Mileage Deduction Calculator With Both 2026 IRS Rates

Worked example

These are the figures the calculator opens with and the answer it gives. Change anything above and every number below moves with it.

What this calculator assumes

• 2026 has two business standard mileage rates, not one. 72.5 cents a mile for miles driven from 1 January through 30 June, and 76 cents from 1 July through 31 December. The first is Notice 2026-10, announced by IR-2025-128. The second is Announcement 2026-11 in Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-29, which says in terms that the Notice 2026-10 rates continue to apply before 1 July. That is why this page asks for your miles in two boxes.
• 2022 split on the same date, 58.5 cents then 62.5 cents, so a mid year change is a mechanism the IRS uses and not a misprint. It said at the time that it normally updates the rates once a year in the fall, which is exactly why a second change catches people out.
• The standard mileage rate already contains the cost of running the vehicle. Publication 463 is blunt about it: use the standard rate for a year and you cannot deduct depreciation, lease payments, maintenance and repairs, gasoline including gasoline taxes, oil, insurance or vehicle registration fees for that car that year. Adding your fuel on top of this figure is claiming the same money twice.
• Parking and tolls are the exception and they do go on top, under either method. Parking at your own place of work does not: Publication 463 calls that a nondeductible commuting expense.
• Home to work is commuting and commuting is not deductible. Publication 463 gives three ways out of that, and the second and third are the ones that fit a contractor. Travel between your home and a temporary work station outside the metropolitan area where you live. Daily travel if you have one or more regular work locations away from your home, such as a shop or a yard. And daily travel if your home itself qualifies as your principal place of business, in which case trips from it to another work location in the same trade are deductible however far away and however permanent.
• Hauling tools does not create a fourth exception. Publication 463 says that hauling tools or instruments in your car while commuting to and from work does not make your car expenses deductible, though the extra cost of something like a towed trailer is deductible on its own.
• The standard rate is not available to every vehicle. You cannot use it if you run five or more cars at the same time, which is fleet operation, or if you have claimed MACRS depreciation, a section 179 deduction, the special depreciation allowance or any depreciation method other than straight line on that car, or actual expenses after 1997 on a car you lease. Alternating between cars at different times is not running them at the same time.
• There is a lock in and it runs one way only. To use the standard rate on a car you own, you have to choose it in the first year the car is available for use in your business. After that first year you can switch between the standard rate and actual expenses. On a leased car, choose the standard rate and you must use it for the entire lease period.
• What the deduction saves you is an estimate and it is the only estimate on this page. A dollar off Schedule C profit takes off 14.13% of self-employment tax, and then income tax at your own marginal rate on 92.94% of that dollar, because half the self-employment tax you just saved was itself a deduction that shrinks with it.
• That saving figure assumes your profit is under the social security wage base, that you are not claiming the qualified business income deduction, which would reduce the income tax part, and that a bigger deduction has not moved you into a lower bracket. It does not include state income tax, which for most people makes the real saving larger rather than smaller.
• The charity rate has been 14 cents a mile every year since before 2011 because it is fixed by section 170(i) of the Internal Revenue Code rather than set by the IRS. The business rate moves because it comes from an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of running a car. This page computes the business rate only.
• What is not here: actual car expenses, depreciation, the section 179 deduction, the depreciation limits on passenger automobiles, and the lease inclusion amounts. Every one of them needs the purchase price, the date the vehicle went into service and a depreciation method, none of which this page asks for, and a figure that looked like a whole vehicle deduction while silently leaving those out would be worse than one that says what it covers.

2026 has two business rates and the line is 1 July

Notice 2026-10 set the 2026 business rate at 72.5 cents a mile, announced on 29 December 2025 in IR-2025-128. Six months later Announcement 2026-11, published in Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-29, modified that notice and raised the business rate to 76 cents. The IRS gives the reason in one line: recent increases in the price of fuel.

The wording on when each rate applies is unusually clear, and it is worth having it exactly. The 76 cent rate applies to deductible transportation expenses paid or incurred on or after 1 July 2026. The rates in Notice 2026-10 continue to apply to expenses paid or incurred before 1 July 2026. So the split is by the date you drove, not by the date you file, and every mile in the year belongs to one side or the other.

The gap is 3.5 cents on every mile driven in the first half. That sounds like nothing until you put a working year through it: 6,200 miles before the change priced at the newer rate is 217 dollars of deduction that does not exist. This page prices each half at its own rate and shows you what a single rate calculator would have told you instead.

It has happened before, and it will not show up in the usual place

2022 went exactly the same way. 58.5 cents to 30 June, then 62.5 cents from 1 July, announced in IR-2022-124 on 9 June 2022 for the same reason. That release also states the habit that explains why almost every free calculator gets a split year wrong: the IRS normally updates the mileage rates once a year in the fall for the next calendar year. Build a tool around one number per year and a mid-year change breaks it silently.

There is a second trap underneath that one. The rate is not published in Publication 463, the publication people go to for car expenses. It is set in a Notice or an Announcement in the Internal Revenue Bulletin and put out in a news release. Publication 463 is a document you file with, so it is issued in arrears: the current edition is the one for use in preparing 2025 returns, and it prints 70 cents.

