Last reviewed: August 3, 2026 · By the RaceYear team
Short answer: The racing mileage deduction is real, but only if your racing is a business and not a hobby. You deduct business miles on the tow vehicle at the IRS standard mileage rate — 72.5 cents per mile through June 30, 2026 and 76 cents per mile from July 1 — or by actual expenses, not both. The trailer is a separate depreciable asset.
Key takeaways
U.S. tax note: General education, not tax or legal advice. Forming an entity, keeping receipts or running a tracking app does not by itself establish trade-or-business status or make an expense deductible. Federal, state and local rules differ and change mid-year — the 2026 mileage rate did exactly that. Verify the figures for the tax year you are actually filing with a qualified tax professional.
Nobody in the pits argues about tires being deductible. The argument is always about the truck. Half the guys swear they write off every mile to the track; the other half never claim one because they don’t know how. Both are usually wrong, and the difference between them is a notebook.
One disclaimer, said once and meant: this is general education, not tax advice. Figures below are dated to the tax year they apply to, rules change, and your situation is yours. Take it to a qualified tax professional before it goes on a return.
None of this applies unless the IRS would call your racing a business carried on for profit. If it’s a hobby, your winnings are still taxable and your tow miles are worth nothing.
The first factor the IRS lists is whether “the taxpayer carries out activity in a businesslike manner and maintains complete and accurate books and records,” and it warns that “all factors, facts, and circumstances with respect to the activity must be considered. No one factor is more important than another” (IRS, hobby or business).
Read that first factor again. The mileage log this post is about isn’t only how you claim the deduction — it’s part of how you prove you’re a business at all. We break the whole hobby loss rule test down in is your racing a business or a hobby. Settle that first.
The IRS business standard mileage rate for 2026 is not one number — it was raised mid-year, the first time the IRS has done that since the 2022 fuel spike. It is 72.5 cents per mile for January 1–June 30, 2026 and 76 cents per mile for July 1–December 31, 2026 (Announcement 2026-11, modifying Notice 2026-10). The 2025 rate was 70 cents (IRS, standard mileage rates). The IRS gave the reason plainly: the change “results from recent increases in the price of fuel.”
For a race team this is not a footnote. Most of a season’s towing happens after July 1 — summer specials, speedweeks, the run at a track championship — so most of your miles are the ones carrying the higher rate. Run the whole year at 72.5 cents and you will understate the deduction on exactly the miles you drove most of.
One more number that never appears on the pay window but shows up when you sell the truck: 35 cents of every 2026 business mile is treated as depreciation and comes off the vehicle’s tax basis (Notice 2026-10). That figure is up from 33 cents in 2025, and unlike the rate itself it was not split mid-year — it is 35 cents for the whole of 2026. It is why a high-mileage tow rig can generate a taxable gain on sale even when the truck feels used up.
| Tax year | Business standard mileage rate | Effective |
|---|---|---|
| 2026, first half | 72.5 cents per mile | Jan. 1–June 30, 2026 |
| 2026, second half | 76 cents per mile | July 1–Dec. 31, 2026 |
| 2025 | 70 cents per mile | Full year |
The rate changes every year. Before you run the math on a season, check the current IRS notice instead of a number you saw in a forum post.
Do the arithmetic on a real season and it stops being trivia. A 174-mile haul to the weekly show is 348 miles round trip — about $252 of deduction at the first-half 2026 rate, closer to $264 after July 1, for one night. Run 22 of those and you’re north of $5,500 in miles alone, more than most grassroots teams collect in purse money all year.
One thing the rate does not swallow: parking fees and business-related tolls stay separately deductible on top of it (IRS Publication 463).
You pick one method per vehicle, and the choice isn’t fully reversible. Actual expenses means deducting the vehicle’s real operating costs — gas, oil, repairs, maintenance, insurance, registration, lease payments, depreciation — times the business-use percentage. Standard mileage replaces all of that with a per-mile rate.
The timing rule is the one that bites. Per Publication 463: “If you want to use the standard mileage rate for a car you own, you must choose to use it in the first year the car is available for use in your business. Then, in later years, you can choose to use either the standard mileage rate or actual expenses.” For a leased vehicle, “you must use it for the entire lease period.” The Schedule C instructions repeat both conditions at line 9 (IRS, Instructions for Schedule C).
Translated for the trailer park: the first tax year your truck goes to work for the racing business is the only year you get to open the standard-mileage door. Start with actual expenses on a truck you own and that door is shut. Start with standard mileage and you keep both options open year to year, though switching to actual expenses later carries its own depreciation rules.
Publication 463 also lists when the rate is off the table entirely. You can’t use the standard mileage rate if you:
Those fourth and fifth bullets are the tow-rig trap. We’ll come back to them.
A business mile is a mile driven for the racing business between work locations. Commuting is not: “You can’t deduct the costs of… driving a car between your home and your main or regular place of work. These costs are personal commuting expenses” (Publication 463).
