Commuting vs Business Mileage: What Actually Counts

IRS Publication 463 states the rule plainly: daily transportation between your home and your regular place of work is a personal commuting expense. Period. It does not matter how far you drive, how bad the traffic is, whether you take work calls during the drive, or that there is no public transit alternative. The IRS treats commuting the same way it treats your grocery run — a non-deductible personal expense.

A 'regular place of work' is any location where you report for work with some degree of frequency and regularity. This includes part-time workplaces, a company's satellite office you visit every Tuesday, or a coworking space you rent by the month. If you go there on a predictable schedule, driving there is commuting.

Stopping for a business errand on the way — picking up office supplies, dropping off a work package — does not convert the entire trip into business mileage. Only the extra miles driven beyond your normal commute route for that errand are deductible. The baseline home-to-office leg remains commuting.

Under IRC §280A(c)(1), if your home office qualifies as your principal place of business, your front door becomes your first business location of the day. Every trip from home to another work location — a client site, a supplier, a temporary project office — is now deductible business mileage, not commuting.

To qualify, the home office must meet two tests. First, exclusive use: the space is used only for business, not as a guest room or playroom after hours. Second, regular use: the space is used on a continuing basis for business. Additionally, you must show the home office is where you perform the most important administrative or revenue-generating activities for your business, and there is no other fixed location where you do substantial administrative work.

For employees, employer-convenience and home-office facts can affect whether a trip is treated as commuting for reimbursement or another eligible purpose, but they do not by themselves create a federal unreimbursed employee deduction. Ordinary W-2 employees should confirm a specific statutory exception before treating the mileage as deductible.

The payoff is substantial. A consultant with a qualifying home office who drives 8,000 miles to client sites can deduct $6,080 if those miles fall in Jul-Dec 2026, using the 76¢ rate. Jan-Jun miles use 72.5¢. Without the home office, those same trips from home to the first client each day might be reclassified as commuting — and the deduction falls apart.

Revenue Ruling 99-7 is the key IRS guidance on temporary work locations. A work location is 'temporary' if you realistically expect the assignment to last 1 year or less, and it actually does end within 1 year. If the expectation changes mid-assignment — say a 6-month project gets extended to 18 months — the location stops being temporary from the date that expectation changes.

The ruling establishes three scenarios where travel to a temporary location is deductible. First (Holding 1): if the temporary location is outside the metropolitan area where you live and normally work, daily transportation from home to that site is deductible — even if you have no regular office elsewhere. Second (Holding 2): if you already have a regular work location, travel from home to any temporary work location in the same trade or business is deductible, regardless of distance or whether it is inside the metro area. Third (Holding 3): if your home is your principal place of business, travel to any other work location is deductible regardless of whether it is temporary or regular.

A critical trap: assignments with no defined end date are considered 'indefinite,' not temporary. An 'indefinite' work location is treated as a regular workplace by the IRS — and travel there is commuting, even if the assignment only lasts a few months in practice. Always establish an expected end date in writing when starting a temporary assignment.

What counts as 'outside the metropolitan area'? There is no bright-line mileage test. The IRS and courts look at facts and circumstances, and courts tend to interpret metropolitan areas broadly. In Saunders v. Commissioner (TC Memo 2012-200), a taxpayer driving 74–96 miles from home was still found to be within the Cincinnati metropolitan area. The takeaway: do not assume a long drive alone makes something 'outside the metro area.'

If you work two jobs in the same day, the travel between Job A and Job B is deductible business mileage — regardless of whether the jobs are with the same employer or in different industries. The IRS rule is straightforward: once you have arrived at your first workplace, any travel to a second workplace in the same day is business mileage, not commuting.

Common example: a nurse who works a morning shift at a hospital, then drives 15 miles to an afternoon shift at a clinic. Those 15 miles are business mileage, deductible at the applicable 2026 rate — 72.5¢ before July 1 or 76¢ from July 1. The drive from home to the hospital in the morning and from the clinic back home in the evening remain commuting.

If you have no regular or fixed workplace — think traveling salespeople, home repair contractors, rideshare drivers, or visiting nurses — the analysis shifts. The IRS generally treats your first trip of the day from home to the first work location as commuting. But once you arrive at that first location, all subsequent travel between work sites during the day is business mileage.

For gig workers (Uber, DoorDash, etc.), the rule is more generous: all miles driven while logged into the platform and available for trips count as business miles. This includes deadhead miles between trips and driving to busier areas — but typically excludes the very first trip from home to your pickup zone and the final trip home at the end of your shift, unless you have a qualifying home office.

Tradespeople — electricians, plumbers, landscapers — who operate from a home office as their business headquarters can deduct all trips to job sites. Those who do not have a qualifying home office cannot deduct the first trip of the day to the supply house or first job site.

For tax years 2018 through 2025, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) suspended miscellaneous itemized deductions — including unreimbursed employee business expenses. The 2026 rules did not restore a general W-2 employee mileage deduction: IRS Notice 2026-10 explains that the tax law changes permanently disallow miscellaneous itemized deductions subject to the 2%-of-AGI floor, including unreimbursed employee travel, with limited exceptions.

Reimbursement and deduction are separate questions. An employer can still reimburse substantiated business mileage under an accountable plan. Self-employed taxpayers and limited eligible employee categories may have different deduction rules, so the applicable status and exception must be checked before treating business mileage as deductible.

For a self-employed taxpayer using the standard-mileage method, 5,000 eligible business miles would produce $3,625 if driven in Jan-Jun 2026 or $3,800 if driven in Jul-Dec, before other tax adjustments. That example is not a federal deduction available to an ordinary W-2 employee merely because the employer paid less.

The best defense on audit is a contemporaneous mileage log that clearly distinguishes business trips from commuting. For each entry, include date, destination, purpose, and miles. Use consistent purpose descriptions — 'Client meeting at X office' is business; 'Commute to regular office' is not. If a single day mixes commuting and business trips, log them separately.

If you claim a home office deduction and use it to convert first-trip-of-the-day mileage to business, your home office qualification must be well-documented: photos of the dedicated space, records of administrative activities performed there, and evidence that no other fixed location is available for those activities.

For temporary work assignments, keep documentation showing the expected duration at the start of the assignment. An email, contract, or project scope document with a defined end date can be the difference between deductible business mileage and non-deductible commuting if the IRS questions the classification.