That is the rule this page is built on. Rates come from the Bulletin and the releases. Rules come from Publication 463. Quoting a rate out of the publication in the second half of 2026 would be a year and a half out of date and would look perfectly authoritative while it was wrong.

Home to the job site is commuting, and the toolbox in the back does not change it

Publication 463 answers the contractor version of this question by name, and it is the single most useful sentence in the whole document for anybody reading this page: hauling tools or instruments in your car while commuting to and from work does not make your car expenses deductible. You can deduct the additional cost of hauling them, such as renting a trailer you tow with your car, but the drive itself stays commuting.

Three things do change the answer, and one of them fits a lot of contractors. Daily transportation between your home and a temporary work station outside the metropolitan area where you live is deductible, where temporary means the assignment is realistically expected to last, and does in fact last, one year or less. Transportation is also deductible if you have one or more regular work locations away from your home, or if your home qualifies as your principal place of business, in which case trips from it to another work location in the same trade are deductible however permanent the work and however far away it is.

Two smaller ones catch people out. If you pick up your assignments at a union hall and then drive to the job, the leg from the hall to the job is non-deductible commuting. And parking is split down the same line: fees to park at your own place of work are a commuting expense, while parking when you visit a customer or client is deductible.

The rate already contains your fuel, insurance and repairs

Publication 463 puts a caution on this because of how often it goes wrong. If you use the standard mileage rate for a year, you cannot deduct your actual car expenses for that year, and it lists them: depreciation, lease payments, maintenance and repairs, gasoline including gasoline taxes, oil, insurance, and vehicle registration fees. Adding a fuel figure on top of the mileage figure is the most common way this deduction gets overstated.

Parking fees and tolls attributable to business use are the exception. They go on top, under either method. That is why this page has a box for parking and tolls and no box anywhere for gas, and why the number it produces is a deduction rather than a running cost.

Two of the four published rates are not the business rate and are not interchangeable with it. Charity is 14 cents a mile and has been 14 cents in every year going back beyond 2011, because it is fixed by statute, section 170(i) of the Code, rather than set by the IRS. Medical, and moving for certain members of the military, is 23.5 cents for the second half of 2026, and it is lower because it is based only on the variable costs of running a car while the business rate is based on the fixed and variable costs together.

The first year decides whether you can use the rate at all

For a car you own, you must choose the standard mileage rate in the first year the car is available for use in your business. Do that and you can switch between the standard rate and actual expenses in later years. Miss it and the standard rate is gone for that vehicle. For a leased car the commitment is longer: choose the standard mileage rate and you have to use it for the entire lease period.

Publication 463 also bars the rate outright in five situations. Using five or more cars at the same time, as in fleet operations. Claiming a depreciation deduction on the car by any method other than straight line over its estimated useful life. Using MACRS. Claiming a section 179 deduction on the car. Claiming the special depreciation allowance on it. Or claiming actual car expenses after 1997 for a car you leased.

The five car rule is narrower than it reads. You are not using five or more cars at the same time if you alternate between them, using them at different times. And a car used for hire, a taxi for instance, can elect the standard mileage rate unless it is disallowed for one of the other reasons.

What a deducted mile is actually worth to you

More than your tax bracket, and that is the part most people underestimate. The deduction comes off Schedule C profit, so it lowers two different taxes. Self-employment tax goes first: 15.3 percent applied to 92.35 percent of profit, which works out at about 14.1 cents for every dollar of deduction. Income tax follows at your own rate, on slightly less than the whole dollar, because half of the self-employment tax you just removed was itself deductible in arriving at adjusted gross income.

At the 22 percent bracket the two together come to roughly 34.6 cents of tax for every dollar deducted. The 13,600 miles this page opens with produce 10,119 dollars of deduction and about 3,498 dollars of tax that you keep. That figure is the only estimate on the page and it is marked as one: it assumes your profit stays above zero, that the social security wage base is not in play, and it leaves out state income tax and the qualified business income deduction.

It also chains into the two pages next to it. A mileage deduction lowers Schedule C profit, lower profit lowers self-employment tax, and lower total tax lowers the four estimated payments you send in. Work the mileage out first and the other two answers change underneath it.

What this page deliberately does not compute

Actual car expenses, depreciation, the section 179 deduction, the depreciation limits on passenger automobiles and the lease inclusion amounts are all out of scope. Every one of them needs the purchase price, the date the vehicle went into service and a depreciation method, none of which this page asks for. A figure that looked like a complete vehicle deduction while quietly leaving those out would be worse than one that states what it covers.

They are named here so the right people go and find them. For 2025 the aggregate cost you could elect to expense under section 179 was capped at 2,500,000 dollars, with a separate 31,300 dollar cap on a sport utility vehicle. The depreciation limits for a car placed in service that year ran 20,200 dollars in the first tax year, 19,600 in the second and 11,800 in the third.

If you are choosing between the standard rate and actual expenses for the first time, that choice is worth making with your own numbers and your own first year rather than from any calculator, because it is the one decision here you cannot take back for the life of the vehicle.

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