Mileage tracking for delivery drivers

Yes, if you deliver as an independent contractor: the IRS counts driving “a car for booked rides or deliveries” as gig work, and your costs come off what you earned, on your own Schedule C. Your business miles go on line 9 at the IRS standard mileage rate (72.5¢ a mile through June 30, 2026, 76¢ from July 1) or as the business share of the car's running costs, such as gas, repairs and insurance, plus business parking and tolls. Three limits apply: commuting never counts, you need a record of each business drive kept as you go, and the mileage rate is open to a car you own only if you used the rate for that car's first year in your business. The total lowers the profit you're taxed on; it isn't money back (the guide for delivery drivers).

Only the driving for deliveries, which is a business of its own on your return. The drive from home to your employer never counts. A drive straight from your W-2 job to your first pickup does: Publication 463 lets you deduct “the expense of getting from one workplace to the other.” Nobody withholds tax from what the apps pay you, so you may need to pay estimated tax or have more withheld at your job (quarterly estimated taxes).

Each platform's income is reported, and your business miles are your miles whichever app they were for: a DoorDash drop-off to an Uber Eats pickup counts like any other drive between two stops. Each platform's mileage figure counts the miles that app saw, by its own rules, and with two apps on, the same miles can be in both, so the figures don't add up to one log; yours has to cover both. OdoTax records every drive whichever app is open, and you can name the app in the purpose. Whether deliveries and rides go on one Schedule C or two is a question for your tax preparer.

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 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).

You don't need an LLC: a business you own alone is a sole proprietorship and files Schedule C, and so does a one-owner LLC unless you chose to have it taxed as a corporation. A married couple who run it together, file a joint return and both materially participate (take part regularly and substantially) can choose to be a qualified joint venture, so each files a Schedule C for their share, but only if the business isn't an LLC or another state-law entity; otherwise two owners, a two-member LLC included, are generally taxed as a partnership unless they chose otherwise, and the business's costs go on the partnership's return, not on a Schedule C of yours (couples in community property states have rules of their own). If you work in your own S corporation, the IRS treats you as its employee, 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. Either way the same mileage log backs the numbers; set it up with your accountant.

Yes, the profit is taxable however small it is: income tax is figured on it with the rest of your income, and self-employment tax is owed once your net earnings from self-employment reach $400 for the year. Both come after costs, and on a small business the car is often the biggest one. Say deliveries brought in $6,000 and your only cost was 2,000 business miles in the fall: at 76¢ a mile that's $1,520, which leaves $4,480 of profit. Self-employment tax is then $4,480 × 92.35% × 15.3% = $633.00, against $847.77 without the miles, $214.77 less, and income tax can fall too, by up to the rate your last dollar is taxed at, depending on the rest of your return (what changes at tax time).

From a pickup to the customer, and from that drop-off to the next pickup, in the same app or another: Publication 463 lists “Getting from one workplace to another in the course of your business or profession” and “Visiting clients or customers.” Business tolls and parking go on top, and errands and days off are personal. Two kinds of driving are unsettled, the first and last drive of the day and miles with no order to go to, and the next questions take them one at a time (the miles between orders).

Publication 463 doesn't say, because it has no rule written for delivery apps. With no regular place of work and no home office, its example treats “the location of your first business contact inside the metropolitan area” as your office, which makes the drive to it, and home from the last one, commuting. With a home office that is your principal place of business, “you can deduct your daily transportation costs between your home and another work location in the same trade or business.” Ask a tax preparer which fits you, and log those drives either way: a logged drive can be left out later, and one never logged has to be rebuilt (the first and last drive).

Possibly. Publication 587's test is that you use a space “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. For a driver that would be a desk used only for the business's paperwork: the log, the books, messages with the platform. Whether yours passes, and whether it then makes the drive from home business, is a question for a tax preparer; this is general information, not tax advice (the home office test).

