Pet Sitter & Dog Walker Mileage: What Counts

Your Rover or Wag calendar just filled up for Thanksgiving week: three houses of drop-in visits, morning and evening, while the owners are away. That's a lot of driving in your own car, and you're wondering which of those miles you can actually write off, especially the drive from your house to the first stop.

Between clients: always a business mile

IRS Publication 463 is direct about it: "If you work at two places in 1 day, whether or not for the same employer, you can deduct the expense of getting from one workplace to the other." For a sitter, each client's home is a workplace. Feeding the cat on Elm Street and then driving to walk the beagle on Oak Avenue is a business trip, every time.

The same goes for drives that are part of the booking itself:

• taking a client's dog to the vet, groomer or a park for its walk;
• picking up food or medication a client asked you to buy for their pet;
• running to the store for your own business supplies (waste bags, treats, a spare leash) between visits.

One limit: if you stop somewhere personal between two clients, Pub. 463 caps the deduction at what the direct route would have been.

The first and last drive of the day

This is where most sitters overclaim. Pub. 463 says that if you have no regular place of work but ordinarily work in the metro area where you live, "You can't deduct daily transportation costs between your home and temporary work sites within your metropolitan area. These are nondeductible commuting expenses." Clients' homes in your own town are exactly that kind of temporary work site.

So for most sitters, home → first visit and last visit → home are personal miles. If you go home between your morning and evening rounds, the evening round starts with another commuting leg.

There are two ways those legs become business miles:

• Your home is your principal place of business. Rev. Rul. 99-7 and the summary chart in Pub. 463 allow daily trips between your residence and another work location in the same business, "regardless of whether the work is temporary or permanent and regardless of the distance," when the residence is your principal place of business. Publication 587 says a home office qualifies if you use it "exclusively and regularly for administrative or management activities" and you have "no other fixed location" where you do substantial admin work. Its examples include "Billing customers," "Keeping books and records," "Ordering supplies" and "Setting up appointments." A sitter who handles bookings, meet-and-greet scheduling and records at a desk used only for the business can often meet that. A couch or the kitchen table you also eat at can't. Our home office guide walks through the exclusive-use test step by step.
• The client is outside your metro area. A house-sit at a cabin an hour past the suburbs is a temporary work site outside your metropolitan area, so the drive there is deductible even without a home office.

What Thanksgiving week is worth: a worked example

Jess does drop-in visits from November 21 to 29 (nine days). Each round goes home → client A (3 miles) → client B (2 miles) → client C (4 miles) → home (5 miles), and she does a morning round and an evening round, going home in between.

One week is modest either way. Over a year of daily walks it isn't: the same pattern 250 days a year at 76¢ is roughly $2,300 against $5,300. That's why the home-office question is worth settling once, properly, rather than guessing in April. Want to check your own route? The mileage calculator does the multiplication.

Your 1099-K won't match your bank account

Rover's tax page for sitters says its 1099-K reports gross payments, including "things you didn't receive money for like canceled bookings, Rover service fees, and even sales tax." For 2025 Rover issues it when you pass "more than 200 transactions and $20,000 in processed payments," and some states set lower thresholds. Two things follow:

• Report the gross, then deduct the fees. Put the 1099-K figure in income and claim the platform's service fees as a business expense, so your Schedule C reconciles with the form the IRS also received. Rover's account summary shows both the gross and your net.
• No form doesn't mean no tax. Cash and Venmo from neighbors and repeat clients are income too, and self-employment tax applies once your net earnings reach $400 (see the IRS self-employment tax page). Our 1099-K vs. 1099-NEC guide covers the forms in more detail.

What the log needs to show

For each business drive: the date, the miles, where you went and why. "Drop-in, 2 cats" or "Vet run, client's dog" is enough of a purpose; you don't need owners' full names in the log. Write it the same day. A week of overlapping visits is hard to rebuild from a booking calendar later, and same-day notes hold up far better than April reconstruction.

Who this isn't for

• Employees of a pet-care company. If you're paid on a W-2, unreimbursed car costs aren't deductible on your federal return. Ask the company about mileage reimbursement.
• Occasional favors. Feeding a friend's cat twice a year isn't a business. The money is still reportable, but business deductions assume you're in business to make a profit.
• Sitters outside the US. This is US federal tax only.
• Other house-to-house holiday work. Hanging Christmas lights follows the same commuting rule, plus a season that runs into January: see Christmas light side hustle mileage and taxes.

Where TaxMiles fits, and where it doesn't

We make TaxMiles, so weigh this accordingly.

• It logs every drive without you starting a timer. Drives are detected automatically and sorted into Business, Personal or Commute, so you can mark the between-client hops Business and the home legs Commute (or Business, if your home office qualifies). Trips before July 1, 2026 are valued at 72.5¢ and later ones at 76¢.
• You can add your own trip purposes. Settings → Auto-Classify → Trip Purposes lets you add one like "Drop-in visit" or "Vet run" next to the built-in list.
• It knows pet care. Pick Pet Care under Settings → Auto-Classify → Line of Work and the Deduction Finder (Taxes → Tax Toolkit, Pro) suggests supplies like leashes, treats and waste bags, pet-sitter liability insurance, and platform fees, alongside a home office entry.
• What it can't do. It doesn't decide whether your home office qualifies, doesn't import your Rover or Wag bookings or earnings, and doesn't know which house is a "regular" work location. Classifying the first and last leg is your call. It's an estimate tool, not tax advice.
• The free plan covers your first 40 business trips in total. Pro is $7.99 a month or $59.99 a year. There's no family plan; each sitter needs their own subscription.

Frequently asked questions

Can a pet sitter deduct mileage between clients' homes?

Yes. If pet sitting or dog walking is your business, a drive from one client's home to the next is a trip between two work locations, which IRS Publication 463 treats as deductible. At the 2026 standard mileage rate that is 76 cents a mile from July 1 (72.5 cents before).

Is the drive from my house to my first drop-in visit deductible?

Usually not. If you have no regular work location and the client lives in your metro area, the IRS treats home to the first visit and the last visit to home as commuting. The exception is when your home is your principal place of business, for example a space used only and regularly for booking, billing and records, with no other fixed office. Then those legs count too.

Does Rover's 1099-K show what I actually earned?

No. Rover says its 1099-K reports gross payments, including canceled bookings, Rover service fees and sales tax, not what reached your bank. Report the gross amount as income and deduct the platform fees as a business expense so the two match.

Are trips to the vet or dog park with a client's dog business miles?

If the trip is part of the job you were booked for, such as taking a client's dog to the vet or a walk at a park during a visit, it is a drive between work locations and counts. Note the pet and the reason in your log.

Sources: IRS Publication 463 (2025) (two places of work; no regular place of work and temporary work sites in your metro area; temporary work location defined as one year or less; residence as principal place of business in the transportation chart summary); IRS Rev. Rul. 99-7 (daily transportation between residence and work locations); IRS Publication 587 (2025) (principal place of business; administrative or management activities; exclusive use); IRS standard mileage rates (72.5¢ January 1–June 30, 2026; 76¢ July 1–December 31, 2026) and Notice 2026-10; IRS Self-Employment Tax ($400 threshold); Rover Rover + Taxes (1099-K gross amounts and 2025 threshold). Checked October 29, 2026.

This article is general information for US federal income tax, not tax or legal advice. The worked example is hypothetical: made-up distances, one car, the standard mileage rate. Whether your home office is your principal place of business depends on your facts. TaxMiles is published by Gigabyte LLC, the company that wrote this article. We aren't affiliated with Rover or Wag.