Mileage Logs for Real Estate Agents

Last updated on: September 19, 2023

As a realtor, using your vehicle for business purposes uses up a huge amount of your miles. Regardless of whether you are driving a potential future homeowner to 5 different locations on a Sunday or going to get snacks for your open house, these trips will all be tax-deductible for you as you drove your car for business purposes.

How much is the standard mileage rate?

The IRS announces a standard mileage rate every tax year that taxpayers can use to calculate their vehicle expenses for tax deduction purposes.

The 2023 standard business mileage rate is 65.5 cents/mile, which can quickly add up to a considerable amount in tax deductions, which means more money in your wallet.

Although it greatly depends on the average miles driven per year,  the annual business mileage for a realtor is around 7,000 – 10,000 miles a year. This means a tax deduction of several $1,000s on average.

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Let’s take a look at a specific example:

The 2022 standard mileage rate for business purposes is 65.6 cents/mile in 2023.

Let’s look at Emma for instance. She is a real estate agent who has had 5 clients looking for properties this month. Emma drives approx. 90 miles a day between properties and meetings. She hosts open houses, goes to realtor-sponsor lunches, and looks at potential “pocket listing” houses.

90 miles per day on average, for approx 300 days a year means that Emma drove 27,000 miles in a year for business purposes. Calculating for the whole year, Emma will be able to claim approx. $17,685 in tax deductions.

While you may drive more (or less) miles than Emma, it’s easy to see how this tax deduction is a successful realtor’s primary concern.

NOTE: If you prefer going with the Actual Expenses method instead of the standard mileage rate, you can deduct your car-related business expenses (like gas or auto insurance) in the ratio of your business trips – 90% business trips means that you’ll able to deduct 90% of your vehicle-related business expenses. It depends of your driving habits if this method is more worth it than the standard mileage rate.

“What do I do now?”

You need supporting IRS-Proof mileage logs to claim a vehicle mileage tax deduction. When your claim is audited, the Internal Revenue Service will expect you to have precise mileage logs, low or high mileage.

Your mileage log must include:

You’ve already claimed a tax deduction in a previous year and now you’re being audited for mileage?

MileageWise helps customers of different age groups on a daily basis who are being audited by the IRS (including many real estate agents, realtors or insurance agents) pass audits. Our mileage logging software has been designed to meet the strict requirements of the IRS and has been reviewed by IRS audit experts to ensure they are compliant.

TIP: More info about the IRS mileage reimbursement rate and the calculation methods (car allowance, fixed and variable costs, etc.)

If realtors choose to take the standard mileage deduction, they can get a significant amount of money that they earned by driving for business.

Want to know the average business miles claimed on taxes annually? An average miles per year calculator can be used to calculate a rough estimate of how many miles you drive per year.

Did you forget to record your trips in the past as a Google user?

Then you’re very lucky because if you have Location History turned on in your Google account, even if you have 1000+ trips/month, you can transform them into an IRS-Proof mileage log via MileageWise.

Take advantage of your 14-day free trial, and try all of our unique features.

You will see for yourself that by creating IRS-Proof mileage logs in 7 minutes/month and saving yourself from the consequences of inaccurate mileage logs, MileageWise becomes the best deal for your dollar on the mileage log market.

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Check out the new video to MileageWise’s mileage tracker mobile app:

…and its accompanying Web Dashboard platform: