The mileage deduction on your tax return is an easy one to take and definitely worthwhile if you use your car for your business, or for transporting yourself to your business appointments. Since the IRS wants your claim substantiated, you want an easy-to-use tracking tool.

Logging mileage seems to be a real hassle for most people I’ve spoken with (”My accountant told me to keep a notepad in the car. I think I’ve used it 4 times this year– I never think of using it!”)

I’ve developed 2 versions of the travel log that are Schedule/Planner & Mapquest based. This means that all you need is your Schedule/Planner (complete with appointment, date, time, purpose (super brief is fine), and location of appointment) & access to a Mapquest.com type of website that tells you how far it is between point A and point B.

Travel log by destination is for when you go to same place multiple times.
Travel log by date is for when you go somewhere only once.

Instructions
The forms are pretty self explanatory, so I’ll keep this part brief.
1. Fill out forms at the end of each month (or at the end of the year, but if you have a lot of appointments eligible for the mileage deduction, doing this monthly is a lot less painful).

2. Start at the beginning of the month and scan for business appointments that you drove to.

3. Enter each appointment on either the travel log by date or travel log by destination (not both)

A few notes on the travel log by destination:

• total # of trips - Leave blank until the end of the year. Then, simply add up the number of dates enterd.
• total mileage - Multiply the mileage RT x total # of trips. Leave blank until the end of the year.
• if you don’t know the mileage for a destination, see #4 below

4. if you don’t know the mileage, goto MapQuest.com and use the part of the page that let’s you enter a beginning and end point. It looks like this:

When it gives you the directions, it will also give you total mileage at the top of the page. Multiply by 2 and voila! there is your round trip mileage.

Download options:
pdf - keep in your reference binder and fill in by hand
excel spreadsheet - store on your computer and type in info
Download these and other helpful forms here.