Temporary Work Location: When Driving to a Client Site Is Deductible Mileage, Not Commuting

Q: Is driving from my home to a client's office ever deductible mileage?

It depends on whether the client site is your regular workplace or a temporary one, and on whether you have a qualifying home office. If you have one or more regular work locations away from home and you're commuting to a temporary work location in the same trade or business, the daily round-trip mileage is deductible regardless of distance. Separately, if your home is your principal place of business, mileage between home and any other work location in the same business is deductible regardless of whether that location is temporary or permanent, and regardless of distance. If neither applies — the client site is effectively your only, ongoing place of work, and you don't have a qualifying home office — the drive is nondeductible commuting, the same as any employee's drive to their office.

Q: What makes a work location "temporary" instead of "regular"?

Per IRS Publication 463, a work location is temporary if your assignment there is realistically expected to last, and does in fact last, one year or less. If it's realistically expected to last more than one year — even if it later turns out to last less — it's indefinite, not temporary, from that point forward. If an assignment starts out expected to last a year or less but your expectation changes partway through, it's treated as temporary only up until the date your expectation changes; it isn't retroactively disqualified for the earlier period.

Q: Does the temporary work location have to be far away to qualify?

Not if you have a regular place of work elsewhere. Publication 463 states that if you have one or more regular work locations away from home, mileage to a temporary work location is deductible "regardless of distance," whether the temporary location is inside or outside your metropolitan area. The distance restriction only applies to a narrower case: someone with no regular place of work at all, who ordinarily works within their home metro area. That person can only deduct mileage to a temporary work location outside that metropolitan area — a same-city temporary gig doesn't qualify for them.

Q: I work from a home office. Does the 1-year temporary-location rule even apply to me?

Only if your home office doesn't independently qualify as your principal place of business. If it does, a separate and more generous rule applies: Publication 463 states that if your residence is your principal place of business, you can deduct mileage between your home and another work location in the same trade or business "regardless of whether the work is temporary or permanent and regardless of the distance." For a freelancer whose home office already qualifies for the home office deduction as their principal place of business, this is the rule that matters — a client engagement running well past a year doesn't cost you the mileage deduction the way it would for someone relying on the temporary-location rule alone.

Q: What happens to my mileage deduction if a temporary assignment turns into a long-term one?

The switch takes effect on the date your realistic expectation changes, not retroactively. Mileage you drove and logged while you genuinely expected the assignment to last a year or less stays deductible for that period. Once you know — or should know — that it will run past a year, the location becomes indefinite (your new tax home, for travel-expense purposes) and further daily mileage there stops qualifying under the temporary-location rule. The one exception is the home-office rule above: if your home independently qualifies as your principal place of business, none of this time limit applies to you in the first place.

Published: September 10, 2026 · Reading time: 8 min

TL;DR: Ordinary commuting — home to your one regular workplace — is never deductible, for anyone. But Publication 463 carves out a real exception: if you have a regular workplace and pick up a temporary assignment somewhere else (realistically expected to last one year or less), the daily round-trip mileage there is deductible, regardless of distance. There's a second, more generous rule that most home-office freelancers should actually be using: if your home is your principal place of business, mileage to any other work location in the same business is deductible regardless of whether the work is temporary or permanent and regardless of the distance — no 1-year clock at all. A worked example below spans the 2026 mid-year mileage-rate change to show exactly how the math and the record both hold up.

"Is this drive deductible?" sounds like a distance question. It isn't. Publication 463 draws the line around whether the location is regular or temporary, and separately, around whether your home counts as your principal place of business — get either test right and the distance stops mattering.

The Baseline Everyone Already Knows

Daily transportation between your home and your one regular place of business is a personal commuting expense, full stop — this is true for a W-2 employee and a freelancer alike, and no amount of "but I was thinking about work the whole drive" changes it.

The exceptions start once you have more than one work location, or once your home office genuinely qualifies as your business's principal place.

Exception 1: The Temporary Work Location Rule

If you have one or more regular work locations away from your home, and you take on work at a temporary location in the same trade or business, Publication 463 is direct about the result:

"You can deduct the expenses of the daily round-trip transportation between your home and the temporary location, regardless of distance."

"Temporary" has a specific, testable definition — it isn't a vibe:

"If your employment at a work location is realistically expected to last (and does in fact last) for 1 year or less, the employment is temporary unless there are facts and circumstances that would indicate otherwise. If your employment at a work location is realistically expected to last for more than 1 year... the employment isn't temporary, regardless of whether it actually lasts for more than 1 year."

Two things fall out of that wording that matter for how you actually track this:

The test is about your expectation, not the outcome. A contract genuinely expected to run 9 months that gets extended to 14 stays temporary for the first 9 months' worth of driving, and only loses temporary status once your expectation changes.
A changed expectation isn't retroactive. Pub. 463 is explicit: "that employment will be treated as temporary... until your expectation changes. It won't be treated as temporary after the date you determine it will last more than 1 year." Log the date your expectation changed, and split your mileage record there.

