If you drive for work as a freelancer or gig worker in the US, mileage can be one of your largest deductions — and one of the easiest to lose in an audit, because it depends on records you had to keep at the time. This guide covers what a solid log contains, which paperwork to keep alongside it, and a low-effort phone workflow. It is general information, not tax advice; check IRS guidance or ask a tax professional for your situation.
What counts, in plain terms
Self-employed people can generally deduct business use of a vehicle either with the standard mileage rate (a set amount per business mile, published by the IRS each year — look up the current figure on irs.gov, because it changes) or with actual expenses (fuel, repairs, insurance, depreciation, prorated by business use). Commuting from home to a regular workplace is generally not deductible. Trips between jobs, to clients, to pick up supplies, or (for drivers) the miles driven while working generally are, but the rules have details.
Whichever method you pick, you need to show how many business miles you drove.
What a defensible mileage log contains
Aim for contemporaneous records — written at or near the time of the trip — with:
- Date of each trip
- Starting point and destination (or a clear route description)
- Business purpose ("client meeting with X", "supply pickup", "delivery shift")
- Miles driven (odometer start/end or measured distance)
- Total odometer reading at the start and end of the year, to show business vs. total use
A log reconstructed in April from memory is weaker than one kept week by week. Estimates written at the end of the year are exactly what auditors discount.
Receipts and paperwork to keep alongside it
Mileage is one piece. Keep:
- Fuel, parking, tolls (if you use actual expenses, or for parking and tolls, which can be deductible in addition to the standard rate — confirm with a professional)
- Repair, insurance and registration documents
- Invoices or payment statements showing which income the trips relate to
- Phone and software bills with a business share
- Year-end forms you receive (1099-NEC, 1099-K) once they arrive
How long to keep everything depends on rules in your situation; a retention schedule is covered in how long to keep documents.
A phone workflow that takes minutes a week
- Log trips as you go. Use a mileage-tracking app, or a simple notes/spreadsheet template with the columns above. Pick whatever you will really use every week.
- Scan receipts the day you get them. Thermal paper fades. A photo in your camera roll isn't organized; a scanned, named PDF is. Our guide on scanning and organizing receipts walks through folders and naming.
- Name files consistently:
2026-03-14_fuel_shell_48.20.pdf. Sorting by name then sorts by date. - File by category (fuel, parking, repairs, supplies, income) so the totals are quick to compute.
- Back up monthly. One phone is one point of failure — see how to back up scanned documents.
- Do a 10-minute review at month-end. Fill gaps while you still remember the trip.
For the broader paper trail, how to organize tax documents digitally covers the rest of the year-end pile.
Common mistakes
- Mixing personal and business miles without separating them
- Round numbers (every trip exactly 20.0 miles) that look invented
- Missing purpose — "driving" isn't a purpose
- Losing the year-start odometer reading — photograph the odometer on 1 January
- Throwing away faded receipts before scanning them
Where LumenScan fits
LumenScan is a document scanner, not a mileage tracker: use it for the receipts and paperwork side. It straightens and cleans photos of receipts, reads the text on-device so you can search them later (for example for "Shell" or "parking"), auto-files receipts and invoices into categories, and exports tidy PDFs for your accountant. Nothing is uploaded for text recognition. The free tier includes one OCR scan per day; Pro unlocks the rest. Pair it with whichever mileage log you will actually keep, and tax season becomes an export instead of a hunt.