How Long Should I Keep Mileage Records? IRS and HMRC Answers

A mileage log has two lifespans. The first ends in April, when the return is filed and the deduction claimed. The second runs for years afterward — the period during which the IRS, HMRC, or the Finanzamt can still ask you to produce the record behind the number. Most retention failures happen in that second lifespan, quietly: the app subscription lapses, the phone gets replaced, and the log that existed in 2026 cannot be produced in 2029.

Here are the actual clocks, and the storage habit that beats all of them.

The IRS clocks

The IRS ties retention to the period of limitations — how long a return can still be examined or amended:

Situation	Keep records for
Standard filed return	3 years from filing (or 2 years from paying the tax, if later)
Income understated by more than 25%	6 years
Claim for a loss or amended-return refund	3 years from the claim
No return filed, or fraudulent return	No limit

Three details worth pausing on. The clock starts at filing, not at the tax year — records for 2026 driving filed in April 2027 run to at least April 2030. The six-year window does not require wrongdoing on the mileage itself; any sufficiently large income understatement elsewhere on the return reopens everything, mileage log included. And the official IRS guidance explicitly frames these as minimums — records supporting property basis or carryovers run longer.

The practical rule: keep mileage records seven years. It costs a few megabytes, covers the three- and six-year windows with margin, and replaces a limitations-period analysis with a folder naming convention.

The UK and German clocks, briefly

UK. Self-employed filers keep records five years after the 31 January submission deadline — records for 2025–26 driving, filed by 31 January 2027, must survive to 31 January 2032. Employees claiming mileage relief have a shorter horizon, around two years after the tax year, but the five-year habit is simpler to run. The UK logbook rules guide covers the HMRC record structure itself.

Germany. Business records, the Fahrtenbuch included, fall under statutory retention of up to ten years. German rules are stricter about form as well as duration — the log must remain readable and tamper-evident for the whole period.

Driving across borders does not multiply your obligations — the records follow the tax authority you file with — but the pattern across all three systems is identical: the retention period is always longer than an app subscription.

Retention is a format problem, not a discipline problem

Nobody deletes their mileage log on purpose. It disappears through dependencies:

• The subscription lapses and history access was a paid feature
• The account closes — or the app shuts down, which small utilities do
• The phone changes and the local database did not migrate
• The format rots — a proprietary backup no current app version can read

Every one of these is survivable with the same move: export yearly, store the files yourself. A per-trip CSV plus an annual PDF summary, dropped into the same backed-up folder as the rest of that year’s tax papers, satisfies IRS, HMRC, and German requirements simultaneously — the export guide covers what those files should contain. PDF and CSV are the two formats safely readable in 2036; whatever the app uses internally is not guaranteed to be.

The year-end ritual is fifteen minutes: export, verify the file opens, drop it in the tax-year folder, done. What you must not do is discover the export paywall or the closed account after the question arrives — at that point you are in reconstruction territory, which recovers less and proves worse.

Where MileTrack fits

MileTrack removes the two dependencies that usually kill old logs. Exports — PDF, CSV, XLSX — are free, so the year-end archive never hits a paywall. And trip history lives on your device by default rather than behind an account on someone’s server, so the record does not evaporate with a subscription state. MileTrack for US drivers shows the monthly export that becomes the archive.

The retention habit stays yours: export each year, keep the files with the tax papers, count seven years before deleting anything. That is the entire discipline.

Related guides

• Mileage Log Requirements for IRS: What to Record and How to Store It
• Mileage Tracker Reports and Exports: What Your Accountant Wants
• Forgot to Track Your Miles? How to Reconstruct a Mileage Log

Tax note: educational content only, not tax advice. Limitation periods have exceptions — when in doubt, keep the records longer.