If you drive for work — rideshare, deliveries, real estate, contracting, sales — your car is at least partly a tax deduction. The IRS (and most tax authorities) lets you choose between two methods. Car Money makes both painless.
Method 1: Standard mileage rate (US)
You deduct a flat rate per mile driven for business — 67¢ per mile in 2024. This requires a contemporaneous mileage log (filled out as you drive, not from memory in April).
Car Money's auto trip detection plus business/personal classification is a contemporaneous log. It is exactly what IRS Publication 463 describes.
Method 2: Actual expenses
You deduct the business percentage of every car expense — fuel, maintenance, insurance, registration, depreciation. This requires receipts.
Car Money's expense entries with photo receipts cover this. So does the location pin (helpful when proving “yes, this was actually a delivery, here is the location”).
How to export
- Open Reports
- Tap the date range — set it to “Last year” or your tax year
- (Optional) Filter by Business trips only, or by category
- Tap Export → choose PDF (for printing/scanning), Excel (for your accountant), or CSV (for your own analysis)
That is it. The export includes vehicle, date, mileage, category, amount, attached receipt and location. Everything an auditor or accountant could ask for.
Self-employed tip: do both
For your first year, do the math both ways. Whichever number is bigger is the one to claim. After that, the IRS lets you switch to standard mileage but not always back, so check with your accountant.
Small things that pay off
- Tag every Uber/Lyft/delivery trip as Business the day you drive it
- Snap a photo of every fuel receipt and parking ticket
- Drop an odometer reading on January 1 and December 31 (Car Money has a dedicated Odometer Log for exactly this)
That last one — start- and end-of-year odometer entries — is the single most-asked-for record by tax preparers. Five seconds, twice a year.