What To Do If You Didn't Use A Mileage Log for Taxes
Don’t panic: This is a pretty common situation. People who work for themselves don’t always get the heads up that their mileage is deductible, so they don’t keep a log for their business. What should you do without a mileage log for taxes?
Even though keeping a mileage log for taxes throughout the entire year is absolutely the best way to document your mileage deduction, the good news is that drivers can deduct mileage based on incomplete records if you forgot to track miles for Instacart, Uber, or any other car-based independent work.
According to the IRS, this includes either a “written or oral statement containing specific information about the element” or “supporting evidence that is sufficient to establish the element.” In plain English, this means that you need to make sure your estimate matches what evidence you do have.
Here’s what to do if you didn’t log miles, plus how to keep up with tracking mileage for taxes moving forward.
Want to maximize mileage this year and automatically record mileage for taxes? Download our free app to start capturing all the miles you're allowed to write off.
1. Start With Your Trip Logs (If You Have Them)
If you drive for an on-demand platform and want to know how to log miles for taxes, you likely have pretty good records of your business mileage.
Uber (along with Lyft and many other on-demand companies) will track your on-trip mileage for you. This includes your mileage when you have a passenger in the car, but not your mileage when you are driving to the passenger, or driving between trips to find places where you’re likely to be matched with a passenger.
Your on-trip mileage serves as the minimum mileage that you can deduct. It’s not a complete record of the business miles that you actually drove, but it’ll still save you money at tax time.
2. Find Your Total Mileage
When you claim your mileage deduction on a Schedule C (or in tax filing software), you’ll likely need to input how many miles you drove in total during the year, including personal and commuting miles.
If you didn’t keep track of your mileage throughout the year, you need to make sure your total mileage deduction makes sense when compared to your total miles driven. Ideally, you’d note your odometer readings at the beginning and end of the year, but you could also use old maintenance receipts to figure your total mileage (because these often record odometer readings).
Once you find this number, you’ve got a range for what your actual deductible mileage is. You’ll know that your actual deductible mileage is somewhere between your total miles and your rideshare miles.
3. Look for Documentation of Your Other Business Mileage
Let’s assume that you are missing the miles from:
Between business meetings (or passengers, if you're a rideshare driver)
When driving from your home office to your first meeting of the day
From your last meeting back to your home office
This is where the search starts. You’ll have to find evidence that proves you actually incurred this non-trip mileage while running your business. Here are a few ways you can find that evidence to track mileage for taxes:
Calculate the Mileage for the Drive to Your First Meeting
On a given day, you can see where you began your first trip or ended your last trip and how far away it is from your home. It’s a tedious process, but if you calculate the mileage between those two points and document your exact starting and ending locations, you can calculate your deductible mileage from that information.
For example, if you go online with your Uber app at home in Oakland, but drive to San Francisco before you get your first passenger, you can calculate how many miles you drove to the city and include those in your deduction.
Calculate the Mileage Between Trips
If you also have records on where one meeting ended and the next began, you can calculate the mileage that you drove between those two locations. Just be sure to include great notes on each drive that you add to your mileage log, and keep track of all of your supporting documents like Uber trip logs or appointment books.
Double-Check Your Estimates
Find recordings of your odometer readings throughout the year. This helps corroborate your story that your estimated mileage is consistent with your car’s total usage throughout the year. Maintenance receipts are great sources for odometer readings.
Finding Your Driving Patterns
The investigative work described above sounds like a hassle, right? Don’t worry, you can take the typical mileage you drive in a week or month and apply it to a larger period of time.
If you find your total deductible mileage for one month and can prove that you drove about the same amount each month, then you can apply your typical monthly mileage to the rest of the year.
For example, let’s say you were only tracking your Uber mileage for November and December of 2022. If you can show that your Uber income and trip number was about the same for all 12 months of the year, and you know that you drove the same number of miles (or within a small range), then you could use your Uber income and trip logs as proof that your deductible mileage was consistent throughout the year.
One note: The goal of this exercise isn’t to re-create the mileage log, but to help you figure out and account for the miles you’ve driven with the resources at hand. This can help you save money when filing taxes. Moving forward, the best method for how to prove mileage to the IRS is to actively keep records that log miles for the entire year.
For rideshare drivers, you’ve got a lot of built-in records. Records that show fare money received from Uber proves that you did some driving. If you start with the evidence that you do have, you’ll be able to build a story around your rideshare activity.
4. Start Tracking Mileage For Taxes
The best approach for how to keep track of mileage for taxes? Take the headache out of finding your mileage next year by tracking your miles now. With the Stride app, you can track both your mileage and your deductible expenses (for all of your independent jobs).
