IRS Standard Mileage Rate 2026
The business rate is 76 cents per mile for miles driven on or after July 1, 2026, and 72.5 cents for January through June. Here are the official rates, how to apply them, and what the IRS expects you to keep.
The standard mileage rate is the amount the IRS lets you deduct, or an employer reimburse tax-free, for each mile driven for business. It covers the whole cost of running the vehicle: gas, insurance, maintenance, repairs and depreciation. You cannot deduct those separately on top of it.
2026 rates by purpose
| Purpose | 2026 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Business, July 1 – December 31 | 76 cents / mile | 70 cents |
| Business, January 1 – June 30 | 72.5 cents / mile | |
| Medical | 20.5 cents / mile | 21 cents |
| Moving (active-duty military) | 20.5 cents / mile | 21 cents |
| Charitable | 14 cents / mile | 14 cents |
The year opened at 72.5 cents, set by IRS Notice 2026-10 of December 29, 2025. The IRS then raised the business rate to 76 cents for miles driven on or after July 1, 2026, a mid-year adjustment it last made in 2022; the current table is on the IRS standard mileage rates page. The date of the trip decides the rate: a June 30 drive is worth 72.5 cents a mile, a July 1 drive 76 cents. The business rate applies to gasoline, diesel, hybrid and fully electric vehicles alike — the IRS makes no distinction.
The charitable rate is set by statute, not by the IRS, which is why it never moves.
How to apply it
Multiply your business miles by the rate of the period they were driven in. Drive 4,600 business miles before July 1 and 4,600 after, and your 2026 deduction is 4,600 × $0.725 + 4,600 × $0.76 = $6,831.00. A log that dates every trip is what makes the split possible; Kilevo applies each rate to the trips of its period and prints both on the annual report.
Tolls and parking fees are deductible on top of the standard rate. Nothing else is.
Standard rate or actual expenses?
You may instead deduct the actual cost of operating the vehicle. Two rules decide whether you still have the choice.
If you want to use the standard rate for a car you own, you must use it in the first year the car is available for business. Switch to actual expenses later and you can go back to the standard rate — but you cannot do the reverse.
For a leased car, once you choose the standard mileage rate you must keep it for the entire lease, renewals included.
Commuting is not business mileage
Driving between home and your regular workplace is a personal commute, never deductible, however far it is. The drive from one client to the next is business mileage. So is the drive from a home office — your principal place of business — to a client.
What the IRS wants to see
A deduction you cannot document is a deduction you will lose. The IRS expects a contemporaneous mileage log recording, for each trip: the date, the mileage driven, the destination and the business purpose.
« Contemporaneous » is the word that matters. A log reconstructed from memory in April, the week before filing, carries little weight in an audit.
Work it out
The mileage reimbursement calculator applies these rates, no sign-up needed. If you need the log itself, start from our free mileage log template.
Kilevo is a mileage tracking app that rebuilds your trips from your Google or Outlook calendar, computes the distances, and exports an IRS-ready annual report.
