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
• Driving to a business-related errand like a bank deposit for the business or a post office trip to ship a client order
• Driving to a conference, course, or professional development event related to your work

The home-office exception

If your home is genuinely your principal place of business, 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. CRA's test for this is the same one used for the home-office (business-use-of-home) expense deduction: either your home is where you do more than 50% of your work, or you use a dedicated space in your home exclusively, and on a regular and continuous basis, to meet clients or customers. If neither applies — say, you rent a desk at a coworking space or have another fixed location you work from most days — that location, not your home, becomes the "regular place of business" your commute is measured against.

Mixed personal and business trips

If a single drive combines a business purpose with a personal one — for example, dropping off a client delivery on the way to pick up groceries — only the business-related portion of the trip is deductible. In practice this usually means logging the direct distance to the business destination as business kilometres, and treating any detour or added distance for the personal errand as personal. If the business stop is genuinely on a direct route you'd have driven anyway, some practitioners log the whole trip as business since the personal errand added no extra distance — but if in doubt, the more conservative approach (only the distance actually attributable to the business purpose) holds up better under review.

A borderline case worth knowing: the secondary regular location

Working from a coworking space or a second office you visit most days creates its own "regular place of business," even if it isn't a traditional employer's office — meaning the commute there follows the same non-deductible rule as commuting to any other regular workplace. This trips people up because it feels like "going to work as a freelancer," but CRA's distinction is about regularity of the destination, not who owns the building.

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. See our mileage log requirements guide for what a defensible purpose entry actually looks like.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Logging the daily drive to a coworking space or shared office as business travel, when it functions as a regular commute.
• Claiming an entire mixed-purpose trip as business when only part of the added distance was actually for a business reason.
• Assuming self-employed status alone makes every drive deductible. The commuting rule applies to self-employed people the same way it applies to employees.
• Not documenting why home qualifies as a principal place of business — if reviewed, you may need to show you meet the more-than-50%-of-work-from-home or exclusive-client-meeting-space test, not just assert it.

Frequently asked questions

Does driving to the bank to deposit a client cheque count as business travel? Yes, if it's a trip specifically for a business errand rather than part of your regular commute pattern.

What about driving to pick up my child while also stopping at a client's office? Only the portion of the trip attributable to the client stop is deductible — the personal errand doesn't become business travel just because it happened on the same drive.

Does working from a coffee shop instead of home change anything? Not meaningfully — what matters is whether you have a genuine, regular principal place of business, not the specific building. Habitually working from the same coffee shop could itself become a "regular location" for commuting purposes.

Official source: CRA – Motor vehicle expenses