Business miles are worth real money at tax time. Here’s how to log a trip, what the app fills in for you, and how the miles reach your Schedule C draft.
Open Mileage and fill in the short form: the date, where the drive started, where it ended, and a few words on why it was a business drive (“client meeting”, “supply run”). If you drove there and back, check Round trip and the miles count both ways. If you’ve added your vehicles, pick the one you drove; if not, skip it and add the trip.
The business purpose isn’t busywork. If anyone ever asks why a drive was deductible, your answer is already written down next to the date and the miles.
No. ExpenseGhost never tracks your location. There’s no background app watching where you go, no GPS, and nothing running down your phone’s battery while you drive. A trip exists because you logged it, and for no other reason.
What you get instead is a form that does the tedious part. As you type the start and end, the app suggests real addresses, and once you pick them it fills in the driving miles for you. If it can’t work out the distance, you type the miles yourself. Either way, logging a drive takes a few seconds.
Each year the IRS sets a standard rate per business mile: 72.5 cents for 2026. Your deduction is your logged miles times that rate, so 1,000 business miles in 2026 is $725 off your business profit. The top of the Mileage page keeps the running total for the year and shows the rate it’s using.
That total flows into your Schedule C draft (the tax form where a sole proprietor reports business profit and expenses) under car and truck expenses, and into your tax estimate. Both are draft numbers to confirm with your tax preparer, and the tax estimates guide explains where the estimate comes from.
One exception. If you set a vehicle to actual expense, its trips don’t add to this total. Actual expense means you deduct what you actually spent on that car (gas, repairs, insurance) instead of a flat rate per mile, and the app keeps the two methods from counting the same costs twice. Parking and tolls are separate and count either way.
Drives you make for the business: visiting a client, picking up supplies, driving between two work sites, dropping packages at the post office. If the reason for the drive was work, it generally counts. Log it while it’s fresh, with a purpose you’d be comfortable reading back a year later.
Commuting usually doesn’t count. Driving from home to your regular workplace and back is commuting, not business mileage, even though you’re going there to work. The rules have edges (a home office can change the picture), so when a drive feels borderline, ask a tax professional before you count on it.
Delete, yes. Every trip in the list has a Delete button, and removing one takes its miles off your deduction for the year right away. There’s no edit button, so to fix a wrong date or address, delete the trip and log it again with the right details.