Any tax experts know with so called GIG jobs that uses your personal vehicle such as Uber, Instacart, Door Dash, etc. can you claim mileage and / or expenses of the maintenance of the vehicle ??? If so how much can you claim, etc ??? Example if my vehicle is up for 60K miles service, can I expense the cost of that ??? Thank you for reading and any info given, etc. God Bless

Either take the per mile allowance or pro-rate your actual expenses. Either needs to be documented. The per-mile is the simplest, just multiply your legitimate business miles by the IRS per-mile allowance.

Anyone else doing GIG jobs or has done in the past and if so which method for taxes did you use and why ??? Again thank you for reading and any info given or shared. God Bless

I agree with fly-sig. The paperwork required to itemize expensing vehicle maintenance is way more involved than simply claiming the mileage rate. If i recall, you have to log work usage vs personal usage, and then pro-rate all of your vehicle expenses by that percentage. The IRS rate is supposed to encompass all of that. Another aspect is that the vehicle is an asset and has depreciating value.

While I travel for work, I don't do gig work. My accountant told me to just use the IRS rate.

Uber/Lyft give you an annual report on mileage.
IRS rate was simple & easy.

I've used Turbo Tax forever and it does a good job. I've claimed mileage on and off related to job expenses and with my wife's consulting business. But not as a central part of a business like Uber.

If you have a very expensive vehicle then taking actual expenses, including depreciation, could be a benefit. Depreciation is a double-edged sword though, that can bite you when you sell the vehicle.

For typical vehicles the mileage allowance is probably sufficient to cover your costs, and it is much simpler book keeping.

When I was using my vehicle for work purposes in my self-employed business, I would run my taxes both ways (with actual expenses vs. the IRS per mile "allowance"). For some strange reason the actual expenses always ended up higher than the allowance. Even just the gas alone was usually higher than the IRS. Both calculations were done with the same mileage figures. There are multiple phone apps out there that will help track mileage and expenses as they occur. I used aCar, but there is probably something better now.

If you are going the actual expenses route, don't forget things like insurance, depreciation, and interest on your car payments. Stuff like personal property taxes can usually be deducted directly, rather than pro-rated as vehicle expenses.

It can get complicated deciding where to take deductions. At some point it becomes a choice between how much time you expend (and possibly waste) chasing that last dollar vs. what your time is worth to you.

Just be aware of an odd quirk. You can switch between the two methods EXCEPT in year one. Once you pick actual in the first year that's it.