Commuting vs Business Miles: Where the IRS Draws the Line

Commute mileage is the single biggest source of overclaimed business miles on US tax returns. The IRS draws a hard line: driving from home to your regular place of work and back is a personal expense under IRC Section 262, and personal expenses are not deductible. Period.

But the rules have important exceptions — particularly for home office workers, temporary work locations, and people with multiple workplaces. Knowing exactly where the line falls can save you thousands in legitimate deductions you might otherwise skip, while keeping you out of trouble for claims that do not qualify.

The basic rule: commuting is personal

Under long-standing IRS guidance, daily transportation between your home and your regular or main place of business is commuting. Commuting costs are personal expenses regardless of:

• How far the commute is
• Whether you use the drive time for business calls
• Whether you carry tools or equipment in the vehicle
• Whether no public transportation is available

This applies to employees and self-employed individuals alike. The legal basis is IRC Section 262(a): “Except as otherwise expressly provided in this chapter, no deduction shall be allowed for personal, living, or family expenses.”

The IRS reaffirmed this in Revenue Ruling 99-7, which specifically addresses when travel between home and work qualifies as deductible business transportation versus nondeductible commuting.

The home office exception: when home-to-client drives ARE deductible

Here is where the rules get more favorable for self-employed people and remote workers. If your home qualifies as your principal place of business, drives from your home office to client sites, temporary work locations, or other business destinations are deductible business travel — not commuting.

To qualify, your home must meet the requirements of IRC Section 280A(c)(1). Your home office is your principal place of business if:

1. You use it regularly and exclusively for business, AND
2. It is your principal place of business (where you do most of your administrative or management work, and you have no other fixed office location), OR
3. You meet patients, clients, or customers there in the normal course of business

Route 3 is worth a caveat: it qualifies the home office for the deduction of its own costs under §280A(c)(1)(B), but the mileage flip described next rests specifically on §280A(c)(1)(A) — the home being your principal place of business. Meeting clients at home regularly, while working mainly from an office elsewhere, does not turn your drives into business miles.

Under Revenue Ruling 99-7, once your home qualifies as your principal place of business, the commuting rule flips. A drive from your home office to a client’s office 30 miles away is business travel, not a commute. Without the home office designation, that same drive could be treated as commuting if the client’s office is your regular work location.

This distinction matters enormously. A freelancer with a qualifying home office who visits clients four days a week can deduct all of those drives. The same freelancer without a home office designation, who considers the client’s location a regular workplace, would get zero deduction for the same trips.

Temporary work locations

Drives to a temporary work location are deductible regardless of whether you have a home office. The IRS defines a temporary work location as one where your employment is expected to last one year or less.

Key rules from IRS Publication 463:

• If you have a regular workplace, travel from home to a temporary work location is deductible
• If you do not have a regular workplace, travel from home to a temporary location is deductible only if the location is outside your metropolitan area
• Once a “temporary” assignment extends beyond one year (or is expected to), it becomes a regular workplace and drives there become nondeductible commuting

Example: You work from a regular office downtown. A client hires you for a 6-month project at their facility across town. Your daily drive to the client’s facility during that project is deductible business travel because it is a temporary work location. If the project extends to 14 months, the deduction stops from the point you know it will exceed one year.

Commuting miles vs business miles, side by side

The same 22-mile drive can be either one. The distinction never turns on distance, vehicle or purpose in the loose sense — only on the two endpoints and what they count as:

Drive	Which kind	Why
Home → regular office	Commuting	The classic case IRC §262 excludes, however long it is
Home → regular office, with a client call on the way	Commuting	Doing business during a commute does not convert it
Home office → client site	Business	The home office is the principal place of business (Rev. Rul. 99-7)
Regular office → client site → regular office	Business	Travel between workplaces during the workday
Home → temporary work site, under one year	Business, conditionally	Deductible if you also have a regular workplace; with no regular workplace, only if the site is outside your metro area (Rev. Rul. 99-7)
Home → first of two offices	Commuting	Home at one end, a regular workplace at the other
Office A → office B, same day	Business	Both are regular workplaces
Last office → home	Commuting	Same two endpoint types, in the other direction
Home → office on a Sunday to catch up	Commuting	Odd hours and weekends change nothing
Home office → supply store → home office	Business	An errand for the business from the principal workplace