Two rules in that same publication do most of the heavy lifting for racers. The home-shop rule: “If you have an office in your home that qualifies as a principal place of business, you can deduct your daily transportation costs between your home and another work location in the same trade or business.” And the temporary-location rule: “If you have one or more regular work locations away from your home and you commute to a temporary work location in the same trade or business, you can deduct the expenses of the daily round-trip transportation between your home and the temporary location, regardless of distance.”
| The trip | Business mile? |
|---|---|
| Your shop (a qualifying principal place of business) to the track and back | Yes — travel between work locations in the same business |
| Home to a temporary work location, when you have a regular work location away from home | Yes, regardless of distance |
| Mid-week parts run to the speed shop or machine shop | Yes, if the errand is for the racing business |
| Home to your regular day job | No — personal commuting |
| The scenic detour, the family days tacked onto a long tow | No — deduct only the business portion |
| Laps you turn on track | No — the rate is for operating a highway vehicle, not the race car |
Where it gets genuinely gray is the home track you run every Saturday for eight months. Temporary work location, or your regular place of business? Reasonable tax pros differ, and the answer decides whether the first leg of the night is a deduction or a commute. Ask yours, and note the answer — the same logic applies to every touring date your sanctioning body puts on the schedule.
Four elements, per trip. Publication 463’s Table 5-1 requires you to prove the amount, the time, the place or description, and the business purpose of transportation expenses.
Here’s what that looks like as one line in a racer’s notebook:
| Element | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Amount | 348 miles round trip |
| Time (date) | April 18, 2026 |
| Place | Lernerville Speedway, Sarver, PA |
| Business purpose | Hauled the 602 Crate to the weekly points show |
Three more requirements people miss:
And know what the form asks. Part IV of Schedule C wants the date the vehicle was placed in service, your business miles, your commuting miles and your other miles — then asks flatly whether you have evidence to support the deduction, and whether that evidence is written (Instructions for Schedule C). The return itself asks if you kept a log. Let that shape how you drive all season.
Your truck is one vehicle with two jobs, and the tax treatment follows the split. Only the business-use share counts — if the same F-350 hauls the car Saturday and the kids Sunday, personal miles are personal.
Now back to that trap. Take a big depreciation write-off on the truck — Section 179 or the special depreciation allowance — and Publication 463 says you can no longer use the standard mileage rate on that vehicle. You’ve committed it to actual expenses. That’s not a bad outcome; it’s a permanent one, and racers stumble into it by buying a truck in December, letting somebody expense the whole thing, and discovering in year three that the simple per-mile method is gone.
So decide before you file the first return that includes the truck. Run both methods on a realistic season of miles with your tax pro, and pick knowing it’s a one-way door on a vehicle you own.
The trailer doesn’t generate mileage. It’s equipment you bought, so it’s capitalized and depreciated — or expensed up front under Section 179 if it qualifies. Registration, tires, bearings and repairs on the trailer itself are trailer expenses, not car-and-truck expenses; where they land on the form is a question for your preparer.
Four rules decide whether the enclosed 32-footer gets written off this year:
The other lever is bonus depreciation. Treasury and the IRS have confirmed a permanent 100% additional first-year depreciation deduction for qualified property acquired after Jan. 19, 2025 (IRS, Notice 2026-11 guidance). Section 179 and bonus depreciation reach a similar place by different roads with different limits. Which one fits your season is exactly the call a tax professional gets paid to make.
It depends on where your business actually operates from. If your shop or home office qualifies as your principal place of business, transportation from there to another work location in the same trade or business is deductible. Driving between home and a main or regular place of work is nondeductible personal commuting. A weekly home track is a genuinely gray case — get your tax pro’s read.
No. The standard mileage rate replaces the vehicle’s operating costs — gas, oil, repairs, maintenance, insurance, lease payments and depreciation — for that vehicle. You choose that method or actual expenses, not both. Parking fees and business-related tolls are the exception: they stay deductible on top of the rate either way.
Not on a vehicle you own. You must choose the standard mileage rate in the first year the vehicle is available for use in your business; in later years you can move between methods. If you started with actual expenses, took Section 179, or claimed the special depreciation allowance on that vehicle, the standard mileage rate is off the table for it.
No. The rate is a per-mile allowance for operating and maintaining the vehicle you drive. The trailer is a separate business asset that gets depreciated over time or expensed under Section 179 if it qualifies, and its own registration, tires and repairs are separate expenses. Confirm the treatment with a tax professional.
Reconstructing a season from memory is the weakest position you can be in. The IRS values records made at or near the time of the expense over statements prepared later, and Schedule C Part IV asks directly whether your evidence is written. Start logging today rather than promising yourself you’ll rebuild it in April.
You can absolutely do all of this by hand. A spiral notebook in the door pocket, the odometer at the gate, four columns per trip — that’s a complete, legitimate mileage log, and it beats a fancy app you never open. The failure mode isn’t the method, it’s Tuesday: the night you got home at 1 a.m., unloaded, and never wrote down the odometer. RaceTrips exists to make that Tuesday not matter.
Log every trip and every mile as you go with RaceTrips — the first 8 trip reports are free.
Want the rest of the picture? Racing tax deductions covers everything else a racing business can write off, and Schedule C for racers shows exactly where these numbers land at filing time. Mileage isn’t the only way to write off the rig — race car depreciation and Section 179 covers the other one. A mileage log is one line item in a bigger record — a racing expense tracker covers the rest of what a deduction has to prove.
Run into a term you don’t know? It’s defined in plain language in the RaceYear racing glossary.
Saying it once more, because it matters: this is general education, not tax advice. Every figure here is tied to the tax year noted, rates and limits change annually, and only a qualified tax professional can apply them to your operation.
Setup notes, maintenance logs, race-day plans, and tax tracking — all in your pocket.
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