A surprising number of STR owners log every mile they drive in the property’s general direction and call it a deduction. That is not how this works. The IRS test for STR mileage is “ordinary and necessary” for the rental activity — and “necessary” means the trip exists because of the rental, not because of the trip.
What counts
- Turnovers you do yourself. Driving from home to the property to flip the unit between guests is the cleanest deduction in the category. Track it: date, start odometer, end odometer, purpose.
- Supply runs tied to the property. A Costco run for paper goods, amenities, replacement linens — deductible at the standard mileage rate when the run is because of the rental. Mixed personal + property in one trip? Only the property miles count, and you need to be honest about it.
- Owner meetings on-site. Contractor walk-throughs, HOA inspections, pest control coordination, plumber visits — all defensible.
- Bank, post office, hardware store when the errand is for the rental: replacement key cutting, deposits for the rental account, shipping a forgotten guest item.
What doesn’t
- Scouting trips before purchase. Pre-acquisition drives are capitalizable into basis, not currently deductible. The CPA flag will fire on this every time.
- “Drive-bys” with no documented purpose. Showing the property to family, swinging by to check on it with no maintenance task — these don’t pass the necessary test.
- Commute-style trips if the property is your principal place of business and you live there part-time. The personal-use rules under §280A start to compress your deductions fast.
- Anything you can’t reconstruct from records. A mileage log written six months after the fact, with no supporting calendar, invoices, or receipts, is the easiest line item for an examiner to toss.
The 2026 rate and the log format that survives
The standard mileage rate moves each year — pull it from IRS Notice (current year) before you file. Don’t memorize it; it changes.
What survives review is a log with five columns, captured at the time of the trip:
| Date | Purpose | From | To | Miles |
|---|
Reconstructed logs lose. Contemporaneous logs win. A generic phone app captures the miles, but it won’t tag each trip to a business purpose or roll the year-end total into the Schedule E format your CPA asks for — which is exactly the substantiation an examiner wants to see.
Where the workbook helps
The STR Mileage Log workbook — $17 — ships with the categories above pre-coded, year-end totals that match your CPA’s mileage worksheet, and a “questionable” column you fill in yourself so the gray-area trips get a second look before you hand it over.
Not buying today? The free 47 STR deductions checklist puts mileage next to the other deductions hosts forget — so you see where each drive fits in the bigger return.
This is general information, not tax advice. Your situation has facts this post doesn’t know about — talk to your CPA before claiming anything on a return.