The mileage deduction for resellers, with 2026's two rates

A Saturday loop of four charity shops, sorry, thrift stores, and a post office can easily run to 40 miles. At the IRS business rate, that’s about $29.00 of deduction for one morning. Yet the mileage deduction for resellers is the one most part-timers never claim, because nobody wrote the miles down at the time.

This guide covers which drives count, the two IRS rates for 2026, what to log for each trip, and what a year of Saturdays is worth. It finishes with the choice between the standard rate and actual costs, which is worth making on purpose. None of it is tax advice, but all of it will make the chat with your tax preparer shorter.

Two IRS mileage rates in 2026

The IRS standard mileage rate for business driving changed partway through 2026. The rate follows the date of the drive, not the date you file:

So a 40-mile trip on Saturday 7 March is worth $29.00. The same trip on Saturday 8 August is worth $30.40. If you rebuild a log at the end of the year with one rate for everything, you’ll get one half of it wrong.

The mileage deduction for resellers: which drives count?

Driving for the business counts. For a reseller that usually means:

• Sourcing runs to thrift stores, estate sales, yard sales, flea markets and auctions.
• Trips to the post office, a UPS store or a carrier drop-off to ship orders.
• Buying supplies: mailers, boxes, tape, a new label printer.
• Going to the bank to deposit business takings.

Sourcing trips often chain together: three thrift stores, a yard sale, then the post office on the way home. Log the whole loop as one trip with its stops in order. If you peel off for something personal halfway, like the supermarket or a friend’s house, leave that leg out and pick the business miles up again when you head back to business stops.

Driving you’d have done anyway doesn’t turn into business driving because you stopped at a Goodwill on the way. The commute to another job is personal, and so is the school run.

Where the trip starts matters too. If your home is your main place of business (you list, store and pack there), trips from home to source and to ship are generally business trips. If it isn’t, the rules are stricter. This is the bit to check with a tax professional if you’re unsure.

What should a reseller’s mileage log include?

For each trip, write down:

• The date.
• Where you went, or the stops in order.
• Why: sourcing, shipping or supplies.
• The miles, from the odometer or a map route.
• Any parking and tolls, which you can claim on top of the standard rate.

The IRS is plain about timing. Its guide to car and travel expenses says:

In other words, a log rebuilt from memory in April is the kind that doesn’t hold up. A map app helps with the miles: plan the route in it before you set off, or check your location history that evening, and copy the distance into your log while you still remember which stops were for the business. Logging the trip before you leave the last car park takes less time than reading this paragraph. The habit is the hard part, not the record.

What a year of Saturdays is worth

Here’s the mileage deduction for resellers made concrete. Say you do a 40-mile sourcing loop every Saturday of 2026. That’s 52 trips and 2,080 miles, split across the two rates:

$1,544.40 is a deduction, not a refund. What it saves you depends on your tax bracket and self-employment tax. Still, it’s real money for driving you were doing anyway, and it only exists if the log does. Your post office runs go on top.

Standard mileage rate or actual costs?

The standard mileage rate covers fuel, wear, insurance and depreciation in one number, which is why it’s the simple choice for most resellers. The alternative is to claim the business share of your actual car costs. That needs every receipt and a record of your total miles for the year, so you can work out the business percentage.

The first year matters. The IRS says:

Actual costs can win if your car is expensive to run and most of its miles are business miles. For a typical part-time reseller doing a few hundred business miles a month in an ordinary car, the standard rate is usually simpler and close enough. After that first year you can switch between the two methods, with some limits on depreciation. If you’re not sure, start with the standard rate in year one, which keeps both doors open.

Common mileage mistakes

1. Using one rate for all of 2026. Trips before 1 July use 72.5¢; trips from 1 July use 76¢.
2. Counting the whole day’s driving. Only the business legs count. A detour to the shops for groceries isn’t one.
3. Forgetting parking and tolls. They go on top of the standard rate.
4. Estimating at year end. “About 40 miles most Saturdays” isn’t a log.
5. Losing the log with the phone. Whatever you use, make sure it backs up somewhere. A year of trips that lived only in one notes app is gone the day the phone goes in the canal, and rebuilding it from memory is exactly the kind of record the IRS trusts least.

Linking trips to the items they found

A sourcing trip has two costs, the miles and the stock, and one result: what that stock eventually sold for. Linking items to the trip they came from answers the question resellers actually ask, which is whether that estate sale an hour away was worth the drive.

In Hustl’s ledger, items can be tagged with the trip they came from, and the year’s report shows the mileage deduction beside the profit from sales. The trip log is part of Ledger. For the rest of what to keep, read the record keeping guide, and for the stock side, the cost of goods sold guide. Weighing up tools to keep it all in? Our app or spreadsheet review compares the options.

Rates are from the IRS standard mileage rates page (IR-2025-128 and IR-2026-29), and the recordkeeping rules from Publication 463. This guide isn’t tax advice.