The pattern underneath the table is about endpoints, not about the order of the day: a drive is commuting when one end is your home and the other is a regular workplace. Change either end — a temporary site, a client, a second workplace, or a home that qualifies as your principal place of business under §280A(c)(1)(A) — and the same drive becomes business mileage, first thing in the morning included. That is why a home office changes so many answers at once: it changes what one of the endpoints is.

Business travel vs commuting

These are not two names for the same thing, and the test that separates them is not distance. Publication 463 treats them in separate chapters:

Business travel (chapter 1) means being away from the general area of your tax home — your regular place of business, wherever you keep your family home — substantially longer than an ordinary day’s work, and needing sleep or rest to meet the demands of your work while away. That “general area” is not the same thing as the “metropolitan area” in the temporary-work-location rule above. Meeting both parts unlocks lodging and meals alongside the mileage.

Local business transportation (chapter 4) covers every work drive that does not meet it. The mileage can be deductible, and 50% of a genuine business meal with a client still is (IRC §274(k), (n)) — but with no overnight stay there is no lodging to deduct.

Commuting is the slice of local transportation that connects your home with a regular workplace. It is deductible under neither chapter.

Drive	Away overnight	Mileage	Lodging	Meals
Home → your regular office	No	No	No	No
Regular office → client across town	No	Yes	No	Only a business meal with that client, at 50%
Home → client in another state, staying the night	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes, at 50% (IRC §274(n))

The practical consequence: a long commute never becomes business travel by being long. Two hours each way to the same regular office is a commute. The trip that does qualify as travel is deductible from the front door — not because of the endpoint test above, but because once you are away from your tax home, Publication 463 counts the transportation between your home and your business destination as a travel expense. No home office is needed for that.

Commuting miles when you are self-employed

Being self-employed changes where mileage lands on the return, not what counts as business. Sole proprietors and single-member LLCs deduct vehicle expenses on Schedule C, which the suspension of unreimbursed employee expenses never applied to. The endpoint test is exactly the same one W-2 employees face.

That matters most in two situations:

• You rent a shop, studio or office. That is a regular workplace. Home to it in the morning is a commute, however early and however far, and so is the drive back. Drives out from it during the day are business miles — and because you do have a regular workplace away from home, so is a drive straight from home to a temporary work site, whatever the distance (Rev. Rul. 99-7).
• You work from a qualifying home office. Then the home-office rule above applies to you in full: the first drive of the day is already business mileage.

The trap sits between the two. A desk in the corner of the living room that doubles as the family computer does not qualify under §280A(c)(1)(A), which requires regular and exclusive business use. Claim the home-office exception without meeting that test and every drive you reclassified is a commute again — on a return you have already filed.

Two or more regular workplaces

If you have more than one regular place of business, travel between them during the workday is deductible. However, your commute to the first workplace and your commute home from the last one are still personal.

Example: An attorney has an office downtown and a satellite office in the suburbs. Driving from home to the downtown office in the morning is commuting (not deductible). Driving from the downtown office to the suburban office mid-day is business travel (deductible). Driving from the suburban office home in the evening is commuting (not deductible).

Scenario examples: deductible or not?

Scenario 1: Freelance web developer with a home office

Jamie has a qualifying home office and no other fixed workplace. On Monday, Jamie drives from home to a client’s office for a project meeting (22 miles), then returns home.

Result: Both legs are deductible. Jamie’s home is the principal place of business, so drives to client sites are business travel under Rev. Rul. 99-7.

Scenario 2: Employee commuting to corporate headquarters

Alex drives from home to the company’s main office every day — a 15-mile commute each way.

