What an IRS audit actually asks for, as a gig driver

The five things a record needs

IRS Publication 463 defines "adequate records" for vehicle expenses as documentary evidence that, together, prove:

• Date of the expense or use
• Mileage for each business use, and the total miles for the year
• Destination — where you drove
• Business purpose of the trip

A mileage log covers all four by nature. A single spreadsheet row per trip — date, miles, drop-off area, "DoorDash delivery" — satisfies this if it's accurate and complete. What doesn't satisfy it: a single number written at tax time ("I drove about 11,000 miles for DoorDash this year"), even if the number turns out to be close to correct. Publication 463 is explicit that an expense account statement or log made "at or near the time" of the expense, backed by documentary evidence, has "more value" than a statement made later.

Contemporaneous records vs. reconstruction

"At or near the time" doesn't mean the exact minute — a log filled in that evening or that week from memory is still contemporaneous in the IRS's sense. What loses strength is a log built months or years later, with no supporting evidence, purely from memory. The IRS does still accept reconstructed records — it just weighs them differently in a dispute, and reconstruction is harder to do accurately the longer you wait. See what to do if you didn't track your miles for exactly what documentary evidence (platform trip histories, calendar entries, fuel and maintenance receipts, odometer readings) can rebuild a defensible log after the fact.

The one exception: sampling

Publication 463 allows a narrow shortcut: if you keep adequate records for part of the year, and that part is representative of your use for the rest of the year, the IRS accepts that sample to support the whole year's deduction. This is not permission to track three weeks a year and extrapolate freely — it applies where circumstances genuinely limit full record-keeping and the sample honestly reflects the pattern. A driver who tracked January–March in detail, then stopped, can potentially use that period to support a consistent claim for the rest of the year — but a period chosen because it happened to have unusually high mileage would not meet the "representative" bar.

What actually gets requested

In practice, if a mileage deduction is questioned, expect a request for the underlying records themselves — not just the total. That means your log (app export, spreadsheet, or paper), plus whatever corroborates it: platform trip-history exports, fuel receipts, maintenance records showing odometer readings at service visits, and toll or parking records tied to specific trips. The stronger the log lines up with independent evidence like an oil-change receipt's odometer reading, the less there is to dispute.

Business purpose, specifically

A generic label repeated on every row — "work" — is weaker than something specific: "DoorDash delivery run, downtown zone" or "Uber ride, airport pickup." You don't need a novel per trip; you need enough that a reviewer can tell the trip was for gig work and not a personal errand.

What this doesn't require

None of this requires photographing every receipt or logging every red light. It requires the four elements above, recorded close to when they happened, for every trip you're claiming. A driver using automatic detection with accurate dates, mileage, and platform tags — plus a quick business-purpose default like "{platform} delivery" — already meets the standard for every trip that's correctly classified.