Publication 463 has no rule written for miles driven with no order to go to, such as heading toward a busier part of town. They are in your log like every other mile you drive; ask your tax preparer how to treat them. Sitting parked with the app on adds no miles either way (waiting for orders).

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 stop 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. OdoTax records the drive as you drove it and can't shorten a recorded drive's miles, so for a detour, write the direct route's miles in the drive's note, which goes into the report's CSV, for your tax preparer (round trips and routes).

Parking and tolls you pay on a delivery go on top of the mileage rate: “In addition to using the standard mileage rate, you can deduct any business-related parking fees and tolls.” A parking ticket never counts, however short the stop was. Add each amount to the drive it belongs to, and keep a receipt for any parking fee or toll of $75 or more.

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 car “doesn't change the use of your car from personal use to business use,” and having the app on doesn't either. A drive is business because of where you're going and why, and the log has to say why (tools in the back).

It's a start, not the log. DoorDash says it sends “mileage estimate emails by January 31” to Dashers who dashed by car and had on-delivery mileage: it is the platform's summary of its own deliveries, so miles for another app aren't in it. The record Publication 463 asks for is your own, kept at or near the time: the date, where you went, why and the miles for each business use. Where a log falls short, the platform's records help: “Invoices of deliveries establish when you used the car for business” (the estimate and your log).

DoorDash says “A 1099-NEC form summarizes Dashers' earnings as independent contractors in the US,” and a business has to send one once it has paid you $2,000 or more in 2026 ($600 through 2025). An app that pays you through a payment network sends a 1099-K instead, once it has paid you more than $20,000 in more than 200 transactions in the year; some states set a lower bar. Neither form decides what you owe: “You must report all income on your tax return, even if you don't receive Forms 1099 from the businesses that pay you” (1099s and tips).

Because a 1099-K reports the gross amount customers paid, before the platform's cut. The IRS says the gross payment amount “isn't adjusted for any” fees, credits or refunds, that “These items are not taxable income,” and “You can deduct them from the gross amount.” The platform's yearly summary breaks them out. So on Schedule C the gross goes in as income and the fees come off as expenses, and you are taxed on what you kept, less your car and your other costs.

Tips are income like the rest. From tax year 2025 through 2028 there is also a deduction of up to $25,000 of qualified tips a year for the occupations on an IRS list: “Goods Delivery People” are on it, with an “app/platform-based delivery person” among the examples. For the self-employed it can't be more than 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.” It phases out above $150,000 of modified adjusted gross income ($300,000 on a joint return), covers voluntary tips only and has filing conditions of its own, so check it with your tax preparer (1099s and tips).

Schedule C, Profit or Loss From Business, is the part of your federal return where a business you own by yourself 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 car 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, which 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's one IRS amount per business mile that stands in for what the car costs to run: for 2026, 72.5¢ 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 driver in our delivery guide drove 6,200 business miles before July 1 and 6,800 after, which come to 6,200 × $0.725 + 6,800 × $0.76 = $9,663.00, and with $138 of tolls and parking, $9,801 on line 9. OdoTax prices every drive by its date, so the two halves add up on their own (the 2026 rates).

No: a deduction lowers the profit you're taxed on, and the dollar amounts OdoTax shows on your drives are that deduction, not cash. On Schedule C it lowers self-employment tax 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. For the driver in our guide, with $9,801 on line 9, that's $9,801 × 92.35% × 15.3% = $1,384.84 less self-employment tax. Income tax falls too, by up to the rate your last dollar is taxed at, and what that adds up to depends on your whole return, so OdoTax shows the deduction, not a saving (deduction or refund).

