Mileage log requirements in the United States

What your records have to contain to survive a check by the IRS, and the rate DriveHub applies.

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Updated 5 Oct 2026

Country

The rate

$0.76 per mile

In force from 1 July 2026 to 31 December 2026.

The rule that governs it

Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses — "adequate records".

What every trip has to record

Required per trip

The date
the destination
the business mileage
the business purpose

Required per year

The total miles for the year — Pub. 463 Table 5-1's Transportation row, verbatim: "the cost of the car and any improvements, the date you started using it for business, the mileage for each business use, and the total miles for the year."

The IRS does not ask for odometer readings. The word odometer appears exactly once in the whole of Publication 463: on Table 5-2, under the heading "THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL INTERNAL REVENUE FORM". Reading the odometer on the first and last day of the year is still a sound way to arrive at the year's total, and a better one than summing recorded trips; it is how DriveHub produces the figure.

Prefer to keep it by hand? A blank log with these fields: CSV · PDF.

What form the records may take

26 CFR § 1.274-5T(c)(1): "A contemporaneous log is not required, but a record … made at or near the time of the expenditure or use … has a high degree of credibility." And (c)(2)(ii)(A) is explicit that "a log maintained on a weekly basis, which accounts for use during the week, shall be considered a record made at or near the time of such use." Pub. 463 says it plainly: "You don't need to write down the elements of every expense on the day of the expense." So the standard is at or near the time, and a weekly log meets it.

How long to keep them

No number in the law. 26 CFR § 1.6001-1(e) requires records to be kept "so long as the contents thereof may become material in the administration of any internal revenue law"; IRC § 6001 sets no period at all. In practice the floor is the assessment limitation of IRC § 6501 — three years from filing, six where more than 25 % of gross income was omitted, unlimited for a fraudulent or unfiled return. But a mileage log outlives all of those, because Pub. 463 requires the business-use record "for each year of the recovery period", and a car is 5-year MACRS property depreciated over six calendar years — so a depreciating filer's log sits on a six-plus-three chain, not three years. The clearest employee split among the 21 countries on this site: Pub. 463 says an employee who hands records to the employer and is reimbursed "generally don't have to keep copies", and 26 CFR § 1.274-5T(e) moves the duty to the employer — with four exceptions, including a nonaccountable plan and claiming more than the reimbursement. Failure is not a penalty: under IRC § 274(d) the deduction simply does not exist without substantiation.

What it costs to get wrong

A missing element can put the whole deduction at risk on audit; the business-use percentage is the figure that collapses first.

Where this comes from

The requirements above are quoted from the IRS. DriveHub re-checks these, and the rate, against the authority's own pages; this page is built from that record.

DriveHub records this automatically. It tracks each drive in the background and keeps the start and end, the distance and the route. Tracking and the missing-drive check are free; the report in the shape a tax office expects is part of DriveHub Pro.