You switched to an electric car to cut your running costs, and the first tax question that hits you is an uncomfortable one: there are no gas receipts any more. The thing every deduction guide told you to keep no longer exists.
So does the mileage deduction still work? And can you deduct what you spend charging?
The answers are yes and no — in that order — and the second one is where people lose money, in both directions. Some drivers pay tax they did not owe because they assumed no fuel receipts meant no deduction. Others claim charging costs on top of the mileage rate and create a problem for themselves.
The standard mileage rate does not care what you put in the car
The IRS standard mileage rate is a flat amount per business mile. It is not a fuel reimbursement. Gas, diesel, electricity, hydrogen — the rate is the same, and an EV driver claims exactly what the driver in the petrol car next to them claims.
The rate was revised mid-year in 2026, so the year has two halves:
| Period | Business rate |
|---|---|
| 1 January – 30 June 2026 | 72.5¢ per mile |
| 1 July – 31 December 2026 | 76¢ per mile |
Ten thousand business miles driven evenly across 2026 is roughly $7,425 of deduction. The electricity to cover those miles might have cost you $350. That gap is not an error — read on.
Watch the split date. Miles driven on 28 June and 2 July are worth different amounts. If your log does not carry dates, you cannot apply the two rates correctly, and averaging them is not a defensible method.
The expensive mistake: adding charging on top
This is the one to get right.
The standard mileage rate is designed to stand in for all the costs of operating the vehicle. It already includes fuel or electricity, maintenance, repairs, tyres, insurance, registration and depreciation. Claiming the standard rate and your charging bills deducts the same cost twice.
It is an easy mistake to make honestly. Charging feels like a new, separate, trackable expense — you get an app receipt for every public charge, which is more paperwork than a petrol driver ever had. But the rate absorbed it before you started.
Pick one method per vehicle per year. Either the standard rate, or actual expenses. Not both.
What the rate is quietly doing to your car's tax basis
Something worth understanding before you decide, because it surfaces later and surprises people.
Part of every standard-rate mile is treated as depreciation. In 2026 that component is 34¢ per mile. Every business mile you deduct reduces your vehicle's tax basis by that amount, whether or not you ever think about it.
Drive 30,000 business miles in a year and you have written roughly $10,200 of depreciation off that car's basis. It does not cost you anything now. It matters when you sell or trade the vehicle, because your gain is measured against the reduced basis — so a lower basis can mean a taxable gain on a sale you assumed was a loss.
This is not an argument against the standard rate. It is an argument for knowing your running total, which TaxMiles keeps for each vehicle so the number is there when you need it rather than reconstructed years later.
When actual expenses might beat the rate for an EV — and when they will not
Actual expenses means deducting the business-use percentage of what the car really costs you: electricity, insurance, registration, repairs, tyres, and depreciation on the vehicle itself.
For most EV gig drivers, the standard rate wins, and the reason is the thing that made you buy the EV. Your running costs are low. The standard rate pays you a fixed amount per mile regardless, so low running costs make the standard rate more generous, not less. The driver burning $0.14 a mile in petrol and the driver paying $0.035 a mile in electricity claim the same 76¢.
Actual expenses can still win in a narrow set of cases:
- An expensive car driven relatively few business miles. Depreciation on a costly vehicle can exceed what a modest number of miles returns at the standard rate. Note that luxury-auto depreciation limits apply and cap this.
- A first year with heavy write-offs available. Depending on the vehicle and how it is used, first-year depreciation provisions can be large.
- Genuinely high costs. An out-of-warranty battery repair is not a small number.
And one problem that is specific to electric cars: substantiating home charging. Public charging gives you a receipt per session. Charging at home puts the cost inside a household electricity bill that also ran your oven and your air conditioning. To claim it under actual expenses you need a defensible method of separating it — a dedicated meter on the charger, or a charger app that logs kWh delivered priced at your tariff. A guess at "about a third of the bill" is not a method.
That difficulty is a practical argument for the standard rate on top of the arithmetic one. The standard rate needs a mileage log. Actual expenses need a mileage log and a year of receipts and a way to prove what your garage consumed.
The first-year rule that can lock you out
If you have just bought the EV, this is the paragraph that matters most, because it is a one-time decision you cannot revisit.
You must use the standard mileage rate in the first year you use a vehicle for business if you want the option of ever using it for that vehicle. Choose actual expenses in year one and you are locked into actual expenses for that car for as long as you own it.
It does not work the other way round. Start with the standard rate and you can switch between methods in later years as circumstances change.
So the safe default in year one is the standard rate, unless you have run the numbers and are confident actual expenses will win for the life of the car. TaxMiles has a comparison screen for exactly this decision — Standard vs actual expenses — because it is the one people get wrong once and then cannot undo.
Leasing? Different trap, same shape. If you use the standard mileage rate on a leased vehicle, you must use it for the entire lease term. Switching part-way is not permitted.
What you can still deduct on top
The standard rate absorbs operating costs, but not everything is an operating cost. Separately deductible, at business-use proportion:
- Parking fees incurred on business trips — not parking at your own regular workplace.
- Tolls on business routes.
- Interest on a car loan, if you are self-employed, at your business-use percentage.
- Personal property tax on the vehicle, where your state levies one, at business-use percentage.
What is not separately deductible alongside the standard rate: electricity, home charger installation as a vehicle expense, maintenance, tyres, insurance and depreciation. All already in the rate.
There is a separate matter that is not a vehicle deduction at all: federal and state incentives for EV purchase or home charger installation are credits with their own rules and their own forms. They do not interact with your mileage deduction and they are not part of this calculation.
The log is still the whole game
Nothing about an EV changes what a mileage log has to contain. For each business trip: the date, the miles driven, the destination, and the business purpose. Plus your odometer at the start and end of the year, and your total annual mileage split between business and personal use.
One EV-specific habit worth building: your car's own trip computer and your charging app both know a great deal about where you drove, but neither is a mileage log. They do not record business purpose, which is the field an examiner asks about. Do not plan to reconstruct a year from charging sessions.
Recording contemporaneously — at the time, not in April — is the difference between a log that answers a question and a reconstruction that invites more of them.
The short version
- The standard mileage rate applies to EVs identically. 72.5¢ before 1 July 2026, 76¢ after.
- Do not claim charging on top of it. Electricity is already inside the rate.
- Low running costs make the standard rate better for you, not worse.
- 34¢ of every 2026 business mile is depreciation and reduces your car's basis. Track it.
- Use the standard rate in year one unless you are certain, or you lose the option for that vehicle permanently.
- Parking, tolls and loan interest still deduct separately. Electricity does not.
- Home charging is the hardest thing to substantiate under actual expenses — factor that in before choosing it.
Log the miles, keep the basis
TaxMiles tracks business trips automatically, applies the correct rate on either side of the 1 July change, and keeps a running depreciation figure for each vehicle so the basis question has an answer when you sell.
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If you are weighing the two methods properly, standard mileage vs actual expenses works through the comparison in detail. For the costs that stack on top of the rate, see write-offs that stack with the mileage deduction and parking and tolls. And if the basis point above was new to you, selling a car after years of mileage deductions is the one to read before you trade it in.
This is general education, not tax advice. Rates and rules verified against IRS guidance on 19 September 2026. Your circumstances decide what you can claim — check with a qualified preparer before filing.