A valid Uber mileage log needs five things for every drive: date, starting point, ending point, total miles, and business purpose. Uber's own Tax Summary gives you one annual number for "online miles" and nothing else, which is not what the IRS asks for if your deduction is ever reviewed.
What the IRS actually requires
IRS Publication 463 calls this a contemporaneous log: records made at or near the time of each drive, not reconstructed months later from memory or a bank statement. The standard is the same whether you drive for Uber, Lyft, or any other gig platform, so Uber tracking part of your miles doesn't change what you're expected to keep.
- Date of the trip
- Starting location and ending location, or odometer reading at each
- Total miles driven
- Business purpose (rideshare driving, positioning, errand for the business)
- Whether the trip was for Uber, another platform, or personal use
Why Uber's Tax Summary can't be your only log
Uber's Tax Summary reports one lump figure for online miles across the whole year, with a monthly breakdown at most. It has no dates tied to individual trips, no start and end points, and no record of the deadhead miles you drove home after going offline. A single annual total is the opposite of a contemporaneous, trip-by-trip record.
What an audit-ready log actually looks like
Some drivers keep a notebook in the car and jot down odometer readings before and after each session. It's valid if kept up consistently, but a log with gaps, guessed numbers, or a week reconstructed from a Waze history doesn't hold up as well as one built automatically as you drive. An app-based log that timestamps GPS start and end points for every trip satisfies all five IRS fields without you writing anything down.
What happens if you don't have one
Without a contemporaneous log, the IRS can disallow the mileage deduction entirely on audit, even if you genuinely drove the miles. At the 2026 rate of 72.5 cents per mile through June 30 and 76 cents from July 1 onward, losing a 10,000-mile deduction to a missing log costs a driver roughly $7,425 in disallowed write-offs.
Sources: IRS, Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses. IRS, Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-29 (2026 standard mileage rates).
TruMile builds the contemporaneous log automatically, date, start, end, miles, and purpose, for every drive. Try TruMile →
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