the profit that income tax and self-employment tax are figured on. Your truck shows up on it twice: what its business miles come to on line 9, Car and truck expenses, and its use in Part IV, Information on Your Vehicle (when it went into business use, and its business, commuting and other miles). You don't have to itemize: business miles come off your profit, and that profit carries over to your Form 1040 (through Schedule 1), so you can take the standard deduction as well. Itemizing matters only for medical and charity miles (Schedule C, line by line).

It is one IRS amount per business mile that stands in for what the truck costs to run, set from a yearly study of the costs of running a car. For 2026 it is 72.5¢ a mile for drives through June 30 (Notice 2026-10) and 76¢ for drives from July 1 (Announcement 2026-11), raised because fuel prices went up. Each drive gets the rate for its own date: the electrician on this page drove 7,150 business miles before July 1 and 7,600 after, which come to 7,150 × $0.725 + 7,600 × $0.76 = $10,959.75. OdoTax prices every drive by its date, so the two halves add up on their own (the 2026 rates).

No. A refund is money coming back; a deduction lowers the profit you are taxed on, and the dollar amounts OdoTax shows on your drives are that deduction, not cash. On Schedule C it lowers two taxes. Self-employment tax falls by about 14¢ for every dollar deducted (15.3% on 92.35% of profit), which at 76¢ a mile is about 10.7¢ a mile, as long as your wages and self-employment earnings together stay under $184,500 for 2026; above that, only the 2.9% Medicare part is left. Income tax falls too, by up to the rate your last dollar is taxed at. What that adds up to depends on your whole return, so OdoTax shows the deduction, not a saving (deduction or refund).

Business parking and tolls are added on top of the miles at what you paid, but parking at your own shop is a commuting cost and doesn't count. Traffic fines never do: “You can't deduct fines you pay or collateral you forfeit for traffic violations.” Keep a receipt for any parking fee or toll of $75 or more, unless none is readily available; below that, the entry in your log is the record. In OdoTax you add the amounts to the drive they belong to, and it keeps the amounts, not the receipts (parking and tolls).

Usually, if you expect to owe $1,000 or more for the year after any tax already withheld and refundable credits, because nobody takes tax out of what customers pay you. For 2026 the payments are due April 15, June 15 and September 15, 2026, and January 15, 2027, and they cover both income tax and self-employment tax. Both are figured on profit after costs, so an up-to-date mileage log keeps the estimate right. Quarterly estimated taxes has the amounts that avoid the IRS's underpayment penalty.

No. In a year you use the standard rate, Publication 463 says you “can't deduct depreciation, lease payments, maintenance and repairs, gasoline (including gasoline taxes), oil, insurance, or vehicle registration fees”: the rate already covers them, and 35¢ of each 2026 business mile is the truck's depreciation. Of a truck loan payment, only the interest goes on top, at the business share. So do business parking and tolls and, because you're self-employed, the business share of state and local personal property tax on the truck. On the standard rate there are no fuel or repair receipts to keep: the mileage log is what you need, plus the truck's purchase papers, because the IRS asks for what it cost (what the rate covers).

Where both are open to you, Publication 463 suggests you “figure your deduction both ways to see which gives you a larger deduction.” The order matters: for a truck you own, the standard rate has to be chosen in the first year it is available for use in your business, and you can move to actual costs in a later year, but a truck started on actual costs can never use the standard rate. A leased truck on the standard rate stays on it for the whole lease. Actual costs, the business share of gas, repairs, tires, insurance, depreciation and the rest, with receipts, can come out ahead for an expensive truck with high running costs; either way you need the mileage log, because the business share is business miles divided by total miles (standard rate or actual expenses).

Maybe not on that truck. The Schedule C instructions say you can take the standard mileage rate only if you “owned the vehicle and used the standard mileage rate for the first year you placed the vehicle in service”, and Publication 463 says that choice is made “by the due date (including extensions) of your return” for that first year. If 2026 is the truck's first year in your business, choose the rate on your 2026 return. If the truck has been working for you since an earlier year you never claimed, ask a tax preparer which method it can use before you file. Actual expenses are open to it, and they need the same mileage log, because the business share is business miles divided by total miles. The next truck you put to work gets its own first year.

