Unpaid miles are still deductible
The platform not paying you for a mile does not make it a personal mile.
Miles driven while you are online and available for work are generally business miles: driving to a restaurant after accepting, repositioning between offers, heading toward an area with more demand, and driving back out of a delivery zone. For delivery work these are commonly 30 to 50 percent of total miles.
Two things follow, and they compound. Platform mileage reports generally exclude them, so a driver using the platform's number as their log may be claiming close to half of what they drove. And these are precisely the miles a tracker with a manual start button loses, because nobody presses start to drive toward a hotspot.
At 2026 rates, 6,000 unclaimed unpaid miles is a deduction of roughly $4,350 to $4,560 left on the table.
The three categories
| Miles | Platform pays? | On the platform's mileage report? | Generally deductible? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active delivery or fare | Yes | Usually | Yes |
| To the pickup after accepting | Sometimes | Sometimes | Yes |
| Toward a hotspot while online | No | No | Generally yes |
| Repositioning between offers while online | No | No | Generally yes |
| Out of a delivery zone, still online | No | No | Generally yes |
| Anything while offline | No | No | No |
The dividing line is not who paid. It is whether you were working. Online and available for work is the condition that matters, and it is why going offline before running an errand is a habit worth building: it makes the classification obvious rather than arguable.
What they are worth
A driver with 20,000 total working miles, where 40 percent are unpaid:
| Miles | Deduction at 2026 rates | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid portion only | 12,000 | $8,700 – $9,120 |
| All working miles | 20,000 | $14,500 – $15,200 |
| Difference | 8,000 | $5,800 – $6,080 |
At a combined income and self-employment tax rate near 30 percent, that difference is roughly $1,800 of real money for the same driving.
Ranges reflect 2026's two rates: 72.5¢ through June 30, 76¢ from July 1. The two-rate explainer.
Why trackers lose exactly these miles
This is the part that makes it a product problem rather than a knowledge problem.
Manual start loses them first. You press start for a delivery because a delivery feels like work. You do not press start to drive twenty minutes toward a busier suburb, because that feels like waiting. It is not waiting, and it is not a personal trip either.
Late detection loses their beginnings. A tracker that takes half a mile to decide you are driving clips the start of every trip. Repositioning trips are short, so a fixed clipping distance removes a larger share of them.
Ambiguous-trip defaults lose them silently. An app that quietly buckets unclear trips as personal will undercount, and you will never see it happen.
MileTruth is built against all three: automatic capture on motion activity and geofence wake-ups rather than a button, back-filled trip starts so a trip is not short by the detection distance, and unclassified by default so nothing gets bucketed without you. How to measure whether your app is losing trips.
Recording them defensibly
Same standard as any other business mile. Publication 463 wants, per trip, the date, the mileage, the destination or route, and the business purpose, recorded at or near the time.
For unpaid miles the purpose is the part people overthink. It does not need to be elaborate:
- "Drove to zone, online"
- "Repositioned to hotspot after drop, online"
- "Returned from delivery area, online"
Keep your platform history as corroboration. It shows you were working on those dates and in that area, which supports the unpaid miles even though it does not list them.
And keep personal trips in the log, marked personal. A log showing classification actually happened is more credible than one containing only business trips, and you need total miles anyway for Part IV of Schedule C.
The boundary this does not resolve
The first trip from home and the last trip home are a separate and genuinely contested question, and being online does not automatically settle it. That one deserves its own page and a conversation with a tax professional, because it recurs for every mile you drive. The commuting rule for gig drivers.
The other reason unpaid miles matter
They are deductible, and they are also cost. Your car does not know which miles were paid.
An offer paying $9 for an 11-mile drive is really a 22-mile round trip once you count getting back to where the work is. At 41 cents a mile that is $9.02 of vehicle cost against $9.00 of revenue. The unpaid half is what turns an acceptable offer into a loss, and it is invisible if you only count paid miles.
That is the second half of what MileTruth computes: gross earnings minus every working mile priced against your own vehicle, divided by hours online. Why your gig pay is lower than it looks.
General information, not tax advice. Every claim links to an IRS source. Your circumstances may differ, and the treatment of specific trips can turn on facts about how you work.
Questions and answers
Are miles driven without a passenger or order deductible?
Miles driven while you are online and available for work are generally treated as business miles, including driving toward a busier area and repositioning between offers. The platform not paying you for a mile does not make it a personal mile.
What percentage of gig driving miles are unpaid?
For delivery work, commonly 30 to 50 percent of total miles. The exact share depends on your market, how far apart pickups and drops are, and how much you reposition while waiting.
Do platform mileage reports include unpaid miles?
Generally not. Platform figures typically cover the paid portion of a trip and exclude the drive to a pickup before acceptance, repositioning between offers, and the drive out of a delivery zone. Using a platform figure as your whole log usually understates your deduction substantially.
Why do mileage apps miss unpaid miles specifically?
Because nobody presses start to drive toward a hotspot. Any tracker with a manual start button loses exactly the miles that feel like waiting rather than working, and those are the unpaid ones.
How do I prove unpaid miles to the IRS?
The same way as any other business mile: a record made at or near the time showing the date, mileage, destination or route, and the business purpose. Drove to zone, online is a sufficient purpose. Platform history corroborates that you were working that day.
MileTruth. “Unpaid miles are still deductible.” Baker Ventures LLC, September 6, 2026. https://miletruth.bakerventuresstudio.com/answers/unpaid-miles-are-still-deductible/