Usually, if you expect to owe $1,000 or more for the year after withholding and refundable credits, because nobody takes tax out of what the apps pay you. For 2026 the payments are due April 15, June 15 and September 15, 2026, and January 15, 2027; they cover income tax and self-employment tax, both figured on profit after costs, so an up-to-date mileage log keeps the estimate right. If your delivery income is uneven through the year, the annualized income installment method can figure each payment from what you had earned by the end of March, May or August, and the whole year for the last; you use it with Form 2210 and Schedule AI, filed with your return. If you also have a W-2 job, extra withholding there counts as paid evenly through the year, whenever it was taken out (quarterly estimated taxes).

Yes: Publication 463's own example is a car used for clients and suppliers that “you and your family use ... for personal purposes,” and on the standard rate you simply deduct the business miles. Only your business drives need the four facts (the date, where you went, why and the miles), but Schedule C, Part IV also asks for the car's total miles for the year, everyone's driving included, split into business, commuting and other; the odometer on January 1 and December 31 is the simplest proof. The date on line 43 is the day your deliveries started using the car, not the day you bought it, and that first year is when the mileage rate has to be chosen. OdoTax records only the drives your phone is on, so your partner's drives without you aren't in it (the readings cover them), and a ride along to soccer practice is recorded for you to mark Personal. Don't sign a family member's phone in to your account: every drive it's on would land in your log and your free count (Part IV, line by line).

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,” because the rate covers them, and 35¢ of each 2026 business mile counts as the car's depreciation. Of a car payment, only the interest goes on top, at the business share, and so does the business share of state and local personal property tax on the car. Business parking and tolls are added at what you paid, and a parking ticket never counts. Keep a receipt for any parking fee or toll of $75 or more, and the car's purchase papers; there are no fuel or repair receipts to keep (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 standard rate is business miles times the rate for each drive's date, and actual expenses are the business share (business miles divided by total miles) of what the car really cost, with receipts. The timing matters more than the choice: for a car you own, the standard rate has to be used in the first year the car is available for use in your business, after which you can use either method each year, but a car started on actual costs can never use the rate. A car on which you claim section 179 or the special depreciation allowance (often called bonus depreciation) in its first year can never use it either, so make that choice for a car bought for the work with your tax preparer. A leased car on the standard rate stays on it for the whole lease. Either way you need the mileage log (standard rate or actual expenses).

Yes: the IRS says the standard mileage rates “apply to fully-electric and hybrid automobiles, as well as gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles.” With the rate you don't deduct charging or gas on top, because the rate stands in for what the car costs to run. Whether actual expenses would come to more for your car is the comparison in the question above.

Maybe not on that car. The Schedule C instructions allow the standard 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 first year you drive the car for deliveries, choose the rate on your 2026 return; if you have driven it for deliveries 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 need the same mileage log, and the next car you put to work gets its own first year.

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 driver one purpose line can cover a run of deliveries, such as “Online for DoorDash — deliveries”, because Publication 463 lets uninterrupted business use go in a single record; “business” on its own is too thin. Once a year, for each car, it also asks for the total miles, the date it went into business use and what it cost. It has to be written at or near the time, while you still remember the drive; a log kept weekly counts, and paper, a spreadsheet and an app all qualify. OdoTax records the date, both addresses and the miles as you drive, and the purpose is yours to add (what the IRS wants).

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, and keep each year's business-mile total until 3 years after you file for the year you sell the car, because standard-rate miles lower its basis. The IRS doesn't approve or certify mileage apps: what counts is what's in the log and when it was written, and OdoTax's PDF is laid out the way Publication 463 describes, with the purposes and the weekly sort yours to add (keep records for years).

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 drives one by one from what you kept at the time: the order history in each app, the platforms' weekly statements, toll records or your phone's location history; an order history backs up a drive, but it isn't the log. If Google Maps Timeline was on, OdoTax can import the drives it kept, and you can add others by hand; the report marks both, and on the free plan they count toward each month's 35 like any other drive, so with more than that to rebuild in a month, go Pro first. 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 summer either: Publication 463 lets part of the year stand for the whole only when other evidence shows that part is representative, and a busy season isn't typical of a slow one.

