Guides

Google Timeline & mileage deduction guides

Updated October 2026

Turning a Google Maps Timeline into a mileage log you can stand behind is two separate problems, and they fail for different reasons. Getting the file out of Google is a mechanical problem: the export moved on-device in 2024 and now comes in three incompatible shapes. Valuing the kilometres is a legal one, and the answer changes at every border.

These guides split along that line.

Every rate quoted in them is read from the authority that published it and carries the date it was published. Those figures are maintained as a dataset of their own, lexrates, which publishes the same figures with their dated history and re-reads them when a government moves one.

Getting the file, and turning it into a log

• How to Export Google Maps Timeline to Excel or CSV → Both export methods, which of the three formats carries street addresses, and the traps that silently corrupt the spreadsheet.
• Convert Google Maps Timeline to a Mileage Log → From a Timeline.json or a Takeout ZIP to a filterable log, in the browser, exportable to CSV, JSON, PDF, KML or GPX.
• Forgot to Track Mileage? Rebuild It from Google Timeline → For delivery and rideshare drivers who never ran a tracker: whether the phone kept the year, which miles drivers claim, and what the IRS says about a log put together later.
• IRS Asking for Your Mileage Log? What to Hand Over → What the IRS asks you to prove for a vehicle deduction, what Publication 463 accepts when the log is incomplete, and how to assemble the evidence from GPS history.
• Mileage Tracker Missed Drives? Fill the Gaps from Timeline → When MileIQ, Everlance or Stride missed drives: finding the gaps in Google Timeline and getting them back into the log without counting a drive twice.
• Free Mileage Log Template for Excel and Google Sheets → A free Excel and CSV mileage log with the columns the IRS asks for, a summary that works out the deduction, and no odometer reading per trip.
• Google Maps Timeline Disappeared? Why Trips Go Missing → Google's 2024 move to on-device storage, why Takeout now comes back short, and how to get your current history out.
• Travel History from Google Maps: Your Dates Abroad, Day by Day → The dates you left and came back, days per country and every stay abroad, for a citizenship application, Form N-400 or a 183-day count. Also en français and en español.
• See Your Google Maps Timeline on a Map: a Year or a Road Trip → Every trip of a year on one map, a single trip on its own, and a road trip downloaded as an image or a printable page for the wall.
• Google Maps Timeline.json format: field reference → Field-level reference for the three shapes: the Android semanticSegments object, the bare iOS array, and the differences that break a parser written against one of them.
• Using Google Timeline for Mileage Tax Deductions → What a compliant mileage log has to contain, and which of it Timeline can actually supply.

What the kilometres are worth, country by country

Read the structure column before the rate: a flat per-kilometre figure and a bracketed scale are not comparable, and a country with an annual cap will stop paying you halfway through a busy year.

Each guide carries the figures themselves, the official source they come from, and the date they were last checked against it. They are stated in one place on purpose: a rate repeated across pages is a rate that goes stale on all but one of them.