Mileage tracking for real estate agents

Yes, if you're paid on commission under a written agreement that says you won't be treated as an employee for tax purposes: the IRS then treats a licensed real estate agent as self-employed for all federal tax purposes. Your business miles go on your own Schedule C, 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: 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 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 agents).

For a licensed agent, two facts decide it: “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 the work is done “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 agreement with the brokerage says that, the IRS treats you as self-employed for all federal tax purposes. The brokerage sends a 1099-NEC, not a W-2, once it has paid you $2,000 or more in 2026 ($600 through 2025), and nobody withholds tax from a commission (why it is your deduction).

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).

Only the drives for your real estate work, and the rules for the first and last drive of the day apply to it as a business of its own. The drive from home to your employer never counts, and a home office for real estate doesn't change that, because the home office rule covers only drives in the same business. A drive straight from your W-2 job to an evening showing does count: Publication 463 lets you deduct “the expense of getting from one workplace to the other.” Nobody withholds tax from a commission, so you may need to pay estimated tax or have more withheld at your job (the home office rule).

Each agent deducts the car they drive, for their own business. If you're on a team as an independent contractor, paid your split of the commission with a 1099-NEC, your drives go on your own Schedule C, under the first-and-last-drive rules for your own setup; riding in a teammate's car gives you no car expense, so delete that ride in OdoTax rather than marking it Personal, which would add its miles to your car's other miles in Part IV. If the team is an LLC with two or more members, the IRS treats it as a partnership unless it chose otherwise, and the car is then not on a Schedule C of yours: its costs go on the partnership's return, or, if your partnership agreement makes you pay them yourself, on your own Schedule E, so ask your tax preparer how your agreement handles them. In OdoTax each agent keeps a log in an account of their own, because a phone signed in to yours adds every drive it's on, personal ones too, to your log; a team leader sees only the reports you send.

You don't need an LLC: an agent paid on commission as an independent contractor is a sole proprietor and files Schedule C, and so does a one-owner LLC unless you chose to have it taxed as a corporation. If you work in your own S corporation, or an LLC taxed as one, 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. A team LLC with two or more members is generally taxed as a partnership, and the car is then not on a Schedule C of yours: its costs go on the partnership's return, or, if your partnership agreement makes you pay them yourself, on your own Schedule E. Either way the same mileage log backs the numbers; set it up with your accountant.

Yes, if you're running it as a business: licensed, with a brokerage, and working to close deals. Costs come off what the business earned, and when they come to more, the loss on Schedule C can lower the tax on your other income, such as wages, within limits (the at-risk rules, for one, generally let you claim a loss only up to what you could actually lose in the business). If it loses money year after year, the IRS can ask whether it is a business or a hobby, and a hobby's costs, the driving included, can't be deducted. The IRS weighs several facts, and “No one factor alone is decisive”: what shows you mean to make a profit is how you run it, records included. Costs from before you were open for business, such as the pre-licensing course, follow rules of their own, so ask a tax preparer about those.

The drives you make for the work: from one showing to the next, to a listing appointment, to an open house and back out to collect the signs, to an inspection, an appraisal, a final walk-through and the closing at the title company, and the runs for lockboxes, keys, photos and staging. Publication 463 counts visiting clients and business meetings away from your regular workplace. Driving for yourself or your family is personal, and home to a brokerage office you work at regularly is commuting unless your home office qualifies. Name the client or the property in each drive's purpose, such as “Showed 412 Oak St to the Marsh family” (drives that count).

It depends on where you work from. If you work at the brokerage office regularly, home straight to a showing, a listing or an open house counts at any distance, because each is a temporary work location, and so does the drive back; home to the office doesn't. With a home office that qualifies as your principal place of business, home to any showing, client or the office counts. With neither, the first and last drives of the day are commuting unless the stop is outside your metro area, and the drives between stops count in every case (the first and last drive).

Yes, if you work there on a regular basis and your home office doesn't qualify: home to the office and back is commuting “no matter how far your home is from your regular place of work,” and parking there is a commuting cost too. The office helps with everything else: drives from it to a showing count, and so does home straight to a showing or a listing, and back. The agent in our guide works at her office three mornings a week; her 1,900 miles between home and the office in 2026 stayed out of the $8,827 on line 9 and went on line 44b as commuting. Publication 463 gives no number for how often makes an office regular, so if you're rarely there, ask your tax preparer (an agent's year).

They can, if your home office is your principal place of business. Publication 587's test is that you use a specific area “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 that you choose not to use doesn't fail it: 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.” Doing your paperwork at that desk every morning can. When your home qualifies, home to a showing, a client or the office all count; whether yours does is for you and your tax preparer (the home office test).

Publication 463 makes your first stop your office: “the location of your first business contact inside the metropolitan area is considered your office.” So home to the first stop of the day and the last stop back home are commuting, and every drive between them is business: showing to showing, a listing appointment to the title company. On a day with one showing in town and nothing else, that can mean no business miles at all. Home to a stop outside your metro area, and back, counts; the IRS gives no distance in miles for a metro area, so for a listing near the edge, ask your tax preparer (neither).

