9 — Car and Truck Expenses Updated for tax year 2025

What this line means

The business-use portion of your vehicle expenses. You have two methods: the standard mileage rate (70 cents per mile in 2025) or actual expenses (gas, insurance, repairs, depreciation) prorated by business-use percentage. You must choose one method for each vehicle, and in most cases, you must decide in the first year you use the vehicle for business. Commuting miles are never deductible.

Does this apply to you?

• You drive to client sites, job locations, or customer meetings
• You make deliveries for your business
• You drive for a rideshare or delivery platform (Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart)
• You travel between your home office and a second business location
• You use your personal vehicle for business errands — supply runs, bank trips, post office

Easy to overlook

The standard mileage rate includes gas, insurance, and depreciation If you use the standard mileage rate, you cannot also deduct gas, oil changes, insurance, or depreciation separately — those are already baked into the per-mile rate. You can still deduct parking fees and tolls on top of the mileage rate. Many sole proprietors claim the mileage rate and then also deduct gas receipts, which is double-dipping. ¹ [SOURCE: IRS Publication 463 — Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses]

Home office eliminates the commuting problem If you have a qualifying home office, drives from your home office to any business location are business miles — not commuting. Without a home office, driving from home to your first business stop of the day is commuting and not deductible. Establishing a home office can convert thousands of otherwise nondeductible commuting miles into deductible business miles. ² [SOURCE: Audit pattern — vehicle expense deductions without mileage logs]

Watch out for this

Failing to keep a contemporaneous mileage log. The IRS requires written records of business miles — date, destination, business purpose, and miles driven — made at or near the time of each trip. Reconstructing a log at year-end from memory does not satisfy the requirement. In an audit, no log means no deduction, regardless of how legitimate the driving was.

Related lines on your return

• Line 30 — Schedule C — Business use of home; establishing a home office changes which miles are deductible
• Lines 43-47a — Schedule C — Part IV vehicle information; must be completed if you claim vehicle expenses
• Line 13 — Schedule C — Depreciation; if using actual expenses, vehicle depreciation goes on line 13, not line 9