The drive from home to your regular place of work is commuting, and commuting is never a business expense, however far it is. The drives you make for work once you are there usually are. Most of the confusion sits in between: people with no office, people with a home office, and days spent going from one job site to the next.
The rules below come from IRS Publication 463 and Revenue Ruling 99-7, which set out when a trip from home counts.
The basic rule
Publication 463 is blunt: “You can’t deduct commuting expenses no matter how far your home is from your regular place of work. You can’t deduct commuting expenses even if you work during the commuting trip.”
A few things do not change a commute into a business trip:
- Working on the way. Business calls, or a colleague riding along to talk shop.
- Advertising on the car. A wrap or a magnetic sign does not turn personal use into business use.
- Hauling tools. Carrying tools or equipment does not make the commute deductible, although extra costs you have for hauling them, such as renting a trailer, can be.
Where your business is based decides the rest
You have a regular place of business
An office, a shop or a yard you work from.
- Home to your office: commuting.
- Office to a client, a site or a supplier: business.
- Between two work locations in one day: business. If you stop somewhere for a personal reason on the way, you can only count what the direct trip would have been.
- Home to a temporary work location in the same line of business: business, whatever the distance.
A work location is temporary if the work there is realistically expected to last, and does last, one year or less. A customer’s house for a two-day job is a temporary work location.
Your home is your principal place of business
If your home office qualifies as your principal place of business, trips from home to any other work location in the same business are business miles, whether that location is regular or temporary, and however far away.
Publication 587 gives the test. A home office can be your principal place of business if you use it for the administrative or management activities of the business and there is no other fixed location where you do a substantial amount of that work. The space also has to meet the other home office requirements in that publication, including regular and exclusive use.
No regular office and no qualifying home office
Publication 463’s own example covers this: the location of your first business contact inside the metropolitan area is treated as your office.
- Home to the first client of the day: commuting.
- Between clients: business.
- Last client back home: commuting.
- Home to a temporary work site outside your metropolitan area: business.
The same day, three ways
A day with three customers, a supply run between the second and third, and home at the end:
| Trip | Plumber with a shop | Consultant with a qualifying home office | Handyman with no office |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home → first customer | Business (temporary work location) | Business | Commuting |
| Customer → customer | Business | Business | Business |
| Customer → supply store → customer | Business | Business | Business |
| Last customer → home | Business (temporary work location) | Business | Commuting |
| Home → own shop, another day | Commuting | — | — |
The handyman’s first and last trips are the ones most often logged wrongly. Moving the start of the day into a qualifying home office changes them, which is why the home office test matters.
Record commuting miles too
Commuting miles are not deductible, but the tax return still asks for them. Schedule C, Part IV asks for the miles you drove during the year for business, for commuting and for other purposes, and Form 4562 asks the same. The simplest way to answer is a log that marks commutes as commutes, next to total miles for the year.
The rest of what a log needs is in IRS mileage log requirements.
Mistakes that cost the deduction
- Counting the drive to your own office because you took calls on the way.
- Counting home to the first client when you have neither an office nor a qualifying home office.
- Assuming any home office makes every trip business. It has to qualify as your principal place of business.
- Deducting parking at your own place of business. Publication 463 treats that as commuting; parking when you visit a customer or client is deductible.
- Logging a personal detour as part of a business trip.
Why I am writing about this
Sorting business from personal is the part of a mileage log that no app can do for you without knowing where you were going, and it is the part I am building Milestamp around — a mileage log for self-employed people in the US. It is not released yet: no App Store listing and no release date.
Short answers
Is commuting considered business use of a car? No. Driving between your home and your main or regular place of work is commuting, a personal expense.
Are miles from home to a client deductible? Yes if you have a regular office elsewhere and the client’s site is a temporary work location, or if your home is your principal place of business. With neither, the first trip of the day is commuting.
Are miles between clients deductible? Yes. Driving from one work location to another during the day is business.
Do commuting miles go on Schedule C? They are reported in Part IV so the IRS can see total use, but they are not deducted.
This is general information about IRS rules, not tax advice. For your own situation, ask a tax professional.