Yes: they're drives for a listing or for a client, and our guide lists open houses with the signs put out and collected, previewing listings and broker tours, and lockbox, key, photo and staging drop-offs among the business drives. The first-and-last-drive rules still apply: if you work at the brokerage office regularly or have a home office that qualifies, the round trip counts, from home or from the office, but with neither, a run from home where putting out signs is your only stop is commuting both ways, while the same stop between two showings counts. Write a purpose that names the property, such as “Open house at 19 Cedar Ct — signs” (purpose lines for agents).

A business meeting away from your regular workplace is on Publication 463's list, which covers an association or listing-service meeting. Door-knocking and gift drop-offs aren't named, so they rest on the general test that a business cost is ordinary and necessary in your line of work, with a purpose you can write down, such as “Door-knocked Maple Ridge” or “Closing gift to the Marsh family.” The first-and-last-drive rules apply to them like any other stop. Classes are different: education has rules of its own, so ask your tax preparer before counting the drive to a course.

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, such as the school run, 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).

No. Advertising on the car “doesn't change the use of your car from personal use to business use,” and “You can't deduct commuting expenses even if you work during the commuting trip.” Clients riding along don't change it either: the drive to a showing is business because of where you're going and why, whoever is in the car. The log has to say why each drive was made (the first and last drive).

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, and on line B you give a business code, which for a real estate agent is 531210, Offices of real estate agents & brokers. 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 agent in our guide drove 5,400 business miles before July 1 and 6,100 after, which come to 5,400 × $0.725 + 6,100 × $0.76 = $8,551.00, and with $276 of business parking and tolls, $8,827 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 agent in our guide, with $8,827 on line 9, that's $8,827 × 92.35% × 15.3% = $1,247.22 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).

No. A 1099-NEC reports what the brokerage paid you; your costs aren't on it, and they come off on your own Schedule C, the car included. If the brokerage took fees out of a commission before paying you, ask whether the form shows the amount before or after them, so nothing is deducted twice or left out. Report all of what you earned whether or not a form arrives: 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 filed by the payor” (where the 1099 comes from).

Usually, if you expect to owe $1,000 or more for the year after withholding and refundable credits, because nobody takes tax out of a commission. 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 closings bunch up in part of 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 real estate work 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, but parking at your own office is a commuting cost, 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 new car or SUV 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).

Not on the standard rate: it's the same for every car, 72.5¢ a mile for drives through June 30, 2026, and 76¢ from July 1. Under actual expenses the car's cost does enter, as depreciation or lease payments at the business share, but Publication 463 limits how much of an expensive car's cost, or of its lease payments, can be deducted each year. A leased car on the standard rate stays on it for the whole lease. Figure it both ways with your tax preparer before the car's first return, because that first-year choice can't always be undone (standard rate or actual expenses).

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 the car works for your real estate business, choose the rate on your 2026 return; if you have driven it to showings 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 an agent the purpose names the client or the property, such as “Showed 412 Oak St to the Marsh family” or “Closing at the title company — Marsh”; “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: listing agreements and contracts with their dates, closing statements, your calendar, a showing service's records or your phone's location history; a calendar 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 spring isn't typical of the winter.

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 contracts, closing statements, calendars 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 your bag. 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).

Each leg is a drive of its own: OdoTax ends a drive once the car has been stopped for about five minutes, so a tour with a showing at every stop is one drive per leg, each with its own addresses and miles. A short stop, such as putting out a sign, can leave two legs joined as one drive, which still has the right miles. Drives shorter than 0.2 mile or a minute are dropped, so a hop between two houses on the same block isn't kept. On the free plan every leg counts toward the month's 35 (how detection works).

Little. On a day of showings the car is parked much of the time, and 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. 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. 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 (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 lot or a new build 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 Saturday of showings 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: “Showing — Marsh”, “Listing appt — 88 Birch Ln”, “Open house — 19 Cedar Ct”, “Closing — Marsh”. 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, not your name for the place, so name the client in the purpose. 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 Sunday open house 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 evening showings, 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).

It suggests it: under Settings → Named places, save your home with the kind Home and the brokerage office with the kind Work, and drives between them are offered as Commute, kept out of the deduction but counted, because Schedule C asks for the car's commuting miles. Drives from the office to a showing are offered as business. A drive from home straight to a showing or a client 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 office 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, 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, and a long stop starts a new drive: the Saturday on this page is five drives, a 20-minute stop at the office splits a trip in two, and three mornings a week at the office are six more drives a week, so a week like that is eleven drives before any personal driving. 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).

Yes, as a report: pick the period and the drives, and email it from the app; whoever gets it needs no account. A report made with a rate per mile of its own, such as the rate your brokerage pays miles back at, prints as a mileage reimbursement claim instead of a deduction log. If the brokerage does pay miles back, you can't both leave that money out of your income and deduct the same miles: Publication 463 has rules of its own for accounting to a client, so ask your tax preparer how to report them. Nobody else can open your log, so a team leader sees only the reports you send (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, where your regular place of work is, 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 real estate agent 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 at a listing, 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).

Your clients 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, client names included, 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).