Not on that truck, now or later. Publication 463: “If, in the year you first place a car in service, you claim either a section 179 deduction or use a depreciation method other than straight line for its estimated useful life, you can't use the standard mileage rate on that car in any future year.” (Straight line spreads the cost evenly over the years.) Section 179 also needs more than 50% business use, and the mileage log is what shows it. Publication 463 counts “a van, pickup, or panel truck” as a car, and its list of when the mileage rate isn't allowed names no weight; the 6,000-pound line in Publication 463 is for depreciation under actual costs. For a heavier work truck that isn't a pickup or van, such as a dump truck, ask your tax preparer which method fits, and make the section 179 choice with them before you file.

Yes: each vehicle needs its own business miles and total miles for the year, and with more than one you attach the Part IV answers for each extra one. In OdoTax, add both under Settings → Vehicles; each keeps its own log and odometer readings, and the report gives each one's business, commuting and other miles. A drive goes on your default vehicle unless something says otherwise: on Android, link each truck's Bluetooth, and on an iPhone, pick its CarPlay or Bluetooth stereo under Car audio. For a truck with neither, tap Vehicle when you sort the drive (telling trucks apart).

Yes, as long as fewer than five are used for business at the same time; with five or more in use at once, Publication 463 says you “can't use the standard mileage rate for the business use of any car.” Trucks you take turns with aren't used at the same time: Publication 463's landscaping business had four pickups in use and traded two in, and “can use the standard mileage rate for the business mileage of all six of the trucks you owned during the year.” OdoTax is built for one driver and their vehicles, with no team plan yet, and it prices drives at the standard rate (the van or pickup).

For each business drive, Publication 463's Table 5-1 asks for four things: the date, where you went, the business purpose and the miles. For a trade, the purpose names the job or the customer, such as “Rough-in, Alvarez kitchen, 14 Elm St” or “Wire and boxes for the Alvarez job”; “business” on its own is too thin. Once a year, for each truck, it also asks for the total miles, the date it went into business use and what it cost. OdoTax records the date, both addresses and the miles as you drive, and the purpose is yours to add (what the IRS wants).

No to both. The rule is “at or near the time”, while you still remember the drive, and Publication 463 says: “If you maintain a log on a weekly basis that accounts for use during the week, the log is considered a timely kept record.” Paper, a spreadsheet and an app all count: “if you prepare a record on a computer, it is considered an adequate record.” What doesn't hold up is a year rebuilt from memory the next April (when to write it down).

The rules don't require odometer readings, and personal drives don't need the four facts. But Schedule C, Part IV asks for each truck's total miles for the year, split into business, commuting and other, so you need the total and a commuting count. The simplest proof of the total is the odometer on January 1 and December 31, written down or photographed. In OdoTax you add the readings under Settings → Odometer, and a January photo can be entered in August. You mark each drive Business, Personal or Commute, and the report adds up the business and commute miles of the drives OdoTax has; days the phone stayed home, someone else at the wheel, or drives locked on the free plan aren't in those figures. With a reading at each end of the year, a report of all drives takes the other miles from the odometer, its miles less business and commuting, so the three add up to the total Part IV asks for (odometer readings).

A business drive you can't prove isn't allowed, and no part of it can be allowed on a guess: “You can't deduct amounts that you approximate or estimate.” A penalty can come on top: 20% of the tax underpaid through negligence, and the tax regulations count failing to keep adequate records as negligence. Keep the log at least 3 years from the date you file (a return filed early counts as filed on the due date), so a 2026 log on a return filed by April 15, 2027 is kept until April 15, 2030. Some cases run longer. Standard-rate miles also lower the truck's basis (what it counts as having cost you), so keep each year's business-mile total until 3 years after you file the return for the year you sell or trade in the truck (keep records for years).

What counts is what's in the log and when it was written, not which app made it; the IRS doesn't approve or certify mileage apps. Publication 463 asks, for each business drive, for the date, where you went, the purpose and the miles, recorded at or near the time (a weekly log counts), plus each truck's total miles for the year. OdoTax records the date, both addresses and the miles as you drive, and its PDF is laid out the way Publication 463 describes; the purposes and the weekly sort are yours. This is general information, not tax advice (what the IRS wants).

Not for the rest of the year: from the day you turn tracking on, every drive is recorded as you go. For January to now you can't estimate, but you can rebuild the drives one by one from things you kept at the time, such as invoices, calendar entries, supply-house receipts or your phone's location history. If Google Maps Timeline was on, OdoTax can import the drives it kept, and you can add others by hand; the report marks both. On the free plan these drives count toward each month's 35 like any other: an import adds at most 35 in a month, and a month that already has them takes no more added by hand. With more than that to rebuild, go Pro first, or import the file again after you go Pro to add the rest. A rebuilt drive counts only as far as that evidence backs it up, and it weighs less than one logged at the time. Logging October to December doesn't prove the months before on its own either: Publication 463 lets a record for part of the year stand for the whole year only when other evidence shows that part is representative, which is hard to show when every week's jobs are different.

