Here is the short answer. Your miles are the biggest write-off you have, but they are not the only one. In 2026 you can also deduct tolls, parking, the business part of your phone bill, delivery gear like hot bags and phone mounts, roadside assistance, the apps you pay for the business, and your own health insurance, and these all sit on top of your mileage, not instead of it. What you cannot do is claim your miles and then also write off gas and repairs, because the mileage rate already pays you back for those. Miss the extras and you leave real money on the table. Double up on the wrong ones and you are asking for a problem if you ever get a letter.

Let me walk through the rule that trips people up first, then the list of what actually stacks on top of your miles.

The rule that causes most of the confusion

When you take the standard mileage deduction, that number, 76 cents a mile for the second half of 2026 and 72.5 cents for the first half, is already built to cover the whole cost of running your car. Gas, oil changes, tires, brakes, insurance, registration, and the drop in what your car is worth are all folded into that one rate. Our mileage deduction guide breaks down where that number comes from.

So the trap is simple. If you are taking the standard mileage rate, you do not get to also deduct a tank of gas or a new set of tires on top. Those are already in the 76 cents. The deductions below are the ones that are separate from running the car, so they add on cleanly no matter which method you use. That is the whole game: know which bucket a cost falls in.

Tolls and parking

This is the one drivers most often forget, and it is the clearest. Tolls and parking fees you pay while working are deductible on their own, whether you take the standard mileage rate or the actual expense method. They are never part of the mileage number, so they always stack. If you cross a toll bridge to reach a delivery zone or pay for a garage during a busy downtown shift, that is a write-off. Keep the receipts or let the toll transponder statement do it for you, and only count the trips you made for work, not your personal drive to the store.

Your phone and your plan

Your phone is the whole job. It takes the offers, runs the map, and holds every app you drive for. The business share of your phone bill is deductible, and so is a fair slice of the phone itself if you bought it for the work. The word that matters is share. If you use the phone half for work and half for your own life, you deduct half, not the whole bill. Pick an honest percentage you could explain to a stranger and stick with it. This is a monthly cost that quietly adds up to real money across a year, and almost nobody driving part time bothers to claim it.

The gear that makes the job work

Anything you buy mainly to do the deliveries is deductible. That covers the obvious things and a lot of small ones people never think to add up. Insulated hot bags, a couple of drink carriers, a phone mount for the dash, the charger and the long cable that keeps the phone alive through a shift, a car cup of pens, even the trunk organizer that stops the food from sliding around. None of this is glamorous and none of it is huge on its own, but a handful of these across a year is a stack of receipts that came straight out of your pocket for the business. If you would not have bought it except for driving, write it down.

Roadside help, a dashcam, and car washes

A roadside assistance plan like AAA is partly deductible for the share tied to the work you do behind the wheel. A dashcam you run for safety on shift is deductible. Car washes and interior cleaning get a little grayer, because a clean car is also a personal thing, but the extra cleaning you do because you are hauling food and passengers all day has a business case behind it. The honest move is to claim the business portion and be ready to say why, not to write off every wash you ever paid for.

The apps and subscriptions you pay for the business

If you pay for a tool that exists to run the driving side of your life, that fee is a business expense. A mileage and expense tracker, a tax estimate app, a parking app subscription, even the small monthly cost of a hotspot if you rely on it to work all count. This is a category that did not really exist a few years ago and a lot of drivers still overlook it. The subscription that helps you find these deductions is itself one of them.

Health insurance and the tax that pays for itself

Two bigger ones that live off to the side. If you buy your own health insurance and driving is your main income, the self-employed health insurance deduction can knock a real chunk off your taxable income. And when you pay the 15.3 percent self-employment tax, the IRS lets you deduct half of it automatically as an adjustment, so you are never taxed on the full amount twice. You do not have to chase that second one, it comes out in the math, but it is worth knowing it is there so the self-employment tax does not feel quite as brutal as the sticker number. If that tax is new to you, our guide on how much to set aside covers the whole thing.

What you cannot deduct on top of your miles

This is the short list that keeps you out of trouble. If you take the standard mileage rate, you do not separately deduct gas, oil, repairs, new tires, insurance, registration, lease or loan payments, or car depreciation. All of that is already inside the 76 cents a mile. You also cannot write off a parking or speeding ticket, a personal commute, or clothes you could wear anywhere. And you cannot deduct the same phone or bag twice by counting it as both gear and a supply. Pick a category, claim it once, and move on.

A quick example with the math

Say over a year you drove 12,000 business miles. At an average that lands your mileage deduction somewhere near $8,800 for the year, using the split 2026 rates. This is an illustrative number, not a promise about your own return. Now add the extras that stack on top. Suppose you paid $180 in tolls and parking, deducted $360 for the business half of a $60 a month phone bill, spent $140 on hot bags and a mount and cables, put $90 toward the work share of a roadside plan, and paid $48 a year for a tracking app. That is roughly $818 in deductions that have nothing to do with your miles and everything to do with your pocket.

At a combined income and self-employment tax rate in the low 30 percent range, that extra $818 is around $250 you keep instead of send to the IRS, just for writing down costs you already paid. That is the point. The miles are the mountain, but the pile of small stuff next to it is free money for anyone who bothers to track it.

How to actually keep these

A deduction you cannot back up is a deduction you might have to give back. The rule of thumb is to keep the receipt and a one line note of why it was for work. For miles, a log with dates is what the IRS wants to see, and reconstructing one at tax time from memory is a bad afternoon. The drivers who keep the most are not the ones with the fanciest spreadsheet, they are the ones who capture the cost the moment it happens instead of hunting for it in April. If you want the deadlines behind all of this, our quarterly tax guide lays out when the payments are due.

This is the part Giggie was built to handle. It logs your GPS miles automatically with the date attached, lets you snap and store receipts for tolls, gear, and the rest so they are ready at tax time, and runs your quarterly self-employment tax estimate in real time so the extras you track actually lower the number you owe. Free for 7 days, then $2.99 a month.

The takeaway

Your miles do the heavy lifting, but they are not the finish line. Tolls, parking, the business share of your phone, the bags and mounts and cables, roadside help, the apps you pay for the business, and your own health insurance all stack on top of the mileage deduction. Just do not double up by claiming gas or repairs on top of your miles, because those are already paid for inside the rate. Track the small stuff as it happens, keep the note about why it was for work, and you will hand the IRS less every single year without earning a dollar more.