Deducting Sourcing Trips: 2026 Mileage Rates and Records You Need

The 2026 rates: one change on July 1

The IRS set 72.5¢ for 2026 in December 2025. In July it issued Announcement 2026-11, raising the business rate to 76¢. The announcement says the change “results from recent increases in the price of fuel.” The new rate applies to transportation expenses paid or incurred on or after July 1, 2026, and the old rate still applies to anything before July 1. The IRS’s standard mileage rates page shows both 2026 rows.

So you can’t multiply a year’s miles by one number. Total your business miles before July 1 and from July 1 separately, then apply each rate.

When a sourcing trip counts

Mileage is a business deduction, so it starts with selling as a business, reported on Schedule C. Hobby selling doesn’t get it (see hobby or business). From there, Publication 463 draws the lines:

• Commuting isn’t deductible. Driving between home and your main place of work is personal, however far it is.
• A home that is your principal place of business changes the picture. Pub 463 says you can deduct daily transportation between your residence and another work location in the same business. That holds when the home is your principal place of business, regardless of distance. For a reseller, that’s the trip from a home office to a thrift store, an estate sale or the post office. Whether a home office qualifies is covered in IRS Publication 587.
• Without a qualifying home office or a regular office, Pub 463 treats your first business contact inside your metropolitan area as your office. Home to that first stop and your last stop back home are commuting. Driving between business stops is deductible.
• Parking and tolls for business trips are deductible on top of the mileage rate. Parking at your own regular place of work isn’t.

Worked example: a 2026 trip log

Here is a short log for a seller whose home office is the principal place of business. Each trip is valued with the IRS rate in force on its date, using the same rate table as our profit calculator:

The two post office runs are the same 18 miles one day apart, and they’re worth $13.05 and $13.68. Across a full year the split adds up. Say the same seller logs 1,000 business miles before July 1 and 1,000 after:

Using 72.5¢ for all 2,000 miles would give $1,450.00 and understate it by $35.00. Using 76¢ for all of them would give $1,520.00 and overstate it by $35.00.

What the log needs

Pub 463 asks for a record kept at or near the time of each trip, in a log, diary, trip sheet or similar record. A record you keep on a computer counts as written. For car use, the elements are:

1. Date of each business use.
2. Destination, the place you drove to.
3. Business purpose, such as “sourcing, three thrift stores” or “drop off 12 orders.”
4. Miles for each business use.
5. Total miles you drove the car during the year, business and personal.

Pub 463 also allows sampling. You can keep an adequate record for part of the year and use it for the whole year, if you can show by other evidence that the period is representative. Schedule C, Part IV asks about your vehicle’s business and commuting miles and your records, and its instructions point back to Pub 463’s recordkeeping rules. The log feeds those answers.

Standard rate or actual expenses

The standard rate replaces your actual car costs; it doesn’t add to them. Pub 463 and the Schedule C instructions set the main rules:

• For a car you own, you must choose the standard rate in the first year the car is available for use in your business. In later years you can pick either method.
• For a leased car, the standard rate has to be used for the entire lease period.
• You can’t use it if you use five or more cars in the business at the same time.
• With the standard rate, you don’t also deduct depreciation, lease payments or actual operating costs such as gas, oil and repairs. Notice 2026-10 says 35¢ of each 2026 mile counts as depreciation, which reduces the car’s basis.

Using the rate in per-item profit

On our profit calculator, you enter the sourcing miles you allocate to the item; its example splits a trip evenly over the items it found. A 30-mile run that found five items is 6 miles per item. At 76¢ (a sale dated October 5, 2026) that’s $4.56 per item, and at 72.5¢ (March 14, 2026) it’s $4.35. In the calculator’s default example, a $50.00 item sold on eBay, the $41.08 net payout less $12.00 item cost, $0.96 sourcing tax, $0.85 supplies and $4.56 of mileage leaves $22.71. Keep in mind that the IRS rate is a deduction rate. It stands in for your car cost there, but your real cost per mile may be higher or lower.

Next step

Enter your miles and sale date in the reseller profit calculator. It picks the 72.5¢ or 76¢ rate from the date you give it. The real profit per item guide walks through the rest of the per-item math.