Are the miles from my home to the brokerage office deductible?

Generally no. The IRS treats travel between your home and a regular place of work as a personal commute, and commuting is never deductible however far you live from the office. That is why office trips are counted separately in this calculator and shown as non-deductible by default. Once you are at the office, the driving after that — out to a showing, a listing appointment, a closing, then back again — is business travel. The exception is an agent whose home is their principal place of business, which the toggle above covers.

What is the home-office exception?

If your home is the principal place of business for your real estate work — you do the listing prep, contract work, client calls and administration there, and the brokerage gives you no assigned space you regularly work from — then trips from home to a client, a property or the office are business travel rather than commuting. Whether that applies is a question of fact about how you actually work, not a choice you make on the return, so it is worth settling once with a tax professional rather than guessing each year.

What do I need to record for each trip?

The IRS expects a record made at or near the time of the trip, not reconstructed at year end. For each trip that means the date, where it started and ended, the business purpose, and the miles. A showing loop can be logged as one route with the addresses in order and the total distance, which is enough to substantiate the miles without twenty separate entries. Keep the odometer reading at the start and end of the year as well, since the total miles the car covered is part of the picture.

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Real Estate Agent Mileage Deduction Calculator — Showings, Open Houses and the Commute Rule

Enter the driving a normal week and month actually contain — showings, open houses, client meetings and trips to the brokerage office — and see the deductible miles and what they are worth at the IRS standard mileage rate, with commute miles kept separate because they do not count. Runs entirely in your browser: nothing is sent anywhere, and nothing is stored.

Showings per week

Average round-trip miles per showing

Open houses per month

Average round-trip miles per open house

Client meetings per week

Listing appointments, buyer consultations, closings, inspections, sign and lockbox runs.

Average round-trip miles per meeting

Office trips per week

Home to the brokerage and back. Counted as commuting unless the box below applies.

Average round-trip miles per office trip

Weeks worked per year

Rate per mile (USD)

Default: 76¢ — the IRS business standard mileage rate for travel on or after 1 July 2026 (IRS, Standard mileage rates). Edit it for an earlier period or a brokerage reimbursement rate.

My home is my principal place of business, and the brokerage gives me no assigned space I regularly work from — treat office trips as business travel rather than commuting.

Per week

$114.49

151 deductible miles

Per month

$477.03

628 deductible miles

Per year

$5,724.32

7,532 deductible miles

Non-deductible commute miles, shown separately

36 miles a week and 1,800 a year go on trips between home and the brokerage office. At $0.76 a mile that is $1,368.00 of driving that the commute rule keeps out of the deduction. It is still real wear on the car — it just is not deductible.

How these numbers are built

Showings: 8 × 14 mi × 50 weeks = 5,600 miles a year.
Open houses: 2 × 18 mi × 12 months = 432 miles a year. These are entered monthly, so they use 12 months rather than your weeks worked.
Client meetings: 3 × 10 mi × 50 weeks = 1,500 miles a year.
Office trips: 3 × 12 mi × 50 weeks = 1,800 miles a year, counted as non-deductible commuting.
Deductible total = 7,532 miles × $0.76 = $5,724.32 a year; the week and month figures are that annual total divided by 50 weeks and by 12 months.
Every figure is an estimate from the averages you typed. A deduction is substantiated by a contemporaneous log of actual trips, not by an average.

https://casedaisy.com/tools/real-estate-agent-mileage-calculator?sw=8&sm=14&oh=2&ohm=18&mw=3&mm=10&ow=3&om=12&wpy=50&rate=0.76

casedaisy logs agent mileage from your actual showing routes, commute rule included

Your day's showings become an ordered route with the distance between each address measured, and the home-to-office leg is treated as commute unless you have told it otherwise. The log is built as the day happens, so what you export at tax time is a record rather than an average.

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What counts for an agent

Almost everything an agent drives during the working day is business travel: the loop between four showings, the run out to a listing appointment, the trip to install a lockbox or a sign, the drive to the title company for a closing, the property you previewed before recommending it, the broker tour, the continuing-education class. Driving between an open house and a buyer consultation counts. So does the trip back to the office between two appointments, because by then you are travelling between business stops rather than commuting from home.

What does not count is the personal part of the day. The detour for your dry cleaning between two showings is personal even though the car never went home, and a trip that mixes both purposes is deductible only as to its business portion. That is why the sensible habit is to record trips by address and purpose rather than reading the odometer at the start and end of the day and calling the difference business.

The commute rule and its exception

The rule itself is short: travel between your home and a regular place of work is commuting, and commuting is a personal expense. For an agent affiliated with a brokerage office, the home-to-office and office-to-home legs are commuting however far apart they are, which is why this calculator keeps them in their own line rather than quietly folding them into the total. Everything after you arrive is business driving — office to showing, showing to showing, showing to closing.

The exception is the home office. If your home is the principal place of business for your real estate work and the brokerage provides no space you regularly work from, then the drive from home to the first showing is business travel rather than a commute, and the office run becomes just another business stop. Whether that describes you is a question of fact about how you actually work, and the answer changes the annual figure substantially — which is exactly why it is worth settling once with a tax professional instead of re-deciding it every April.

What to record

A mileage deduction is substantiated by a record made at or near the time of the trip. For each trip that means four things: the date, where it started and where it ended, the business purpose, and the miles. A showing loop can be one entry — the addresses in order and the total distance for the route — which keeps the log short without losing the detail that makes it credible. Note the odometer at the start and end of the year as well, since the total distance the car covered is part of establishing the business share. IRS Publication 463 sets out the recordkeeping rules in full.

Standard rate or actual expenses

There are two general methods for deducting the business use of a car. The standard mileage rate multiplies your business miles by a per-mile rate the IRS publishes, and needs a mileage log. The actual expense method takes the real costs of running the car — fuel, insurance, repairs, tyres, depreciation and so on — and deducts the business share, which needs receipts as well as the log. Which one produces the better result depends on the car and the mileage, and there are rules about when the choice can be made and changed, including a restriction on switching to the standard rate for a car you own if you did not use it in the first business year. This page describes the two methods in general terms only and is not tax advice — the detail is in Publication 463, and a tax professional should confirm which applies to you. Also useful: showing route planner and the contract deadline calculator.

Rates come from the IRS standard mileage rate for business use (IRS, Standard mileage rates). This page explains public IRS guidance and is not tax advice. Last reviewed: September 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Are the miles from my home to the brokerage office deductible?: Generally no. The IRS treats travel between your home and a regular place of work as a personal commute, and commuting is never deductible however far you live from the office. That is why office trips are counted separately in this calculator and shown as non-deductible by default. Once you are at the office, the driving after that — out to a showing, a listing appointment, a closing, then back again — is business travel. The exception is an agent whose home is their principal place of business, which the toggle above covers.
What is the home-office exception?: If your home is the principal place of business for your real estate work — you do the listing prep, contract work, client calls and administration there, and the brokerage gives you no assigned space you regularly work from — then trips from home to a client, a property or the office are business travel rather than commuting. Whether that applies is a question of fact about how you actually work, not a choice you make on the return, so it is worth settling once with a tax professional rather than guessing each year.
What do I need to record for each trip?: The IRS expects a record made at or near the time of the trip, not reconstructed at year end. For each trip that means the date, where it started and ended, the business purpose, and the miles. A showing loop can be logged as one route with the addresses in order and the total distance, which is enough to substantiate the miles without twenty separate entries. Keep the odometer reading at the start and end of the year as well, since the total miles the car covered is part of the picture.