Dead Miles Between Orders: Deductible or Not?
- Miles between a drop-off and your next pickup while working are business miles under the standard professional reading - worth 72.5 cents each January-June and 76 cents from July 1, 2026.
- Repositioning toward a busier zone while you are online is defensible; cruising with every app off is not.
- The first leg from home and the last leg home are commuting, not dead miles.
- DoorDash reports on-delivery miles only; Instacart and Amazon Flex report nothing; Uber alone counts online waiting miles.
- 15 unlogged dead miles a shift is roughly $2,784 of 2026 deduction gone.
- No IRS ruling covers gig dead miles - your contemporaneous log does the arguing.
Are dead miles between orders deductible?
Generally yes. The miles you drive between one drop-off and the next pickup while you are out working are business miles under the consistent position of tax professionals, and they qualify for the standard mileage rate: 72.5 cents per mile for January through June 2026 and 76 cents per mile from July 1 on.
The IRS has never said so in as many words - there is no ruling on app-based driving - but the position rests on ordinary transportation law that predates every platform: trips between business stops are deductible, and a working driver is moving between business stops all shift. To price your own totals across both 2026 rate bands, use the 2026 mileage deduction calculator.
What actually counts as a dead mile
A dead mile is any mile driven during a shift with no order attached: the drive back from a suburban drop-off, the roll toward the restaurant row where pings land, the loop around a parking lot while you wait. Platforms do not pay for these miles, which is exactly why drivers forget they still count for taxes.
For tax purposes they sort into three buckets. Between-stop miles - leaving a drop-off and driving to a pickup - are business miles on any reasonable reading. Repositioning miles - moving toward a busier zone while available for orders - are the standard professional position, with more judgment involved. And driving around with every app closed is not business mileage at all.
The rule that makes between-order miles business miles
The authority is older than any delivery app. Costs of going between one business location and another are deductible business expenses under section 162(a) - Revenue Ruling 99-7 states that as settled law before it ever reaches its commuting exceptions. IRS Publication 463 lists "getting from one workplace to another in the course of your business or profession" as deductible transportation.
Applied to a shift, the restaurant is a business stop, the customer's door is a business stop, and the next restaurant is another one. The mile between your last drop and your next pickup is a trip between business locations, not a personal detour. TurboTax's rideshare guidance reads the rules the same way, treating miles between ride requests while working as deductible.
Repositioning miles: defensible, with a caveat
Driving from a dead suburb back toward downtown while you are online and waiting is treated as business driving by mainstream tax-prep guidance, because you are traveling to where the work is in the course of the business. It is a defensible position, not a cited ruling - the IRS has never addressed app-on waiting miles specifically.
That distinction changes how you document, not whether you claim. A log entry that reads "repositioned from Maple Grove drop-off to downtown zone" ties the miles to the business; a bare number does not. The weaker the direct authority, the more an examiner falls back on your records, so make the purpose field earn its keep on these legs.
The miles that are not dead miles
Three kinds of driving fall outside the deduction no matter how the shift felt. The first leg from home to where you start working and the last leg home are commuting. Personal errands mid-shift are personal miles. And cruising with every app off is not business driving - you are not available for work, so there is no business purpose to attach.
The commuting boundary has its own rules and three narrow exceptions, walked through in our guide to commuting miles vs business miles for gig drivers. The short version: the IRS looks at a leg's endpoints, and a leg that starts or ends at your driveway usually loses - leaving the app on does not change that.
Why your platform's mileage number misses them
Platform year-end figures were built to explain pay, not to substantiate a deduction, and their coverage varies widely. DoorDash's help center describes its January email as an estimate of "on-delivery mileage" - the clock starts when an order is attached, so every between-order mile is outside the number. Instacart and Amazon Flex report no mileage at all.
Uber is the notable exception: its tax summary covers online miles, "including waiting for a trip, while en route to a rider, and during a trip." Even that stops the moment you go offline. And engaged-only figures miss a structurally large share: in Cramer and Krueger's study of Uber data, UberX drivers averaged a passenger in the car for 61.0 percent of miles driven - roughly four miles in ten fell outside an on-trip count. The platform-by-platform breakdown is in what platform mileage estimates leave out.
What dead miles are worth in 2026
The money is not small. A driver who leaves 15 between-order miles per shift unlogged, across five shifts a week, gives up roughly $2,784 of deduction over a 50-week year at 2026 rates. The table prices the habit at an effective 74.25 cents per mile, assuming miles split evenly across the year's two rate periods.
| Unlogged dead miles per shift | Miles per year (5 shifts, 50 weeks) | 2026 deduction lost |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 2,500 | $1,856 |
| 15 | 3,750 | $2,784 |
| 20 | 5,000 | $3,713 |
| 30 | 7,500 | $5,569 |
Illustrative math, not survey data. Rates: 72.5 cents per mile for January-June 2026 (IRS Notice 2026-10) and 76 cents for July-December 2026 (Announcement 2026-11), miles assumed evenly split across both periods.
No ruling covers gig dead miles - the log does the arguing
The IRS Gig Economy Tax Center tells drivers to keep records and deduct business expenses; it says nothing about miles between orders. No Tax Court opinion has ruled on the question directly either. What the cases punish, over and over, is documentation - not the category of mile a driver claimed.
Nurumbi v. Commissioner (T.C. Memo. 2021-79) is the gig-adjacent example: an Uber driver's vehicle deductions were disallowed under section 274(d)'s strict substantiation rules for inadequate records, without the court ever needing to weigh which miles might have qualified. The required record is specific - date, mileage, destination, and business purpose for each business use, kept at or near the time, with weekly upkeep treated as timely. What examiners actually look for is covered in the mileage log that survives an IRS audit.
Track door to door and sort it later
The practical answer is to stop sorting mile types in your head at 35 mph. Record the whole shift, door to door, then classify: exclude the commute legs, tag the personal errand, keep everything driven in the course of working. A log that shows the excluded legs looks deliberate; a log with gaps looks reconstructed.
Dead miles are precisely the miles nobody remembers, because no order receipt marks them - which is the failure automatic capture exists to prevent. GigOdo's automatic mileage tracking starts recording at driving speed, timestamps every trip, and leaves the business-or-personal call to you with a swipe, free and with no trip cap.
Bottom line
Miles between orders are business miles when you are working - and they are the block of deduction most drivers throw away, because no platform reports them and no payout reminds you they happened. Log the full shift, name the purpose on repositioning legs, exclude the commute, and treat the platform estimate as a floor your own log should beat. More recordkeeping guides live in the Mileage & Records series.
Catch every dead mile automatically
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Start freeFAQ
Are miles between deliveries deductible?
What counts as a dead mile?
Are repositioning miles toward a hot zone deductible?
Do miles with the app off count?
Is the drive home after my last order deductible?
Does my platform's estimate include dead miles?
What is the 2026 rate for these miles?
What records do I need for dead miles?
Sources: Rev. Rul. 99-7; IRS Publication 463; IRS Tax Topic 510; IRS Notice 2026-10; Announcement 2026-11, IRB 2026-29; IRS Gig Economy Tax Center; DoorDash Dasher tax help center; Uber tax summary help; Cramer & Krueger, NBER Working Paper 22083 (2016); TurboTax rideshare driver guidance; Nurumbi v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2021-79. This article is general information, not tax advice.