Guide

Forgot to track your miles for DoorDash, Uber or Instacart?

Updated October 2026 · 7 min read

You drove all year for a delivery or rideshare app, never ran a mileage tracker, and now the return wants a number. For many drivers the miles are not lost. If Google Maps Timeline was on, your phone recorded every drive by GPS as you made it: the date, where it started and ended, and how far it went. That is the raw material of a mileage log, written down at the time, by the phone rather than by you.

This guide covers how to check whether you have it, which miles drivers usually claim, what the IRS says about records put together later, and how to turn the history into a log.

First: did your phone record the year?

Timeline is a setting, and since Google moved it onto the phone it is set per device. Two minutes tell you where you stand:

1. Open Google Maps, tap your profile picture, then Your Timeline.
2. Go to a day you know you worked, as early in the year as you can. If it shows the drives, the year is probably there.
3. If nothing goes back further than about three months, the history was being deleted as it aged. That is the default for anyone who turned Timeline on after the move to the phone, and what is gone cannot be brought back. Why it happens, and how to stop it taking the rest.
4. Changed phones during the year? The history stayed on the old one. Export it before you wipe or trade it in.

Whatever you find, change the auto-delete setting to 36 months today (profile picture → Your Timeline → More → Location & privacy settings → Auto-delete Timeline), so next year's return starts from a complete record.

What the apps already count, and what they leave out

Some platforms give you a mileage figure at the end of the year. Uber's annual tax summary, for instance, lists online miles: the driving you did while waiting for a request, on the way to a pickup, and on trips. It is a useful number, with two limits:

• It only counts its own app. If you ran DoorDash and Uber Eats at the same time, each platform knows the time you were online with it, and none of them knows the car. Timeline records the drive whichever app was open.
• It stops when you go offline. The drive out to your zone before you log on, and the drive home after the last order, are not online miles.

Not every platform gives you a total at all, and the figures are not an official tax form. Check your own year-end summary for what it does and does not include before you compare it with anything.

Which miles drivers usually claim

Delivery and rideshare drivers file as self-employed, on Schedule C, and most use the IRS standard mileage rate. The miles commonly claimed are the ones driven for the work:

• driving to the first pickup of a shift,
• driving between orders, and while waiting for the next one,
• driving to the pickup and on to the drop-off,
• driving home at the end of the shift.

The first and last of those depend on where your work is considered to start, which turns on your own situation. A tax preparer settles that; this guide does not. What a rebuilt log gives you is the distance for each drive, dated, so whichever rule applies can be applied to real numbers.

Personal driving stays out: the school run, the supermarket on a day off, a drive to see family.

Is a log put together later acceptable?

The rule sits in the Treasury regulation on substantiation, section 1.274-5T(c). Three phrases in it matter here:

• each element has to be proven "by adequate records or by sufficient evidence corroborating" your own statement;
• records "made at or near the time" of the use carry the most weight;
• "A contemporaneous log is not required."

A log rebuilt from memory at filing time is the weak case: an estimate with nothing behind it. A log rebuilt from GPS history is a different thing. The dates, routes and distances were recorded at the time, by the phone, and the original export file is still there to show it. What remains your statement is which of those drives were work.

So keep the export file with the log, keep your platform summaries and earnings statements beside it, and do not claim a drive you cannot place in a shift. This is how the record holds together; it is not tax advice.

Rebuild the year in five steps

1. Export your Timeline. On Android: Settings → Location → Location services → Timeline → Export Timeline data. On iPhone, from the Google Maps app settings. The export guide covers both, and Takeout for older years.
2. Open it in Time-mile and pick the tax year. Every drive becomes a row with its date, start, end and distance.
3. Find your shifts. A delivery shift shows up as a run of short drives with brief stops at restaurants, stores and customers' addresses. Days you did not work look like ordinary errands.
4. Take out what was personal. Hide a drive with the eye at the end of its row and it leaves the table, the exports and the total. Click a start or end place to say what it is (home, a personal place, a business place): the answer covers every drive that stops there, and the Pro / personal column shows the result.
5. Export the log. The PDF report lists every drive with its date, route and distance, and works out the deduction at the IRS rate in force on each drive's date. CSV if you or your preparer want a spreadsheet.

Already use a tracker and it only missed some drives? Fill the gaps in MileIQ, Everlance or Stride. With Everlance, narrow the dates to the gap and use Export → For Everlance: the file goes straight into its Import History.

Driving in Canada or the UK? The same steps work with the CRA and HMRC rates.

Frequently asked questions

What if I forgot to track my mileage for taxes?

Check whether Google Maps Timeline was on during the year. If it was, your phone recorded the date, route and distance of every drive by GPS as you made it, and those records can be turned into a mileage log. If it was off, or auto-delete removed the months you need, look for other evidence instead: platform summaries, delivery histories, fuel and service receipts.

I forgot to track miles for DoorDash. Can I still claim them?

Often, yes, if you can back the number with evidence. A log rebuilt from GPS data recorded during your shifts is much stronger than an estimate from memory. Which of those miles you can deduct depends on your situation, so confirm the categories with a tax preparer before you file.

Does the IRS accept a mileage log made after the fact?

The regulation says a contemporaneous log is not required, but each element has to be substantiated by adequate records or by sufficient evidence corroborating your own statement, and records made at or near the time carry the most weight. GPS history recorded as you drove is that kind of evidence. Keep the original export file alongside the log.

Doesn't Uber already give me my miles?

Uber's annual tax summary lists online miles: driving while waiting for a request, on the way to a pickup and on trips. It only counts time online in Uber. Drives before you go online, after you go offline, and the time you spent online in another app are not in it. Timeline records the car, whichever app was open.

Is my location history uploaded to rebuild the log?

No. Time-mile reads your Timeline file entirely inside your browser. The file is never sent to a server.