Many people wonder if driving from home to the office (and back) is a valid business trip whose mileage you can deduct as part of your mileage deduction.
The answer is usually no, but… it actually depends!
In general commuting miles are not deductible. This means if you are an employee and the only driving you do for business is to drive to work and back, then you can’t deduct those trips.
But really, the big qualifying question is…
Do you claim the Home Office Deduction?
Yes
If so, that makes your home a valid business location.
Therefore, a trip from home to the office is a valid and deductible business trip!
No
Your home is not a deductible business location, so you cannot deduct any trip that goes there.
There are still some tricks you can use to deduct nearly all of your miles from home to the office.
For an alternate source, here’s what turbo tax says about commuting miles.
Use a mileage tracker to track miles for you
The fact that you can claim these miles is awesome – but the next problem is that you actually have to record and keep a mileage log of every single trip that you have driven in order to claim them on your taxes.
We highly recommend looking at the Mileage Ace mileage tracker. It’s an extremely accurate mileage tracker that is also very affordable. The device is far more reliable than any mileage tracking app and the logs are far more detailed which can be a huge help against an audit.
[…] This can mean that you can start claiming miles from the moment you leave home! You can read more about how you can claim your commuting miles. […]