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The realtor's guide to writing off your car

I am a realtor in Toronto. I drive between showings all day, and for years I could never keep a real mileage log, so I would reconstruct half of it at tax time and quietly leave money on the table. If that is you, this one is for you. Here is what agents can actually write off, how the rules work in the US and Canada in 2026, and the simplest way to keep a log that survives a second look.

The miles add up faster than any other expense

Think about a normal week: showings across town, listing prep, the run to the office for a signature, the inspection, the notary, the closing, the client you picked up because their car was in the shop. An agent can easily put 15,000 to 25,000 business kilometres or miles on a car in a year. At 2026 rates that is thousands of dollars in deductions. For most agents, mileage is the biggest write-off they have, and the one most often shortchanged because the log was never kept.

What driving counts for an agent

The test is whether the trip was for the business. For a realtor, the usual business drives are:

• Showings and previewing properties
• Listing appointments and prepping a listing (photos, staging, sign install)
• Open houses and broker opens
• Inspections, appraisals, and the closing or signing
• Trips to the brokerage for business, the print shop, the lawyer or notary
• Driving clients to see properties

The drive from home to your regular office is normally treated as a personal commute, not a business trip. The line around a home office and your first and last stop of the day has real nuance, so that is a good thing to nail down with your accountant rather than guess.

US agents

Most agents are independent contractors, so your commission income and car costs go on Schedule C. You choose either the standard mileage rate, which is 72.5 cents per mile for 2026, or the actual-expense method where you deduct the business-use share of your real costs. Tolls and parking on a business trip come off on top of either one. If you plan to ever use the standard rate on a car, pick it the first year you use that car for work.

Canadian agents

As a self-employed agent your income and vehicle costs go on Form T2125. Here is the point I wish someone had made plain to me years ago:

The CRA accepts a full-year logbook, or, once you have kept one complete year, a three-month sample in later years that represents the whole year if your pattern holds steady. Record your odometer at the start and end of the year, and keep everything for six years.

The way I actually track it now

I built PocketMile because I wanted this to happen without me. It logs every drive on its own, from the moment I pull out for a showing, using GPS and motion, so there is nothing to remember between appointments. I paired my work car once, so those trips tag themselves as business. My common stops, the office and a couple of regular spots, are saved so they name and sort themselves. A full day of showings chains into one card I can tag at once instead of trip by trip. At tax time I pick a date range and export a clean log for my accountant, built for the CRA or the IRS.

And every bit of that stays on my iPhone and my own iCloud. No account, nothing sent to a company server. As an agent, the last thing I wanted was a running map of every client address I visited sitting in someone else's database. So it does not.

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