CashoutGlossary / Mileage log
Mileage log
A record of each business trip, with the date, the miles and the business purpose, plus your total miles for the year, kept to back up a car deduction.
A mileage log is your proof for a car deduction. You must back up car expenses with adequate records or other sufficient evidence, and for a car the tax regulations say to show:
- the miles for each business use
- the total miles you drove the car during the year
- the date of each trip
- the business purpose of each trip
Writing down where you went makes the purpose easy to show. The regulations accept an account book, diary, log, statement of expense, trip sheets or a similar record.
Timing matters. A contemporaneous log is not strictly required, but the regulations say a record made at or near the time of the trip has a high degree of credibility that a statement prepared later lacks. Log trips the day you drive them, not in April from memory.
Keep the log with your tax records. The IRS general rule is to keep records for 3 years, and longer in some situations.
Cashout's Mileage log lets you enter trips by hand or as part of a shift. It doesn't track your location by GPS, so you enter the miles yourself. On Android it values each trip at the IRS rate for its date and, if you're self-employed, counts business miles against your 1099 profit in the tax estimate. The current iPhone version values every mile at a flat 70 cents, whatever the date. You can also add a miles column to our free tip log template.
Related terms
Mileage deduction · Business-use percentage · Standard mileage rate · Actual expense method
