Where can I get a mileage log template or sample sheet (including printable/PDF format) for substantiating business vehicle use at tax time?

Where do mileage log templates come from, and which can you trust?

Printable, PDF, spreadsheet and fillable templates come from five kinds of source:

• Office-software galleries. Spreadsheet and word-processing programs offer mileage logs you can edit and print.
• Mileage-app and accounting-software vendors. Many publish a free printable or spreadsheet log alongside their products.
• Accounting and tax firms. Firms post logs for their clients, often as PDFs.
• Printed logbooks. Stationery publishers sell bound vehicle logbooks sized for a glove box.
• The party you claim from. An employer or client that repays mileage may supply its own form.

None of them is an official form. IRS Publication 583 says that, except in a few cases, the law does not require any specific kind of records, and that you can choose any recordkeeping system suited to your business that clearly shows your income and expenses. For business vehicle use, the IRS substantiation regulation sets its own rules for what the record must establish and when it is made, so the choice is of format, not content. A badge such as "IRS-approved" is the publisher's own description. A download is dependable when it passes the checklist below, shows who published it and when, and carries no stale year-specific value. Read its terms of use before you edit it or copy it for drivers.

What must a template prompt for on each trip and for the whole period?

The IRS substantiation regulation, 26 CFR 1.274-5T, sets these elements for proving business use of a vehicle:

• Amount. It requires the amount of each business or investment use, measured in miles for an automobile, and the total use of the vehicle for the taxable period.
• Time. It requires the date of each use.
• Business purpose. It requires the business purpose of each use.

The IRS regulation also says that if you claim a deduction or credit for a vehicle, your return asks about its use, including its mileage (total, business, commuting and other personal) and date placed in service. A log that records only business trips cannot produce those totals. The regulation requires the vehicle's total use for the period but does not prescribe odometer readings; readings at the start and end of the period are a simple way to show it.

What checklist should a download pass before you use it?

Run each candidate through these checks before the first trip goes on it:

• Trip line (required by the regulation). Each line has columns for the date, business miles (or the trip's start and end odometer readings) and business purpose, wide enough to name a client and a reason.
• Period total (required by the regulation). The sheet has a space for the vehicle's total miles for the period.
• Destination (recommended). Each line has a destination column.
• Period boundaries (recommended). The sheet has spaces for the odometer reading and date at the start and end of the period, and totals for business, commuting and other personal miles.
• Vehicle (recommended). Every sheet names the make, model, plate or VIN, and the date the vehicle was placed in service.
• Driver (recommended). Every sheet names the driver, and a shared vehicle's sheet has a driver column.
• Continuity (recommended). Each sheet has a number and an opening odometer reading carried from the previous sheet, so a missing sheet shows.
• Year-specific values (recommended). The sheet prints no year, rate or deduction formula, or you can change them for the year the log covers.

Which format will you actually keep up?

The IRS regulation says an adequate record must generally be written, but that a record of a vehicle's business use prepared in a computer memory device with the aid of a logging program is also an adequate record. The regulation does not say whether an ordinary spreadsheet or fillable PDF counts as a logging program. The medium decides where and when entries get made:

Pick the format you will have in hand when a trip ends.

Why does the completed sheet matter more than the template, and when must entries be made?

A blank template proves nothing; the entries do. The IRS regulation requires a log to be prepared or maintained so that each recording of an element of a use is made at or near the time of the use. It defines that as a time when you have full present knowledge of each element, such as the amount, time, place and business purpose, and it treats a log maintained on a weekly basis that accounts for the week's use as made at or near the time.

The regulation also says a contemporaneous log is not required, but that a record made at or near the time and supported by sufficient documentary evidence has a high degree of credibility not present in a statement prepared later, when generally there is a lack of accurate recall. Under the regulation, a statement not made at or near the time needs corroborating evidence of a high degree of probative value to reach that level. That gives two paths:

• Entries made as you drive, or at least weekly. This is the record the template exists to produce, so complete each line before the details fade.

• Entries reconstructed later from calendars, invoices or job records. The result is a later statement that stands only as well as the records behind it. Under the IRS regulation, an element without adequate records must be established by your own detailed statement plus corroborating evidence, and corroboration of a use's miles or date must be direct evidence, such as a written statement, witness testimony or documentary evidence; circumstantial evidence may corroborate the business purpose of an expenditure. A calendar or job list may show the date and purpose but not the miles.

  Keep those records with it, mark the sheet as a reconstruction with the date you prepared it, and never present it as kept at the time.

A period total with no trip lines behind it does not show the amount of each business use, so a template with only a monthly or annual total fails the checklist.

Does a template carry anything that changes by year?

Templates often print a tax year, a mileage rate and a formula that multiplies business miles by the rate. Each must match the year the log covers.

2026 shows why. IRS news release IR-2025-128 announced a rate of 72.5 cents per mile driven for business use beginning January 1, 2026, and said Notice 2026-10 contains the 2026 rates. Announcement 2026-11, in Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-29, revised the business rate to 76 cents per mile for deductible transportation expenses paid or incurred on or after July 1, 2026, and says the Notice 2026-10 rates continue to apply to those expenses paid or incurred before July 1, 2026. A 2026 sheet with one rate cell is wrong for part of the year. Either key two rates to the trip dates or remove the rate and leave it to whoever prepares the return.

Before reusing last year's sheet, change the year, check any rate against the IRS's Standard mileage rates page, which lists the 2026 rates, and re-test every formula. Choosing between the standard rate and actual costs, and computing the deduction, are separate questions.