Result: Not deductible. This is standard commuting to a regular workplace. IRC Section 262 applies.

Scenario 3: Plumber dispatched to job sites from home

Rosa is a self-employed plumber with a qualifying home office where she handles scheduling and bookkeeping. Each day she drives directly from home to the first customer’s house, then between job sites, then home from the last site.

Result: All drives are deductible. Home to first job site is business travel (home office is principal place of business). Travel between job sites is business travel. Last job site to home is business travel.

Scenario 4: Consultant working at a client site for 10 months

Morgan is a consultant assigned to a client’s office for a 10-month engagement. Morgan’s permanent office is downtown.

Result: Drives from home to the client site are deductible because the assignment is temporary (expected to last less than one year). Drives from home to Morgan’s permanent downtown office remain nondeductible commuting.

Scenario 5: Real estate agent showing houses on weekends

Taylor is an independent real estate agent whose principal place of business is a qualifying home office. On Saturday, Taylor drives from home to show three houses, then returns home.

Result: All legs are deductible business travel. The home office serves as Taylor’s principal place of business, and the showings are business activities at temporary locations.

Reimbursement: what an employer can pay tax-free

If you are an employee (not self-employed), the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 suspended the deduction for unreimbursed employee expenses, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 made that suspension permanent. W-2 employees generally cannot deduct mileage on their personal returns, even for legitimate business travel. Armed Forces reservists, qualified performing artists and fee-basis state or local officials are the exception — they deduct above the line under IRC §62(a)(2) and were never affected.

However, employers can reimburse business mileage tax-free through an accountable plan. Under an accountable plan (IRC Section 62(c)):

• The reimbursement must be for expenses with a business connection
• The employee must adequately substantiate the expenses (a mileage log works)
• The employee must return any excess reimbursement within a reasonable period

Reimbursements under an accountable plan are not reported as income on the employee’s W-2. The employer deducts them as a business expense. The reimbursement rate does not have to match the IRS standard rate — employers can pay more or less — but the standard rate ($0.76/mile for travel since July 1, 2026) is the most common benchmark.

If the employer’s plan does not meet all three requirements, it is a nonaccountable plan, and reimbursements are treated as taxable wages.

Commute reimbursement is different. Because the underlying drive is personal under §262, paying an employee for it is taxable wages, not an accountable-plan reimbursement. The narrow exception is qualified transportation fringe benefits under §132(f) — transit passes and qualified parking, within the annual limit.

How to operationalize these rules in your workflow

Use a clear classification policy for every trip:

• Personal commute (not deductible): Home to regular workplace, regular workplace to home
• Business travel (deductible): Home office to client site, travel between business locations during the day, travel to temporary work locations
• Mixed chain: If a trip includes both personal and business segments, split the legs and classify each one separately

Set your mileage tracking app to default new trips to “unclassified” rather than “business.” This forces you to actively review and classify each trip, which prevents accidental overclaiming. Tag commute routes as personal so the app can auto-classify repeat trips.

Review unclassified trips weekly while the context is still fresh. By the end of each month, every trip should be tagged and no ambiguous entries should remain.

In practice: MileTrack detects drives on iPhone automatically and keeps business, commute and personal as separate categories, logs every later edit, and exports reports as PDF, CSV or XLSX. Free for now. MileTrack on the App Store

Related guides

• Independent Contractor Mileage for Taxes: End-to-End Claim Workflow
• Mileage Log Requirements for IRS: What to Record and How to Store It
• Mileage Claim Calculator Guide 2026: Estimate Faster, File Cleaner
• Employee Mileage Reimbursement Rules: When It Is Tax-Free

MileTrack captures trips automatically, classifies them as business, commute, or private, and exports tax-ready reports with all the fields the IRS requires. See how the mileage tracker app that keeps commuting separate works, or get it free on the App Store.

Tax note: this article is educational content only, not professional tax advice. Consult a qualified tax professional for guidance specific to your situation.