Almost everything written about mileage deductions assumes you file with the IRS. If you drive for work in Britain, Canada or Australia, that advice is not slightly off — it is wrong in the unit, wrong in the rate, wrong about when your tax year ends, and wrong about whether the rate stays the same all year.
Here is what each of the three actually does, and what that means for the log you keep.
The short version
All three let you claim a flat amount per unit of distance instead of totting up fuel, insurance and depreciation. That is where the similarity stops.
United Kingdom — HMRC. Denominated in miles, not kilometres. Cars and vans are paid at 55p for the first 10,000 business miles of the tax year and 25p for every mile after that — the first-tier rate rose from 45p at the start of the 2026/27 tax year. The tax year runs from 6 April. HMRC also publishes separate rates for motorcycles and bicycles, and publishes no medical or charitable mileage rate at all.
Canada — CRA. Denominated in kilometres. For 2026 the automobile allowance pays 73¢ for the first 5,000 km of the calendar year and 67¢ beyond that. The Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut are paid four cents more per kilometre — 77¢ and 71¢. The tax year is the calendar year.
Australia — ATO. Denominated in kilometres. One flat rate — 91¢ per kilometre for the 2026–27 income year — but with a hard cap at 5,000 km per car per year. Past 5,000 km the cents-per-kilometre method pays you nothing further — you do not drop to a lower rate, you stop. The income year runs from 1 July.
Tip: Rates move. The figures above were checked against each authority's published rates on 12 September 2026, and the UK's first-tier rate changed at the start of the 2026/27 tax year. Always confirm against the authority before you file — links are at the end of this post.
The trap: two of these change the rate mid-year
This is the part that quietly costs people money, and it is the reason a simple total of your distance is not enough.
In the UK and Canada the rate you get paid depends on how far you had already driven that tax year when you made the trip. A rate is not a property of a journey. It is a property of a journey plus your running total.
Consider a UK driver who has done 9,900 business miles and then makes a 200-mile trip. The first 100 miles of that trip are still inside the 10,000-mile band and pay the higher rate. The remaining 100 fall the other side of the boundary and pay 25p. Rate the whole trip at one rate and you are wrong either way: pick the high rate and you have overclaimed, pick the low one and you have short-changed yourself by £30 on a single journey.
The same applies in Canada at the 5,000 km boundary. In Australia the boundary is harsher still — it is a cliff, not a step.
Why the tax-year start date matters more than it looks
Those distance bands reset when the tax year does. So a British driver's 10,000-mile allowance resets on 6 April, an Australian's 5,000 km cap resets on 1 July, and a Canadian's resets on 1 January.
If your log is organised by calendar year — which is what most tools assume, because most tools are built for the IRS — then your band totals are being counted across the wrong window, and every trip near a boundary is rated wrong.
What a defensible log needs in all three countries
The specific rules differ, but the shape of the evidence does not. In each country you are expected to be able to show, per journey, the date, the distance, and the business purpose — and to be able to separate business travel from ordinary commuting.
Commuting is the common failure. In all three countries, travel between your home and a regular place of work is generally private travel, not business travel, no matter how far it is or how annoying the drive. Travel between work sites during the day generally is deductible. Getting this line wrong is a much bigger risk than getting a rate slightly wrong.
Australia adds a specific wrinkle worth knowing: under the cents-per-kilometre method you are not required to keep formal written evidence in the way a logbook claim demands, but you must be able to show how you worked the distance out. "I estimated it" is not that. A contemporaneous record is.
Which method is actually better?
Be honest with yourself here, because the flat rate is not always the winner.
The per-kilometre and per-mile schemes are generous to people who drive a lot in a cheap, efficient, already-paid-for car. They are poor for someone running an expensive vehicle a modest distance, and in Australia they are poor for anyone over 5,000 km, because the cap means the method simply stops paying.
If you are an Australian driver doing 20,000 business kilometres a year, the cents-per-kilometre method is almost certainly the wrong choice and the logbook method deserves a serious look. We would rather say that than sell you a rate calculator.
Where TaxMiles fits — and where it doesn't
We built the multi-country schemes into the app because the alternative was watching people outside the US use a tool that silently applied the wrong rate. TaxMiles now covers eleven schemes across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada (including the three territories at their higher rate), Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and South Africa. It stores every trip in one canonical unit and converts for display, so switching country doesn't corrupt your history.
Crucially it walks the bands rather than rating a whole trip at one rate, so the 9,900-mile example above splits the way HMRC expects, and it uses each country's own tax-year boundary for the reset.
What it does not do: it is not tax advice, it does not file anything for you, and it does not model every rate every authority publishes — HMRC's motorcycle and bicycle rates are absent rather than approximated, and where an authority publishes no rate for a category, the app shows none rather than inventing one. If your situation is complicated, the app produces the log; an accountant in your country should produce the return.
Track in the scheme that actually applies to you
TaxMiles detects your region and rates every trip against your own authority's bands, units and tax year — not the IRS's.
Get TaxMilesCheck the source before you file
Rates change, sometimes mid-year. These are the pages each authority publishes them on:
HMRC — mileage allowance payments · CRA — automobile and motor vehicle allowances · ATO — cents per kilometre method
Related reading
Business miles vs commuting miles covers the line that matters most in every country. What a mileage log has to contain is written for the IRS, but the shape of the evidence is the same everywhere. Flat rate vs actual expenses walks the trade-off discussed above.