What Counts as a Business Trip for the CRA Mileage Deduction

Commuting doesn't count

Driving from home to your regular place of business is personal travel, not business travel — even if you're self-employed and that "regular place of business" is a client's office you visit every day. CRA treats the first and last leg of a normal workday the same way it would for any employee: your commute is not deductible, no matter how work-related the destination is.

What does count

Once you're already at your regular workplace (or working from a home office that qualifies as your principal place of business), trips you make from there for work purposes are business travel:

• Driving between two job sites or client locations in the same day
• Driving to a meeting, delivery, or errand that isn't your normal daily destination
• Driving to pick up supplies or equipment for a job

The home-office exception

If your home is genuinely your principal place of business — where you do most of your work, not just where you happen to store your car — trips from home directly to a client site or job can count as business travel from the very first kilometre, since there's no separate "regular workplace" you're commuting to first.

Why the distinction matters

Every kilometre you log as business use — correctly or not — affects the deduction you'd calculate off your actual vehicle expenses (see our CRA mileage rate guide for how that math works). Logging a daily commute as business travel inflates your business-use percentage in a way CRA specifically disallows.

Keeping trip purposes in your log — not just distances — is what makes it possible to tell business travel from commuting after the fact, which is exactly what our mileage log's purpose field is for.