CRA Mileage Log: The Guide for Canadian Self-Employed
Canada's mileage rules differ from the IRS in three quiet but important ways. Get them right and you can claim the simplified logbook method — and save hours every year.
If you're self-employed in Canada and use your vehicle for work, the CRA lets you deduct the business-use portion of your car costs — fuel, insurance, maintenance, lease or capital cost allowance. But to claim it, you need a logbook that meets the CRA's standard. And that standard is meaningfully different from the American IRS one.
Here's the Canadian version, in plain language.
The CRA wants a logbook showing, for each business trip, the date, destination, purpose, and kilometres driven — plus your odometer reading at the start and end of the year. Your deduction is the business kilometres divided by total kilometres, applied to your total vehicle expenses.
Three ways the CRA differs from the IRS
- Kilometres, not miles. Obvious but it trips people up — a log built on a US template in miles will misstate your Canadian claim.
- Business-use percentage, not a per-km rate (for the self-employed). Unlike the IRS standard mileage rate, self-employed Canadians generally deduct the business-use percentage of actual costs, not a flat amount per kilometre. (The per-km "reasonable allowance" rate is mainly for employees being reimbursed.)
- The base-year / sample-year method. The CRA offers a simplified logbook option that the IRS doesn't — see below. It's the single biggest time-saver in Canadian mileage tracking.
Full logbook vs simplified (base-year) method
The CRA accepts two approaches:
1. The full logbook
You record every business trip for the entire year. This establishes your business-use percentage precisely. It's the only option in your first year of using the vehicle for business — the CRA calls this your base year.
2. The simplified (sample-year) method
Once you've completed a full base-year logbook, you can keep a representative three-month sample in later years and extrapolate, provided your driving pattern stays within about 10 percentage points of the base year. This is the trick most Canadian freelancers miss — after one diligent year, you only need to log a quarter going forward.
What to record on each trip
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Date | 14 Mar 2026 |
| Destination | Client site — 88 Bloor St, Toronto |
| Purpose | Project kickoff meeting |
| Kilometres | 22.6 km |
And once a year: your odometer reading on January 1 and December 31, so total annual kilometres are documented.
What you can actually deduct
Your business-use percentage applies to your total eligible vehicle costs for the year, which can include:
- Fuel and oil
- Insurance and licence/registration
- Maintenance and repairs
- Lease payments (subject to CRA limits) or Capital Cost Allowance if you own
- Eligible interest on a car loan (within limits)
So if your business use is 60% and your total vehicle costs were $9,000, your deduction is roughly $5,400 — but only if your logbook backs up that 60%.
Generate a CRA mileage logbook free
Kilometre-based, with the fields the CRA expects and year-end odometer tracking built in. Export a clean PDF for your bookkeeper.
Common CRA mileage mistakes
- No base-year log — skipping a full first-year logbook means you can't use the simplified method later.
- Missing odometer readings — without start/end-of-year odometer, total kilometres can't be verified.
- Claiming commuting — like the IRS, the CRA treats home-to-regular-workplace travel as personal.
- Estimating after the fact — the CRA expects records kept as you go, not reconstructed at tax time.
How long to keep it
The CRA generally requires you to keep records, including your mileage logbook, for six years from the end of the tax year they relate to. Keep your base-year logbook for as long as you rely on it for the simplified method.