Can I write off mileage when earning W-2 income?

[kneeland24]

I also earned a very little amount of 1099 but the majority of the mileage was driven during the time I earned W-2 income.

[Analuisa · Accepted solution]

Regular commuting miles to and from work are not deductible, however commuting miles may count as business use and deductible as employee business expenses on form 2106 if your home is your office, if you are working out of a temporary location, or if you work in two or more different places during the day. 

Here are some examples:

1.  You have 2 jobs and you travel to both places in one day. The commuting miles to the 1st job are not deductible but the commuting miles from the 1st job to the 2nd job are. The commuting miles from the 2nd job to your home are not deductible. Whether or not you work for the same employer, you can deduct your expense of getting from one workplace to the other. However, if for some personal reason you do not go directly from one location to the other, you cannot deduct more than the amount it would have cost to go directly from the first location to the second.
2. If you have a qualifying home office for your business, the round-trips between your office and your client's place of business.
3. You have no regular office and you do not have an office in your home. In this case, the location of your first business contact is considered your office. Transportation expenses between your home and this first contact are nondeductible commuting expenses. Transportation expenses between your last business contact and your home are also nondeductible commuting expenses. Although you cannot deduct the costs of these trips, you can deduct the costs of going from one client or customer to another.
4. Your employer sends you to a one-week training session at a different office in the same city. You travel directly from your home to the training location and return each day. You can deduct the cost of your daily round-trip transportation between your home and the training location.

In your case when you have non-employee income 1099-MISC you are allowed to deduct the travel mileage incurred to earn that income. You will be reporting those miles on schedule C.

[kneeland24]

For my particular job, which is in roofing, I was required to travel between multiple job sites during any given day.  There was an office for my employer, however, I did majority of my work out of my own residence.   I would say, on average, that I spent approx 60% of my time traveling to and from or at a job site, 30% at home, and 10% in my employer's office.  I am not sure if this helps.  I did earn a small amount of 1099 income for commissions made on a roofing sale I had, however, it was only around $1700.

[Analuisa]

Your employer does provide an office and if your employer does not reimburse you for mileage expense, pay for your gas or provide you with a vehicle to travel to job sites excess miles are deductible as an Employee Business Expense on form 2106. In order to benefit from this you will need to itemize.
The IRS requires that you keep a mileage log to record the to & from. If the mileage from your home to your employer's office is 8 miles and you travel 10 miles to the first job then your additional commute would be 2 miles, but if you travel from that job site to another, and another all the other mileage will be added to the 2 miles. Always keeping in mind that the commute from your home to your work office and back home are not deductible. Therefore if in one day you travel 100 miles and your round trip to and from work is 16 miles your deductible miles are 84 miles.

As for the 1099 that you received what box is the amount recorded in #3 or #7?