You're a business now
Deliver for DoorDash, Uber Eats, Instacart, or Grubhub and you're an independent contractor: the platform sends a 1099, you file Schedule C, and you pay tax on profit — earnings minus expenses. For almost every courier the largest expense by far is the car. At the 2026 IRS rate of 72.5¢ per business mile, a driver logging 15,000 delivery miles deducts $10,875. Because self-employment income is hit by both income tax and ~15.3% SE tax, that deduction is commonly worth $3,000+ in cash. Every untracked mile leaks money.
Which miles count
- Restaurant/store to customer — yes, obviously.
- Driving to the next pickup — yes.
- Between deliveries while online and working— yes: repositioning toward a hot zone, circling while waiting for an offer with the app on. You're operating your business.
- Home to your starting area— the gray zone. Plain reading: driving from home to where you start working is commuting (personal), and back home at night likewise. If your home qualifies as your principal place of business, trips from home can become business miles — that's a fact-specific question for a tax pro. When in doubt, tap Start when you go online, and let the conservative version still be huge.
- Groceries on the way home with the app off — no. Mixed personal errands are personal.
Why the app's own estimate shortchanges you
DoorDash and Uber both send some form of yearly mileage estimate. Use it as corroboration, never as your log, for two reasons:
- It mostly counts on-trip miles — from acceptance to drop-off. The miles back from a dead-end suburb, between offers, and repositioning across town while online are your working miles too, and they routinely add 30–50% on top of on-trip distance.
- It isn't a §274(d) record. The IRS wants a per-trip log with date, place, purpose, and miles — the four required elements— not a platform's annual summary. The summary is great supporting evidence for the log you keep yourself.
Multi-apping and one log
Running DoorDash and Uber Eats simultaneously doesn't change anything: it's all one delivery business on one Schedule C (or two lines of the same trade). Keep onelog of working miles; don't try to split a mile between platforms.
A workable ritual
- Going online? Start a trip (or note the odometer).
- Going offline?Stop, and classify it as business — purpose: “delivery block.” One recording per session is a perfectly good record; you don't need 23 separate entries for 23 drop-offs.
- January 1: photograph the odometer. Repeat next January 1. Those two numbers give the total-miles denominator your Schedule C asks for.
- Parking and tolls:keep receipts — they're deductible on top of the mileage rate.
One caveat on method: the standard mileage rate is usually the right call for delivery drivers, but if you drive a gas-guzzler or lease, skim actual expenses vs. the standard rate before you file your first year — the first-year choice affects your options later.
The bottom line
A full-time dasher easily clears 20,000 working miles a year — a $14,500 deduction at the 2026 rate. The difference between drivers who capture that and drivers who don't isn't tax knowledge; it's a ten-second logging habit at the start and end of every session.