How long do you keep completed sheets, and will a scan do?

The IRS's record-retention page, How long should I keep records?, says you generally keep records that support an item of income, deduction or credit on your return until the period of limitations for that return runs out. It defines that period as the time in which you can amend the return to claim a credit or refund, or the IRS can assess additional tax. The page says the years run from the date the return was filed unless it states otherwise, and that a return filed before its due date counts as filed on the due date, so keep 2026 sheets at least three years from the later of the filing and due dates. It sets these periods:

The page also says records relating to property are generally kept until the period of limitations expires for the year in which you dispose of the property, because they are needed to figure depreciation and the gain or loss. If the vehicle is depreciated, file its logs with those property records and keep them as long.

IRS Publication 583 says the requirements for hard copy books and records also apply to electronic storage systems, including systems that keep records by electronic imaging. Under Publication 583, such a system must meet these conditions:

• It indexes, stores, preserves, retrieves and reproduces the stored records in legible format.
• It provides a complete and accurate record that is accessible to the IRS.
• It is subject to the same controls and retention guidelines as the original paper records.
• Once it replaces the paper, it is maintained for as long as it is material to the administration of tax law.

Publication 583 lets you destroy the paper originals only after the system has been tested to establish that it reproduces them in compliance with IRS requirements and procedures are in place to ensure continued compliance. It adds that the IRS may test the system, and that if it falls short you may face penalties unless you have kept the originals in a way that lets you and the IRS determine your correct tax. A photo left in a phone's camera roll is neither indexed nor controlled: name each image by vehicle, driver and period, and check that it is legible. Publication 583 points to Revenue Procedure 97-22 for the detailed requirements; until you have checked your scanning routine against them and procedures for continued compliance are in place, keep the paper sheets.

Keep only the current sheet in the vehicle, in a folder with a pen. Take completed sheets out on a fixed day each week or month, scan or copy them that day, and file them by year, vehicle and driver so any period can be produced on request. Never let the year's only copy ride in the vehicle.

What changes when there is more than one vehicle or driver?

The IRS regulation measures total use for each vehicle, so each vehicle needs its own sheets and boundary readings. Every sheet names its vehicle and driver, and a shared vehicle's sheet gives each line a driver.

The regulation lets any taxpayer keep an adequate record for only portions of a taxable year if other evidence shows those periods are representative of the use. It does not allow sampling at all for an employer's vehicle made available to more than one employee for all or part of the year, so keep that vehicle's log for every period of the year whose business use is claimed.

The regulation also says an employer that provides a vehicle to an employee must obtain information from the employee sufficient to complete the employer's return. It adds that an employer providing more than five vehicles need not put that information on its return but must indicate there that it has obtained it, and retain what it received. Under the regulation, an employer that treats all employee use as personal, or whose vehicles meet the rules for vehicles not used personally or used personally only for commuting, need not obtain it for those vehicles but must indicate on its return that it has exempt vehicles.

How should you collect sheets from drivers who do not keep the books?

Run the hand-off as a routine:

1. Give each driver a sheet with plain headings and one filled-in example line, such as "Client and reason: site visit, Lee kitchen job".
2. Collect completed sheets on a fixed day.
3. Check each sheet for gaps: missing dates, blank purpose cells, an opening reading that does not match the previous closing reading, and totals that do not add up.
4. Send gaps back to the driver at once, and have any late entry dated the day it was added.
5. Scan or copy the sheet, file it by vehicle and driver, and give the driver a copy.

What extra fields does a sheet need when it supports a claim to someone else?

When the sheet leaves the business, as an employee's claim to an employer or a contractor's mileage billed to a client, the copy handed over can itself count. The IRS regulation treats an expense account statement that is a transcription of a log kept under its timing rule as a record made at or near the time if an employee submits it to an employer, or an independent contractor to a client or customer, in the regular course of good business practice. Keep the original log; the submitted sheet transcribes it.

The recipient also needs to know whose claim it is and that someone checked it. In judging whether an employer's accounting procedures are adequate, the regulation gives as an example of proper controls that an expense account be verified and approved by a reasonable person other than the person incurring the expenses. The reviewer fields follow that example for employers. Add these fields to the template:

• The claimant's name and business, and the recipient's name
• The vehicle and the period covered
• The claimant's signature and date
• A reviewer's name, signature and date

The reviewer, someone other than the claimant, checks each line against the claimant's own log, and each claimant's total against that claimant's sheet, never only a combined total for a batch. That check shows only that the claim matches the claimant's log. The reviewer should also compare a sample of lines with records the claimant did not prepare, such as the recipient's own job or visit records, and check each sheet's opening odometer reading against the previous sheet's closing reading.

For a contractor's mileage, the reviewer is the client's approver, who checks the lines against the contractor's log if the client asks to see it. How much the other party repays per mile is a separate question.

How do you fix a template that is nearly right?

Most downloads miss one or two prompts, and adding them is quicker than searching again:

• Add what is missing. Add period readings, vehicle and driver fields, a business-purpose column if the template has only "notes", and a sheet number.
• Keep the regulation's prompts (date, miles, purpose, period total) and the recommended ones. Never delete any of them to fit a page; switch to landscape or a second page instead.
• Combine only what the rule allows. Under the IRS regulation, a round trip or uninterrupted business use can share a line, but separate trips keep separate lines.
• Protect the structure. Lock formula and heading cells in a spreadsheet, make key fields required in a fillable PDF, and keep a dated master copy.