2026-05-14 · 6 min read

IRS mileage rate for notary signing agents — the working NSA's guide

If you do 10 signings a week and each one is 15 miles from home, you are driving roughly 7,500 miles per tax year for business purposes. At the 2026 IRS standard mileage rate of 72.5 cents per mile, that is a $5,437.50 deduction — before you count drop-offs, supply runs, or notary-education trips. For a self-employed NSA, this is one of the largest single deductions available. Most NSAs claim a fraction of what they are owed because their mileage log is incomplete.

Note: This is general information for working NSAs, not tax or legal advice. The IRS sets the standard mileage rate each December for the following calendar year. For the current rate, always verify at irs.gov/tax-professionals/standard-mileage-rates. Consult a tax professional for advice specific to your situation.

What the standard mileage rate actually is

The IRS standard mileage rate is a per-mile reimbursement rate that self-employed individuals can use instead of tracking actual vehicle expenses (gas, insurance, depreciation, repairs). You choose one method per vehicle per year — standard mileage or actual expenses — so pick the one that produces the larger deduction. For most NSAs who drive a reliable used vehicle, the standard mileage rate is simpler and competitive.

The rate for business miles is 72.5 cents per mile for tax year 2026. The IRS announces the next year's rate in December — check the IRS website each January before you finalize your year's tracking method.

Which trips count for an NSA

The deductible trip is one driven for a business purpose. For a notary signing agent, that includes:

Driving to the signing. The miles from wherever you are when you start traveling to the signing location. If you leave from home, see the home-office note below.
Multi-stop days. Signing A to signing B is fully deductible. The dead miles between jobs count.
Drop-offs. Driving to FedEx or UPS to ship the signed package is a business trip. Log it the same way.
Supply runs. Driving to Office Depot for notary journals, stamp ink, or printer paper is a deductible business trip.
Continuing education and credentialing. Driving to a notary training class or to get your commission renewed at the county clerk counts.
Bank deposits. Depositing a check from a title company is a business errand.

The home-office question

If your principal place of business is your home — meaning you do your scheduling, invoicing, and document prep from a dedicated workspace at home — then driving from your home office to a signing location is a deductible business trip, not a commute.

If you do not have a qualifying home office, the IRS treats the drive from home to your first client location as a personal commute (not deductible) and the drive home from your last client location the same way. Business miles start at your first client and end at your last.

The home-office deduction has its own rules and is worth evaluating separately if you work from home full-time. Consult a tax professional to determine whether your situation qualifies.

What your mileage log needs to include

The IRS requires contemporaneous documentation. "Contemporaneous" means recorded at or near the time of the trip — not reconstructed from memory at year-end. For each business trip, your log needs:

Date of the trip.
Destination — the address or at minimum the city and business name.
Business purpose — "loan signing, Smith residence" or "FedEx drop, package for First American Title".
Miles driven for that trip (not the odometer reading, though odometer readings at year start and end are also useful).

A mileage log that says "work trip, 22 miles" with no date or destination is not adequate documentation. The IRS can disallow it in an audit. The log that survives is one with a specific address and a specific business reason for every entry.

Why most NSAs under-claim

The pattern is consistent: NSAs log the obvious trips (the signing itself) and forget the rest. Drop-offs accumulate fast — a 5-signing week with a drop-off after each is 10 trips. At 5 miles per drop, that's 50 miles per week, 2,500 miles per year, $1,750 in deductions at the 2025 rate. Gone if you didn't log them.

The second failure mode is reconstructing the log at tax time. You pull the Waze history or the Google Maps timeline and try to back-fill business purpose. This is slow, incomplete, and weak documentation. The IRS views reconstructed logs with skepticism.

A simple logging habit that actually sticks

The NSAs who have clean mileage records do one thing: they log the trip before starting the car for the next one, not at the end of the day. The destination and purpose are fresh, it takes 20 seconds, and the log doesn't become a reconstruction project.

A paper notebook in the glove box works. So does a spreadsheet synced to your phone. The format matters less than the habit. What fails is a mental note to "add it later" — that log will be missing half the entries by February.

How Signbrief handles this

Full disclosure: we built mileage logging into Signbrief because NSAs were already dropping PDFs in to get their signing brief. The mileage log is right there after each job — date and destination are pre-filled from the signing record. You tap the trip type (signing / drop-off / supply run), confirm the miles, done. The data exports as a IRS-format log at year-end.

We're not a tax tool and we're not a replacement for an accountant. We just make the contemporaneous logging step fast enough that NSAs actually do it. $29/mo founding plan while beta seats are open.

Summary: the five things to do before the end of this month

Verify the current IRS standard mileage rate at irs.gov.
Pick your tracking method (standard mileage vs. actual expenses) and stick with it for the full tax year.
Set up a log — phone app, notebook, or spreadsheet — that captures date, destination, business purpose, and miles for every trip.
Decide whether your home qualifies as your principal place of business. If yes, your commute to signings is deductible. If no, start counting miles at your first signing.
Log every trip, including drop-offs, supply runs, and continuing education. Not just the signings.