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, and if the new figures show less tax, the IRS refunds what you overpaid. The proof rules don't change: no estimates, and a drive rebuilt now counts only as far as order histories, statements or a location history from that time back it up. The method is a second question: Publication 463 says the standard mileage rate is chosen “by the due date (including extensions) of your return” for the car'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 at the IRS rate for its own date; on the free plan they count toward that month's 35 like any other drive, so for a month with more than that, go Pro first, or an import stops at the limit and a drive added past it lands locked and hidden from the list. Ask a tax preparer first whether amending is worth it and which method your car can use for those years (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've been stopped for about five minutes, with OdoTax closed and the phone in its mount. That works 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 noticed a mile or two in, and on Android set battery use to Unrestricted; Settings → Tracking configuration shows anything still missing. Moving the car across a parking lot isn't kept: drives shorter than 0.2 mile or a minute are dropped. On an iPhone you can end a drive as you park 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).

No: a drive ends once the car has been stopped for about five minutes, and a drive that starts within 10 minutes and 300 meters of where the last one ended is joined to it. So a run of quick pickups and drop-offs is one drive, and a wait of more than ten minutes at a restaurant starts a new one; an evening usually comes out as a handful. That fits the rule: Publication 463 lets uninterrupted business use go in a single record. It also means the drive from home usually runs on into your first delivery, unless you were parked more than ten minutes before it, waiting at the first pickup for instance, and the drive home usually runs on from your last drop-off; if your tax preparer needs those miles apart, write them in the drive's note, which goes into the report's CSV (splitting and merging).

More than on an ordinary day: GPS runs at full accuracy while a drive is being recorded, and while you deliver that is most of the time, so keep the phone on its charger as you do for the delivery app. 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. What to watch is the phone's own power saving: on an iPhone, Low Power Mode can slow background work, and on Android a battery saver that limits location can make drives go missing or end early; Settings → Tracking configuration warns about both (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 and adding an odometer reading need a connection, so do those later. Silent mode and Do Not Disturb don't stop it either, because detection doesn't depend on notifications at all; by default OdoTax sends one reminder a week, on Sunday evening, when drives are waiting to be sorted. A spot with no street address is still recorded where you parked, and to find the spot by name next time, save it under Settings → Named places → Add place → My location doesn't have an address — pick on map (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 Business to pick a purpose; on the website you can tick a whole evening and mark it at once. The purpose is the line the report prints to say why a business drive was made, and a business drive without one shows “Not recorded” in the PDF. OdoTax starts you with purposes such as Customer visit, Meeting, Errand / supplies and Airport / travel, and you add your own, up to 40 characters, under Settings → Custom purposes: “Online for DoorDash — deliveries”, “Online for Uber Eats — deliveries”, “DoorDash and Uber Eats”. After you hold Business and pick one, a single tap on Business sorts the next drive with that same purpose, and the PDF prints each end of a drive as a street address, so the purpose is the only place the PDF says which app the driving was for. Sorting once a week is enough: a log kept weekly counts as written at or near the time (business or personal).

Until you change it, yes: work hours start as Monday to Friday, 9 to 6, so a drive inside them is suggested as business and one outside as personal, and a Friday night of deliveries comes up as personal. A suggestion sorts a drive only when you tap Apply, unless you turn on Auto-classify, which sorts drives by the clock without asking, so set your hours before you switch it on. Under Settings → Work hours, tap Saturday or Sunday to give it hours, or Add shift for your evening hours, or switch the off-hours suggestion off (on the website, Settings → Classification → Off hours = personal). Saved places and frequent drives are suggested before the clock, so a drive from or to your saved Home is still suggested as personal, and on an irregular week you may prefer to switch work hours off and sort each drive with a tap (sorting by schedule).