To change a return you already filed, you file an amended return, Form 1040-X, generally within 3 years after you filed it or 2 years after you paid the tax, whichever is later. If the new figures show less tax, the IRS refunds what you overpaid. The same proof rules apply: no estimates, and a log rebuilt now counts only as far as invoices, calendars or a location history from that time back up each drive. The method is a second question. Publication 463 says the choice of the standard mileage rate is made “by the due date (including extensions) of your return” for the truck's first year in your business, so an amended return may not be able to choose it. OdoTax accepts drives added by hand or imported from Google Maps Timeline back to January 1 three years ago, and prices each one at the IRS rate for its own date. On the free plan they count toward that month's 35 like any other drive, so with more than 35 in a month to rebuild, go Pro first. Whether amending is worth it, and which method your truck can use for those years, is a question for a tax preparer first (a log rebuilt after the fact).

No. Between drives the phone's motion sensors, and a boundary around where it last stopped, notice when you pull away. OdoTax then switches GPS on, records the route and the miles, and ends the drive once you have been stopped for about five minutes. The app doesn't need to be open and the phone can stay in your pocket, as long as location is set to Always on an iPhone, or Allow all the time on Android, with Precise on. Allow Physical activity (Motion & Fitness on an iPhone) too, or a drive can be caught a mile or two in. On Android, also set battery use to Unrestricted, the setting behind most missed drives; Settings → Tracking configuration shows anything still missing. Drives shorter than 0.2 mile or a minute aren't kept. On an iPhone you can end a drive early with Stop drive on the Lock Screen, or by telling Siri “End my drive in odo” (on your home screen the app is called odo) (how detection works).

Little. Between drives OdoTax doesn't track where you are: the phone waits for the next drive with the motion sensors it already runs and a boundary around where it last stopped, and GPS runs at full accuracy only while a drive is being recorded. On Android you'll see a notification the whole time, “Ready to detect a drive” and then the miles so far, because Android requires one from any app that uses location in the background. A phone battery saver that limits location can make drives go missing or end early; Settings → Tracking configuration flags it (battery use).

Yes. The route and the miles come from the phone's GPS, which needs no internet; the drive is kept on the phone and uploads by itself once you're back in signal, and until then Home says “N drives tracked offline”. Sorting or editing a drive, adding an odometer reading and pausing tracking need a connection, so do those once you're back in coverage (without a connection).

Each drive waits until you say what it was. On Home, tap Classify and the drives come up one at a time: tap Business or Personal, or press and hold to pick a purpose. On the website you can tick a whole day and mark it at once. A route you save as a frequent drive, such as the shop to the same supply house, is sorted the moment each drive on it arrives. Work hours suggest business for a drive inside your hours and personal outside them. They start as Monday to Friday, 9 to 6, so under Settings → Work hours set your own start time, and add a second shift or Saturdays. A suggestion sorts a drive only when you tap Apply, unless you turn on Auto-classify. Sorting once a week is enough, because a log kept weekly counts as written at or near the time (business or personal).

The purpose is the line the report prints to say why a business drive was made; a business drive without one shows “Not recorded” in the PDF. OdoTax starts you with Customer visit, Errand / supplies, Temporary site and a few more, and you can add your own, such as Supply run or Callback, under Settings → Custom purposes. After you pick one by holding Business, a single tap on Business sorts the next drive with that same purpose. A new build with no street address can be saved as a place by dropping a pin on the map. The PDF prints each end as an address, or as a GPS point where there is none, never your name for the place; the CSV adds that name in a column of its own. So name the job in the purpose (labels and places).

It suggests it. Save your home and your shop as places of the kinds Home and Work, and drives between them are offered as Commute: kept out of the deduction but counted, because Schedule C asks for each truck's commuting miles. A drive between home and a job site is suggested as Personal, because one end is home, so mark it Business when the rules for your setup say it counts. If your home office qualifies, leave the shop as an ordinary place, so drives from home to it aren't offered as Commute (the commute).

