Guide

CRA Mileage Rate 2026: 73¢/km — Full Rates & Logbook Guide

Updated July 2026 · 5 min read

For 2026, the CRA's reasonable automobile allowance rate is 73 cents per kilometre for the first 5,000 km driven for business, and 67 cents per kilometre after that — a one-cent increase across the board compared to 2025. In the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut, add 4¢/km to both tiers.

The 2026 rates at a glance

A worked example

You drove 8,000 business kilometres in 2026 (provinces):

(5,000 × $0.73) + (3,000 × $0.67) = $3,650 + $2,010 = $5,660 in tax-free allowance.

Who these rates apply to

• Employees: your employer can pay you a per-kilometre allowance tax-free as long as it's "reasonable" — these CRA rates are the benchmark. A flat monthly car allowance, by contrast, is taxable.
• Self-employed: you deduct actual vehicle expenses prorated by business use — and that proration is computed from your kilometre log, which makes the log itself the foundation of the deduction.

The CRA logbook: what it must contain

Whether you're justifying an allowance or prorating expenses, the CRA expects a logbook recording, for each business trip: the date, destination, purpose, and distance driven — plus odometer readings at the start and end of the year. And because the rate drops after 5,000 km, the running total matters, not just the annual sum.

If you use Google Maps, your phone has already recorded every drive in your Timeline, with GPS timestamps and distances. Turning that into a CRA-ready log:

1. Export your Timeline from your phone (see our Timeline export guide).
2. Open the file in Time-mile — processed entirely in your browser, your location history never touches a server.
3. Filter to your business trips by date and activity type; the distance column gives you per-trip kilometres.
4. Export a CSV to track the 5,000 km threshold in a spreadsheet, or a PDF report for your records.

Official sources

• CRA: Automobile allowance rates — canada.ca
• CRA: Keeping records for motor vehicles — canada.ca