Mileage deduction

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If a taxpayer lives in Missouri, works full time in Missouri, but has a part time job in Illinois, can that taxpayer deduct the mileage when traveling to Illinois for their part time job?

DianeW777

Alumni - Intuit

No. The deduction for driving between jobs (not from home to a second job, but from one job to another) has been suspended and was only available as an itemized deduction.

Employees can no longer deduct work-related mileage in tax years 2018 through 2025 due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that Congress signed into law on December 22, 2017. Prior to the tax law change, employees could deduct mileage for commuting between multiple job sites during the same day, as well as commutes to temporary work locations and offsite business meetings.

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MPLynchAuthor

Level 2

In this case, the taxpayer is driving from home to the second job, not from job 1 to job 2. Does that change your answer or is the response still no, that a taxpayer cannot deduct mileage due to changes in the TCJA?

DawnC

Employee Tax Expert

Commuting miles (to and from a regular work location) are not and have never been deductible. Mileage is an allowable deduction if you’re self-employed or own your own business. What the TCJA changed was the deduction for work-related travel and transportation (for W-2 employees, not the self-employed) - it is no longer deductible. But commuting expenses (going from home to a regular job location) has never been deductible.

Work travel would be going from your regular job site to a temporary location. One end of the trip needs to be a temporary location to be deductible as transportation expenses, otherwise it is commuting.

Some states do not conform to TCJA and work related travel is deductible on that state return. But even in those cases, commuting expenses are still not deductible.

Can I deduct mileage?

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