Yes. In the app, open Drives and tap +, pick From and To (a saved place or an address), and OdoTax measures the road between them; change the distance if you went another way, then set the time, the vehicle and the purpose. The drive is marked as added by hand, with an asterisk in the PDF, and that isn't a mark against it: a log kept by hand is still a log. If drives keep going missing, check Settings → Tracking configuration first (a missed drive).

Not really, and there's no team plan yet: OdoTax is built for one driver and their vehicles. It can't tell who is driving, so it records every drive the phone is on: a phone signed in to your account adds the helper's own drives, personal ones too, to your log and your free count, and a pause on one phone pauses both. If you ride along in someone else's truck, that drive is recorded too; mark it Personal or delete it. A helper who wants his own log needs his own account, and if he's on your W-2, his report can use the rate you pay him per mile and then prints as a mileage reimbursement claim (two phones).

OdoTax runs on an iPhone with iOS 17 or newer and on Android 7 or newer, and the same account opens in any browser at my.odo.tax, where a month of drives fits on one screen. OdoTax isn't listed in the App Store and Google Play yet, so Get the app on this page (odo.tax/get) leads to the test version: through TestFlight, Apple's app for testing new apps, on an iPhone, and through the Android test on Android. Drives are always detected on the phone. The app, the website and the reports are in English, and OdoTax is built for US tax returns (the web account).

The free plan covers 35 drives each calendar month. It needs only an email (no card) and doesn't expire, and everything else is included, PDF and CSV reports too. Every drive counts toward the limit, personal ones too, and each leg of the day is its own drive. The remodeler's day on this page is six drives, so 35 last about 6 working days, and a 20-minute stop at the supply house splits a trip in two. Drives past the limit are still recorded but arrive Locked, left out of totals and reports, and the count starts again on the 1st. Pro removes the limit for $7.99 a month or $74.99 a year. Every drive from then on is open, and an account's first payment for Pro also reopens the drives of the 31 days before it, once (the free limit).

A report. In Reports, pick a period (last tax year, a quarter, the year so far, or your own dates), all drives or business only, and a truck if you have more than one; every report comes as a PDF and a CSV. Before you make it, sort every drive still waiting, because an unsorted drive adds nothing to the deduction, and drives locked by the free plan's monthly limit are left out (the PDF says how many). Fill in any missing purposes, add your odometer readings, and set each truck's In business use since date under Vehicles on the website. Then save your accountant once as a contact and tap Email this report; they don't need an account. If you change drives afterwards, the report says Drives changed since; tap Update to make it again (send a report).

On Schedule C, whatever you file with. The report's first page has a row named Schedule C, line 9: business miles at each drive's rate plus business parking and tolls. Its vehicle table has what Part IV asks on lines 43 to 44c, when the truck went into business use, its odometer readings, and its business, commuting and other miles, and the last page prints the yes-or-no questions of lines 45 to 47b. OdoTax doesn't connect to tax or accounting software, so you type the figures in and keep the PDF with your return; the CSV opens in any spreadsheet (what the report contains).

No. OdoTax keeps the log and applies the IRS standard mileage rate to the drives you mark as business. Which drives are business for your work, and whether the standard rate or actual costs suit your truck, is for you and your tax preparer. The rules on this page come from IRS Publication 463 and the Schedule C instructions, and the contractor mileage guide quotes them.

“All the time” (Always on an iPhone) is what lets OdoTax catch a drive that starts while OdoTax is closed and the phone is in your pocket. With “only while using”, it records nothing unless OdoTax is open on screen, and during a drive it usually isn't. It also needs Precise location, because a log built from rough positions isn't accurate enough to claim. GPS runs at full accuracy only while a drive is being recorded. If you lose a phone, Locate in your web account can ask it where it is, and that answer is kept for 30 days. For hours you don't want logged, Settings → Pause auto-tracking stops detection For 1 hour, For 4 hours, Until tomorrow 9am or For the rest of today, on every phone on your account. Nothing is recorded in that time, business drives included, but you can still add a drive by hand (what data is kept).

For each drive OdoTax keeps the route, both addresses, the miles and the times, plus what you add. A map service fits the GPS points to the roads, and an address service turns the two ends into street addresses. Under the privacy policy, service providers like these get only the data their job needs, and their contracts forbid using it for anything else. Your customers, a general contractor or your accountant see a drive only in a report you send them, which shows addresses and miles, not the route. If you connect OdoTax to Claude, it is sent your drives, totals and saved places when it asks, never a drive's GPS track. If you report a problem with a drive, a person on the OdoTax team looks at it (what data is kept).