Not for a driver with no fixed workplace: Commute is offered on its own only between places you saved as Home and Work. A drive that starts or ends at your saved Home is suggested as Personal, so look at what it holds before you take the suggestion. The drive from home often runs on into your first delivery, and your last drop-off on into the drive home: a drive like that is Business, with the miles from or to home written in its note for your tax preparer. A drive that is only the way from or to home is Business when the rules for your setup say it counts; if it is commuting, set it to Commute on the drive's own page, which keeps it out of the deduction and counts it for Schedule C, Part IV (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, or on the website use Trips → Add a drive. The drive says 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. Drives can be added back to January 1 three years ago, and on the free plan a month that already has its 35 free drives takes no more added by hand. If drives keep going missing, check Settings → Tracking configuration first (a missed drive).

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. It 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: TestFlight, Apple's app for testing new apps, on an iPhone, and the Android test on Android. If you carry a personal phone and a work phone, sign in to one account on both: each records the drives it's on, and when both record the same drive, OdoTax keeps one. The app, the website and the reports are in English, built for US tax returns (the web account).

The free plan covers 35 drives each calendar month; it needs only an email (no card), doesn't expire, and includes everything else, PDF and CSV reports too. Every drive counts toward the limit, personal ones too. A run of quick deliveries is one drive and a wait of more than ten minutes at a restaurant starts a new one, so an evening of deliveries is a handful of drives, and someone who delivers most days will pass the limit. Drives past the limit are still recorded but arrive Locked, left out of totals and reports, and the count starts again on the 1st; Settings shows how many free drives are left this month. Pro removes the limit for $7.99 a month or $74.99 a year (the free limit).

Yes: a monthly plan can be canceled any time, Pro runs to the end of the period you paid for, the account then goes back to the free plan, nothing is deleted, and drives recorded while you were paying stay open for good. Drives locked in a month on the free plan stay locked when you subscribe later, though, and once they're out of reach they're hidden from the list, not deleted: only an account's first payment for Pro also reopens the 31 days before it, and only once, so start Pro before a busy month passes 35 drives, not after. Nine months of Pro cost $71.91 month by month; from ten months on, the $74.99 year is cheaper. A plan is managed where you bought it: the App Store, Google Play or the website (change or cancel).

A report, as a PDF and a CSV: 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 car if you have more than one. Before you make it, sort every drive still waiting, because an unsorted one adds nothing, fill in any purpose the report would print as “Not recorded,” add your odometer readings, and set the car's In business use since date under Vehicles on the website. The PDF's first page has the figures for Schedule C, line 9 and Part IV, and OdoTax doesn't connect to tax software, so you or your preparer type them in, whatever you file with; the CSV opens in any spreadsheet. To hand it over, save your accountant once as a contact and tap Email this report; they don't need an account (send a report).

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, how the first and last drive of your day are treated, and whether the standard rate or actual costs suit your car are for you and your tax preparer. The rules on this page come from IRS Publications 463, 587 and 334 and the Schedule C instructions, and our guides quote them, starting with the DoorDash mileage deduction.

“All the time” (Always on an iPhone) is what lets OdoTax catch a drive that starts while OdoTax is closed; 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: once you've parked, the drive ends there and the phone waits for the next one; between drives it is asked where it is when you use Locate in your web account to find a lost phone, an answer kept for 30 days, or when OdoTax support looks into drives that went missing. For hours you don't want logged, Settings → Pause auto-tracking in the app 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 meanwhile, business drives included, but you can add one by hand (what data is kept).

The delivery apps and your customers see a drive only in a report you send them. 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, and under the privacy policy service providers like these get only the data their job needs. Whoever you send a report to sees the addresses of both ends of each drive in it and your purposes, and in the CSV your notes and your names for saved places too, but not the route; make a report for business drives only and your personal stops stay out. If you connect OdoTax to Claude, it is sent your drives, totals and saved places when it asks, never a drive's GPS track, and if you report a problem with a drive, a person on the OdoTax team looks at it (what data is kept).