Which gig driving miles are actually deductible?

The clear cases

• Miles with a passenger or an order in the car. Business. Nobody disputes this.
• Miles from a drop-off to the next pickup you have already accepted. Business, on any reading.
• Purely personal trips while the app is off. Not deductible.

The genuinely contested cases

These are the ones people argue about, and where you should talk to a professional rather than trust a blog:

• Miles driven while online and available but with no order accepted. The common practitioner position is that these are business miles because you are actively working. The IRS has not confirmed this in published guidance.
• The drive from home to a busy area before going online. Frequently characterised as commuting, and commuting is not deductible. Some practitioners disagree where the driver has a qualifying home office. Fact-dependent.
• The drive home after your last delivery. Same disagreement, same dependency.

Platform-reported mileage is not your deduction

Uber, Lyft and DoorDash each report some mileage figure in-app or on year-end summaries. These are the miles that platform tracked, usually on-trip only. They typically exclude the miles between jobs, which for many drivers is a substantial share of total driving. Treating a platform's number as your deduction generally understates it — and it will not be date-split for the 2026 rate change either.

What to do regardless

Record every mile with its date, destination and purpose, and categorise as you go. If you have that, you and your accountant can take whatever position the facts support. If you don't, the question is academic — you have nothing to substantiate either way. See what the IRS requires in a log.