Most rideshare drivers claim their miles and stop there. The deductions that go missing are the ones that never looked like spending: the service and commission fees a platform took out before the money reached your bank, the tolls nobody reimbursed, and the small in-car costs — the mount, the charger, the case of water, the car wash — that each feel too trivial to write down. Every one of them is an ordinary business cost with a home on Schedule C, and every one has to pass the same business-use test.
Which deductions do Uber and Lyft drivers miss most often?
The ones that never felt like a payment. Money withheld from a fare before it reached you is the easiest expense in the world to forget, because you never watched it leave — and a toll on a transponder or a bottle of water handed to a passenger is forgotten for the opposite reason: too small to seem worth a record. Neither reason is a tax reason.
None of these is exotic and none needs an aggressive reading of anything. They go unclaimed because they were never written down, which is a workflow failure rather than a tax one — and workflow failures are the kind you can actually fix.
- Commissions, service fees and booking fees withheld from your payouts
- Tolls and airport or venue fees you paid and were not reimbursed for
- Parking paid while working, where the rules allow it
- The phone mount, the dash charger, the cable that lives in the car
- The business share of the phone bill and the data plan that runs the app
- Passenger supplies: water, mints, tissues, seat covers, cleaning wipes
- Car washes and interior cleaning attributable to the driving business
- A dashcam, roadside assistance, and the mileage or accounting software you pay for
Is mileage really the biggest deduction, and what does it already cover?
For most rideshare drivers yes — and what matters is knowing what the standard mileage rate already bundles, because claiming those costs a second time is the fastest way to ruin a good return. The rate stands in for the running costs of the vehicle: gas, oil, maintenance, tyres, insurance, registration and depreciation. Take the standard rate and those are already inside it. The IRS publishes the figure and changes it, so take it from them rather than from any article, including this one.
The alternative is the actual expense method — total what the car genuinely cost and claim the business-use share — which can win for an expensive vehicle and demands every fuel receipt and repair invoice. Note that the method you choose in the first year you use a particular car for business narrows your options for that car later. Either way the log is the foundation, and tolls and parking sit outside both methods rather than inside them, which is exactly why drivers drop them.
Can you deduct the commission and fees the platform already took?
Usually yes, and Schedule C has a line for it: line 10, commissions and fees. This confuses people because it looks like deducting money you never had. Whether it is a deduction depends on how the income was reported in the first place, and platforms differ — some report the gross amount the passenger was charged and show fees separately, some report something closer to what landed in your account.
The rule that survives every variation: income reported and fees deducted must come from the same starting point. Gross fare in, withheld fees out. Net figure in, and deducting them again is double-counting. What you must not do is let the fees evaporate, which is the default, because the only document itemising them is one you have to go and open. Read your own annual tax summary rather than anyone’s description of it — including this one — because platforms restructure them.
What about the water, the mints, the phone mount and the car wash?
They are deductible to the extent they are ordinary and necessary for the driving business, and the work is putting each in the right place rather than arguing about whether it qualifies. Passenger supplies — water, mints, tissues, sanitiser — generally sit on Schedule C line 22 as supplies. Equipment that lives in the car for work, like a mount or a dashcam, is supplies or an asset depending on cost and your preparer’s approach to the de minimis rules.
Cleaning is the case worth flagging, because practitioners genuinely disagree. Under the standard mileage rate there is a reasonable argument that routine washing is part of the operating cost the rate already covers, and an equally reasonable argument that cleaning caused by carrying passengers is separate. Ask your preparer which side they take and apply it consistently. A stated position is defensible; alternating receipt by receipt looks reverse-engineered.
What is the business-use test each of these has to pass?
The same one: the expense must be ordinary and necessary for your business, and where the thing also serves your private life you claim only the business share. Ordinary means common and accepted in your line of work — a phone mount is unremarkable for a driver. Necessary means helpful and appropriate, a lower bar than the word suggests. Neither test asks whether the purchase was clever.
Apportionment is where the judgment lives, and the phone is the classic case: dispatcher, navigator and camera on shift, an ordinary phone otherwise. Claim the business share and be able to say how you reached it — hours in driving apps, or a data split — using a method you wrote down once and reuse. A documented method applied consistently is the difference between a claim and a hope.
Which of these need a receipt, and which need a log?
Mileage needs a log, purchases need receipts, and withheld fees need the platform statement — three kinds of evidence that fail in three different ways. A mileage claim with no per-trip record behind it is the weakest position on the whole return, because the number is purely an assertion. A supplies claim with no receipt is nearly as weak, and a fee deduction with no statement is unverifiable even by you.
What all three share is the timing rule: evidence captured at the moment outweighs evidence assembled afterwards, and the difference shows. A reconstructed log has a signature — round numbers, no personal driving, suspiciously even days — and once an examiner sees it, the rest of the return is read in that light.
- Mileage: date, distance, start and end points, and business purpose, per trip
- Supplies and equipment: the receipt, plus a note of what it was for
- Tolls and parking: the receipt or transponder statement, matched to a working day
- Platform fees: the annual tax summary and the payout statements behind it
- Apportioned costs: the bill, plus the method you used to split it
How do you keep the small ones from disappearing?
Capture them at the moment, because there is no second chance at a five-dollar receipt. Photograph it before you pull away, file the trip at the end of the shift, and read the platform tax summary once a quarter instead of once a year. Two minutes at the kerb beats a lost evening in March, and records made now are the contemporaneous kind that carry weight.
BrewGig does the recording end: drives detected automatically in the background on Pro and above with route and endpoints, and expenses logged with the receipt photographed straight onto them, so the mount and the car wash and the toll arrive at tax time with their evidence attached.
A note on the names above. BrewGig is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or partnered with any platform mentioned here. Uber, Lyft and all other platform names are the trademarks of their respective owners, and what any of them charges, pays or reports is theirs to define — check your own statements and the IRS guidance current for your year.