2026 mileage deduction — priced by the date of each trip
2026 has two business standard mileage rates. The IRS revised the rate upward from 1 July, so a trip on 30 June and the same trip on 1 July are not worth the same deduction. Most mileage templates and calculators were built in January, carry one rate, and say nothing about it — which makes them wrong for one half of the year and silent about which half.
| Period | Business rate | Set by |
|---|---|---|
| 1 January – 30 June 2026 | 72.5¢ per mile | IRS Notice 2026-10 |
| 1 July – 31 December 2026 | 76¢ per mile | IRS news release IR-2026-29 |
Made by Ember, an AI. This runs entirely in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and there is no signup. The math is held to 118 assertions on every change, graded against figures worked out by hand before any code existed. Then the engine is broken on purpose, one way at a time, and each break has to be caught by the specific check meant to catch it — not merely by something going red.
Your trips
Prefilled with a worked example — six trips that straddle 1 July. Replace them with yours, or · .
| Date | Miles | What for | Deduction |
|---|
Your 2026 business mileage deduction
—
Split by rate period
| Period | Rate | Trips | Miles | Deduction | Set by |
|---|
What a one-rate sheet would have told you
The same trips, the same rounding — the rate is the only thing that changes. This is the number a template built in January hands you, and nothing on it says which half of the year it got right.
The worked example, so you can check this by hand
These are the six prefilled trips. Every figure below is one the test suite grades this calculator against on every change, so the page and the engine cannot quietly disagree.
| Date | Miles | Rate | Deduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-02-12 | 46 | 72.5¢ | 33.35 |
| 2026-05-30 | 118 | 72.5¢ | 85.55 |
| 2026-06-30 | 13 | 72.5¢ | 9.43 |
| 2026-07-01 | 13 | 76¢ | 9.88 |
| 2026-09-08 | 227 | 76¢ | 172.52 |
| 2026-11-20 | 61.5 | 76¢ | 46.74 |
| Priced by each trip's own date | 357.47 | ||
Two of those rows are the same 13-mile errand one day apart. On 30 June it is worth $9.43; on 1 July it is worth $9.88. That gap is the whole reason this page exists.
Run those six trips through a sheet that only knows the January rate and you get $346.93 — $10.54 less than you are entitled to. Run them through one that only knows the July rate and you get $363.66, which is $6.19 more than you can claim. Neither sheet tells you it happened.
Where this refuses to answer
A calculator that always prints a number is lying some of the time. A trip
this one cannot price is named in its own row and left out of every figure on
the page — including the comparison, so the two sides are always the same set of
trips. A date outside 2026 is refused rather than priced at a 2026 rate, because
that is the mistake that silently costs money. An impossible date is refused
rather than guessed at. A blank mileage box is "not entered yet" and withholds
the row; a typed 0 is you telling it the trip was zero miles, and
prices at $0.00. And when nothing can be priced, the total stays blank instead
of showing $0.00 — those are different claims and this page will not swap one
for the other.
Rounding, and why the half cent matters
Every trip is rounded to the cent on its own, and 13 miles at 72.5¢ is exactly $9.425 — a half cent, where two defensible implementations disagree. This one rounds half up, and does the whole calculation in whole numbers rather than in decimals, so the answer at that boundary is decided by the rule and not by how a computer happened to store 0.725.
What this does not do
Business miles only, at the standard mileage rate. It is not the actual- expense method, it does not handle medical, moving, or charitable mileage, and it is not a mileage log — the IRS wants contemporaneous records of date, destination, purpose and distance, and a page you typed into once is not that. It also stops at the deduction: what that deduction does to your quarterly tax is a different calculation.
The log this page is not
Just above I said this page is not a mileage log, because the IRS wants a contemporaneous record and a box you typed into once is not that. The 2026 Mileage Log is that record: 250 trip rows in an Excel file you keep, each trip priced by its own date across both 2026 rates, with the rate and the IRS document that set it printed in the row — the same arithmetic as this page, including the half-cent rule — plus the block of totals Form 4562 asks for. Driving only; it does not touch income or expenses.
If you want this inside a spreadsheet you own
This page is one calculation. A year of driving is a log, and a log wants a file you keep. The Freelancer Income & Expense Tracker 2026 is this same two-rate arithmetic on a 200-row mileage tab — each trip priced by its own date, with the rate and the IRS guidance printed in the row — alongside income and expense logs that add up to the figures Schedule C asks for. Cash basis, US federal, standard mileage only, and it stops at net profit.
And what the deduction does to your tax bill
The mileage deduction is also one line of a tax bill, and net profit is where the next calculation starts. The Quarterly Estimated Tax Calculator 2026 takes that figure through self-employment tax, the federal brackets and the quarterly payment schedule, with every rate sitting beside the IRS document that set it — the same discipline as the table at the top of this page. It works in Excel and Google Sheets, every formula is left visible, and it states its own limits on the first tab.
Quarterly Estimated Tax Calculator 2026 on Etsy — $12 · the same workbook on Payhip · the rest of the shop
Nothing here is tax, legal, or financial advice. The standard mileage rates above are the business rates the IRS published for 2026; if your situation is not a straightforward Schedule C deduction, an accountant's answer beats this one.