Tolls, Parking, and Fees: What Stacks on Top of Mileage

GigOdo Team · Published July 29, 2026 · Every figure sourced to the IRS unless noted

What actually stacks on top of the mileage rate

Two things, and the IRS names them explicitly. Tax Topic 510 says: "Other car expenses for parking fees and tolls attributable to business use are separately deductible, whether you use the standard mileage rate or actual expenses." Everything else about running the car is already inside the per-mile figure.

That makes tolls and parking unusual. Most car costs a driver thinks of as deductible - gas, a new set of tires, the insurance premium - are not separate line items when you take the standard rate. These two are. Publication 463 repeats it: "In addition to using the standard mileage rate, you can deduct any business-related parking fees and tolls."

Tolls: deductible whenever the drive is

A toll follows the character of the trip. If the miles are business miles, the toll on those miles is a business expense. If the miles are commuting - your first drive out toward a hot zone, your drive home at the end of the night - the toll rides along as a personal cost and isn't deductible.

This matters most for drivers in tolled metros. A courier crossing a bridge four times a shift at $6 a crossing is spending real money that never shows up in a mileage log, because the log counts miles, not dollars. The test is the same one that governs the miles themselves, which we break down in commuting miles vs business miles for gig drivers.

Congestion charges work the same way. If a zone charge is imposed on a vehicle you're driving for business at the time, it's a business cost of that trip. If you drove into the same zone on a day off, it isn't.

Parking: where the commuting line sits

Business parking during a shift is deductible: the garage you pay for while running an order into an office tower, metered parking outside a restaurant, the paid lot at an airport cell area. Publication 463's carve-out is narrow but firm - the parking you can't deduct is the parking at your own workplace.

The exact wording: "Fees you pay to park your car at your place of business are nondeductible commuting expenses. You can, however, deduct business-related parking fees when visiting a customer or client." For a gig driver whose car is the workplace, that clause rarely bites - almost every paid parking event happens out on a job.

One place it does bite: monthly parking at your apartment or a lot near home. That's a personal cost, not a shift expense, even if the only reason you keep the car is the gig.

Tickets, fines, and impound: never

There's no gray area here, and Publication 463 spends one sentence on it: "You can't deduct fines you pay or collateral you forfeit for traffic violations." Parking tickets, moving violations, camera fines - all nondeductible, all of the time.

Drivers push back on this, and the objection is fair: double-parking to run a bag up three flights is often the only way the order gets delivered on time, so the ticket is a genuine cost of doing business. It's still not deductible. Treat tickets as pure loss and price them into whether a dense downtown zone is worth working.

Towing and impound charges that follow a violation get the same treatment as the fine that caused them. If a tow was purely operational - a breakdown on the way to a pickup - that's a different animal and worth asking a preparer about.

The fees you already paid tax on

Here's the trap that costs rideshare drivers the most. Uber adds tolls to the rider's fare and reimburses the driver, and Uber's help center confirms the service fee doesn't apply to toll reimbursements. Those reimbursed tolls sit inside the on-trip gross earnings reported on your 1099-K.

Gross means gross. The IRS is direct about it: the amount on a 1099-K is not adjusted for fees, credits, refunds, shipping, cash equivalents or discounts. If you report the gross and never deduct the tolls that passed through your hands, you pay self-employment tax on money a toll authority took.

Uber's annual Tax Summary lists city and airport fees, service and booking fees, split fare fees, and tolls precisely so they can be deducted. Pull that summary before you file, and pull the deduction, whichever Uber mileage tracker you use for the miles themselves.

What the mileage rate already covers

Knowing the other side keeps you from double-deducting, which is the fastest way to turn a clean return into a messy one. The standard rate substitutes for the actual operating costs of the car: gas, oil, repairs, tires, insurance, registration fees, licenses, and depreciation. Claim those separately on top of the rate and you've claimed the same dollar twice.

For the second half of 2026 that rate is 76 cents per business mile, after the mid-year increase in Announcement 2026-11; January through June miles run at 72.5 cents under Notice 2026-10. You can split a year's driving across both bands with the 2026 mileage deduction calculator. If you're weighing the rate against tracking every real cost, see standard mileage vs actual expenses - and note that tolls and parking deduct either way.

What a dollar of tolls is actually worth

A deduction isn't a refund, so put a number on it. Self-employment tax is 15.3% applied to 92.35% of net earnings (Tax Topic 554), which works out to about 14.1 cents saved per deductible dollar before any income tax. Add a 12% federal bracket and the combined effect lands near 25 cents on the dollar.

Effective rates: 15.3% × 92.35% = 14.13% for self-employment tax; roughly 25.3% adding a 12% bracket, after the deduction for half of SE tax. Sources: IRS Tax Topic 554; IRS 2026 inflation adjustments (Rev. Proc. 2025-32). Your bracket and state tax will move these numbers.

The $100-a-month driver is the common case in a tolled city, and the number that falls out is not small: roughly $300 in tax, every year, sitting in receipts most drivers throw away.

The receipt rule most drivers get wrong

Publication 463's default is documentary evidence - "receipts, canceled checks, or bills" - but it lists exceptions that fit gig driving almost perfectly. No documentary evidence is required if the expense, other than lodging, is less than $75, or if it's a transportation expense for which a receipt isn't readily available.

Almost every toll and parking charge a driver pays clears both exceptions. That does not mean no record. Publication 463 wants evidence showing "the amount, date, place, and essential character of the expense," so a dated line in a log with the amount and what you were doing does the job that a curled-up receipt was never going to do anyway.

Two things make this easy: your toll transponder's monthly statement is documentary evidence for every crossing at once, and card statements timestamp garage charges. Save the statements, note the business ones, and you have a stronger file than a shoebox. The same discipline is what makes a mileage log that survives an IRS audit.

Where it goes on your return

Schedule C, line 9, Car and truck expenses - the same line as your mileage. The Schedule C instructions tell standard-mileage filers to multiply business miles by the rate, then "add to this amount your parking fees and tolls" and enter the combined total on line 9.

Platform fees deducted from your gross - service fees, booking fees, city and airport fees - are a different category and generally belong in Part V or on the commissions and fees line, not line 9. Keep the two piles apart so the numbers reconcile. Tolls and parking are one item in a longer list of write-offs most drivers underclaim; the rest are in 12 gig driver tax deductions beyond mileage.

Capturing them without thinking about it

The reason these deductions get lost isn't ignorance of the rule - it's that a $6 toll at 8pm is invisible by April. The fix is logging the expense in the same motion as the trip: amount, where, why, done in seconds while the car is still stopped.

That's the workflow GigOdo is built around - automatic trip detection for the miles, an expense entry attached to the shift for the tolls and parking, and a report at filing time that separates what stacks on top of the rate from what's already inside it. Free, no trip cap, and your GPS route never leaves your phone.

Bottom line

The IRS gives gig drivers exactly two add-ons to the mileage rate, and both are ones drivers pay constantly and record almost never. Tolls and business parking deduct on top. Fines never do. Reimbursed tolls that ran through your 1099-K have to come back out. Start writing them down this shift - at a quarter on the dollar, a year of small charges is a real number. More on records and miles in our mileage and records guides.

FAQ

Sources: IRS Tax Topic 510; IRS Publication 463 (2025); Instructions for Schedule C; IRS, What to do with Form 1099-K; IRS Tax Topic 554; IRS 2026 inflation adjustments (Rev. Proc. 2025-32); Uber Help, tolls and parking fees; Uber Help, annual Tax Summary. This article is general information, not tax advice.