The Realtor Mileage Log the IRS Will Actually Accept

Mileage is usually the largest single deduction on a working agent’s Schedule C, and it is the one most likely to evaporate under examination. Not because agents inflate it — because the number is real and the record behind it is not.

The good news is that the requirement is short. The IRS is not asking for a GPS trace or a fuel log. It asks four things per trip, plus one habit twice a year.

The four fields

For each business use of your vehicle, the substantiation rules want:

1. The date of the trip.
2. The mileage for that trip.
3. The destination — where you went.
4. The business purpose — why you went.

That is it. “3/14 · 22 mi · 1420 Willow Creek · listing presentation” satisfies the standard. What fails is a spreadsheet row reading “March — 1,340 miles.”

The fifth requirement is not per-trip: you need your total miles for the year, business and personal combined, because the deduction is a share of a whole. In practice that means an odometer reading on January 1 and another on December 31. Agents who skip this are the ones who cannot answer the first question in an audit — 11,000 business miles out of what?

If you take one habit from this page, take that one. Photograph your odometer on New Year’s Day. It costs four seconds and it is the anchor every other number hangs from.

The 2026 rate changed in the middle of the year

The IRS re-rated business mileage mid-2026, which it does only rarely — the last time was 2022. For the 2026 tax year there are two rates:

Period	Business rate	Authority
Jan 1 – Jun 30, 2026	72.5¢ per mile	Notice 2026-10
Jul 1 – Dec 31, 2026	76¢ per mile	Announcement 2026-11
All of 2025	70¢ per mile	Notice 2025-04

The change is retroactive to July 1, and the announcement came after that date — so miles you drove in early July were already worth 76 cents before anyone told you.

This matters for two reasons. The obvious one: a full-year log that applies a single rate to all 2026 miles is wrong, in whichever direction. The less obvious one: a log without dates cannot be split. If your record is “2026: 14,200 business miles,” there is no defensible way to allocate it between the two periods. A dated log splits itself.

The math, for an agent running 14,000 business miles evenly across the year:

• 7,000 miles × $0.725 = $5,075
• 7,000 miles × $0.76 = $5,320
• Line 9 total: $10,395

Applying 72.5¢ to the whole year would have cost that agent $245. Applying 76¢ to the whole year would have overstated the deduction by the same amount — the more expensive mistake of the two.

Commuting: the rule that decides your first drive

Commuting is never deductible. That sentence is doing more work than agents realize, because what counts as commuting depends entirely on where your principal place of business is.

If your brokerage office is your principal place of business: home → office is commuting. The deductible day starts when you pull out of the office lot. Office → showing → showing → office are all business miles. Last showing → home is commuting again.

If your home office is your principal place of business: home → first showing is a business mile, and so is last showing → home. Nothing changes about the driving. What changes is that a qualifying home office moves the starting line.

For an agent whose day begins and ends at a listing, that distinction is often worth two or three thousand miles a year — several times the value of the home office deduction itself. To qualify, the space has to be used regularly and exclusively for business, and it has to be where you do your administrative work. A corner of the dining room that becomes the dining room at 6pm does not qualify.

There is a third pattern worth knowing: a temporary work location outside your regular metro area. Driving to a listing two counties over for a one-off assignment can be deductible even from home, on different grounds. It is a narrower rule than agents hope, and it is the kind of thing to confirm with your CPA rather than assume.

What counts, in an ordinary week

Deductible:

• Office to a showing, inspection, appraisal, or closing
• Between showings
• To the title company, the courthouse, the county recorder
• To a listing appointment or a client meeting
• To pick up signs, lockboxes, staging items
• To a CE class, a board meeting, an industry conference
• Previewing property for a specific client or an active listing

Not deductible:

• Home to your brokerage office, and back, absent a qualifying home office
• Personal errands stitched onto a business route — you deduct the business leg, not the detour
• Driving past a listing on your way somewhere personal

Standard mileage or actual expenses — pick once, carefully

Two methods. Standard mileage multiplies business miles by the IRS rate. Actual expenses deducts the business-use percentage of gas, maintenance, repairs, insurance, registration, and depreciation.

Three rules govern the choice:

1. You cannot combine them. The standard rate already contains gas, maintenance, insurance, and depreciation. Deducting those separately on top of a per-mile deduction is double-counting, and it is visible on the face of the return.
2. The first year decides your options. To use the standard rate on a vehicle at all, you must use it in the first year that vehicle is available for business. Take actual expenses with depreciation in year one and that vehicle is locked to actual expenses for as long as you own it. Start with standard and you can switch later.
3. Parking and tolls sit outside the choice. Both are deductible under either method, as is the business share of auto loan interest and state personal property tax.

For most residential agents, standard mileage wins — high miles, ordinary car, and none of the recordkeeping burden of tracking every repair invoice with a business-use percentage attached. Actual expenses tend to win with an expensive vehicle, low annual mileage, or heavy first-year depreciation. Run both in a year you have complete records, then commit.

Why reconstructed logs fail

An examiner looking at vehicle expense is testing one thing: whether the record was made when the driving happened. A few tells make that determination for them:

• Round numbers. Twelve monthly entries of exactly 1,200 miles did not come from a car.
• No destinations. Miles without an address are miles without a business purpose.
• Weekday-only patterns for an agent whose listings all closed on Saturdays.
• Totals that outrun the odometer. 22,000 business miles on a car that moved 19,000 miles all year ends the conversation.

The regulations do not require a daily entry. They permit records covering part of the year if that part is representative of the whole — a three-month sample, applied to a consistent full year. But a sample is a fallback for someone who kept real records for part of the year, not a plan. And “representative” is a claim you have to be able to support.

The habit that makes this a non-issue

Mileage is the one deduction where the record has to exist at the moment of the drive, because nothing recreates it later. The two-minute version:

1. January 1 and December 31: photograph the odometer. Total miles, established.
2. Log the trip when you park, not on Sunday. Destination and purpose are obvious in the moment and a guess by the weekend.
3. Attach the address. “Showing” is a category. “1420 Willow Creek — buyer showing, Hendersons” is a record.
4. Let dates do the rate math. With a 2026 split rate, a dated log allocates itself and an undated one cannot.

ListingLedger records drives with the date, destination, purpose, and per-period rate already attached, applies 72.5¢ before July 1 and 76¢ after it without you thinking about it, and blocks a gas or maintenance entry from landing on the same return as a standard-mileage deduction. The year-end report prints your line 9 figure with the rate stamped next to the period it came from — which is exactly what a CPA, or an examiner, asks for first.

Next: how much of each commission check to set aside so the mileage deduction is not the only thing standing between you and an April surprise.