There's a distance wrinkle worth knowing even though it usually doesn't bind: someone with no regular work location at all, who ordinarily works within their home metro area, can only deduct mileage to a temporary site outside that metro area — a same-city temporary gig doesn't qualify for that specific person. But that limitation is about having no regular workplace in the first place; the moment you have even one regular work location, the "regardless of distance" language above governs instead, metro area or not.

Exception 2: The Home-Office Rule Most Freelancers Should Actually Rely On

This is the one that matters most for a typical home-office freelancer, and it skips the 1-year clock entirely. Pub. 463's own transportation chapter states:

"...daily transportation expenses can be deducted if (1) you have one or more regular work locations away from your residence; or (2) your residence is your principal place of business and you incur expenses going between the residence and another work location in the same trade or business, regardless of whether the work is temporary or permanent and regardless of the distance."

If your home office already qualifies as your principal place of business — the same standard used for the home office deduction — this second branch applies on its own, independent of the temporary-location rule and its 1-year test. A freelance developer whose home office is her principal place of business doesn't need to watch a 1-year clock on a client engagement at all: the mileage between her home office and that client's site is deductible whether the engagement runs three months or three years.

The two rules solve different problems. The temporary-location rule (Exception 1) is for someone with a regular workplace who occasionally works somewhere else and needs that "somewhere else" to stay temporary. The home-office rule (Exception 2) is for someone whose home office is itself the regular workplace, driving out to wherever the client is — duration never enters into it.

Worked Example: A Contract Spanning the 2026 Mileage-Rate Split

A freelance software developer's home office is her principal place of business — she meets clients, does her billable work, and keeps her only files there, satisfying the home office deduction's principal-place-of-business test. She takes a 16-week on-site contract at a client's office, 22 miles from her home (44 miles round trip), driving out three days a week. Ten of those weeks fall in the first half of the year, six in the second — spanning the IRS's 2026 mid-year mileage rate change (72.5¢/mile January 1–June 30; 76¢/mile July 1–December 31).

Period	Weeks	Trips (3/week)	Round-trip miles per trip	Total miles	Rate	Deduction
Jan 1 – Jun 30, 2026	10	30	44	1,320	$0.725	$957.00
Jul 1 – Dec 31, 2026	6	18	44	792	$0.76	$601.92
Total	16	48	—	2,112	—	$1,558.92

Because her home office independently qualifies as her principal place of business, none of this depended on whether the 16-week contract counted as "temporary." It would have been fully deductible on the same terms even if the client had extended it to two years — the home-office rule doesn't have a duration limit to track. The only thing that mattered for the math was logging the correct rate for each half of the year, which is exactly the kind of split a contemporaneous mileage log (not a year-end estimate) gets right automatically.

If she instead worked from a coworking desk that wasn't her tax home — no qualifying home office, and no other regular workplace — the analysis would flip: she'd need the client site itself to be genuinely temporary (the 1-year test) and, if she had no other regular workplace at all, outside her metro area, to deduct any of this mileage.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is driving from my home to a client's office ever deductible mileage?

Yes, under either of two rules: the temporary-work-location rule (if you have another regular workplace and the client site is genuinely temporary), or the home-office rule (if your home is your principal place of business, regardless of how long the engagement runs).

What makes a work location "temporary" instead of "regular"?

Whether it's realistically expected to last, and does last, one year or less. An expectation that changes mid-assignment reclassifies the location going forward, not retroactively.

Does the temporary work location have to be far away to qualify?

No, if you have a regular workplace elsewhere — Publication 463 allows the deduction "regardless of distance" in that case. The metro-area distance restriction only applies to someone with no regular workplace at all.

I work from a home office. Does the 1-year temporary-location rule even apply to me?

Not if your home office independently qualifies as your principal place of business — a separate rule then applies with no duration limit at all.

What happens to my mileage deduction if a temporary assignment turns into a long-term one?

The mileage stays deductible through the date your expectation changed; only the mileage after that point loses the temporary-location deduction, unless the home-office rule applies to you regardless.

Authoritative References

IRS — Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses: Chapter 4, "Transportation" — the temporary work location rule, the 1-year test, and the home-office exception, quoted verbatim above
IRS — 2026 standard mileage rates: Notice 2026-10, 2026-4 I.R.B. 378 (January 1–June 30) and Announcement 2026-11, 2026-29 I.R.B. (July 1–December 31, modifying Notice 2026-10) — the mid-year rate change used in the worked example. The IRS's own rate table also lists these as news releases IR-2025-128 and IR-2026-29; the Notice and Announcement are the underlying published guidance.

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This guide is general education for U.S. freelancers and independent contractors for the 2026 tax year. It is not personalized tax advice. Whether your home office qualifies as your principal place of business, and whether a specific assignment is temporary under the facts-and-circumstances standard, depends on your actual situation — consult a licensed tax professional and IRS Publication 463 before relying on this analysis for your own return.

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