✅ Current for tax year 2026
Every real deduction available to Dashers, from mileage and phone bills to insulated bags, and what the IRS actually allows.
Quick answer: Your DoorDash 1099-NEC shows gross pay, not taxable income. Mileage, your phone bill, hot bags, and a handful of other real costs come off before the IRS calculates what you owe — and for most Dashers, mileage is by far the biggest one.
Mileage — the big one
For 2026, the IRS standard mileage rate is 72.5 cents per mile from January through June, rising to 76 cents per mile from July onward. Track every mile you drive while on a delivery — from accepting an order through drop-off, and the driving between deliveries while the app is active. You need a contemporaneous log (date, miles, purpose); an estimate built at tax time doesn’t hold up if questioned. A mileage-tracking app that logs automatically is worth using from day one.
Your phone
The business-use percentage of your phone bill is deductible. If you use your phone 60% for Dashing and 40% for everything else, 60% of the bill counts.
Hot bags, mounts, and gear
Insulated bags, phone mounts, chargers, and any equipment bought specifically to Dash are deductible in the year you buy them.
Health insurance and retirement — if you qualify
If Dashing is a significant part of your income and you pay your own health insurance, or contribute to a SEP-IRA or Solo 401(k), those come off too — see the full deductions list for the current dollar limits.
What doesn’t count
Your everyday clothing, meals you eat while working (as opposed to a business meal with a client — rare for delivery work), and the commute from home to where you start Dashing for the day are all personal, not business, expenses.
Putting it together
Gross 1099-NEC pay minus all of the above gets you to net self-employment income — the number that actually goes into the 1099 & quarterly tax calculator to figure your self-employment tax and quarterly payment.
Standard mileage vs. actual expenses
You have two ways to deduct vehicle costs, but almost never a reason to use both. The standard mileage rate (72.5¢ then 76¢ per mile in 2026) bundles gas, maintenance, depreciation, and insurance into one per-mile number — simplest for Dashers, since most drive a personal car used for both work and life. The actual-expense method instead totals your real gas, repairs, insurance, and depreciation, then applies your business-use percentage. It usually only comes out ahead for a newer, expensive vehicle used almost entirely for Dashing. Once you pick a method for a vehicle in its first year of business use, switching later has restrictions — choose deliberately rather than defaulting.
Recordkeeping that actually holds up
A log written from memory at tax time rarely survives an audit. What does: a mileage app (Stride, Everlance, or similar) that timestamps each trip automatically, or a simple daily note of start/end odometer readings tied to the dates you Dashed. For gear and hot bags, keep the receipt and note the purchase date — the IRS wants to see the expense was incurred in the tax year you’re claiming it. None of this needs to be complicated; it just needs to exist contemporaneously, not get reconstructed in April.
Insurance while Dashing
Your personal auto insurance policy may not automatically cover you while delivering for pay — many personal policies exclude commercial or delivery use entirely, which can leave you without coverage exactly when you need it most. Some insurers offer a rideshare/delivery endorsement that extends your existing policy for a relatively small added premium; others require a separate commercial policy. The added cost of that endorsement, when purchased specifically because you Dash, is itself a deductible business expense — the business-use percentage of it, same as your regular insurance premium isn’t deductible for personal driving. Check with your insurer before an accident forces you to find out the hard way whether you were covered.
Vehicle depreciation, if you use actual expenses
If you use the actual-expense method rather than standard mileage, your vehicle’s depreciation — the portion of its declining value attributable to business use — is one of the expense categories you can claim, calculated using IRS depreciation tables based on your vehicle’s cost and business-use percentage. This is genuinely more complex than standard mileage, which already has depreciation baked into its per-mile rate, and it comes with its own set of rules about switching methods in later years. For most Dashers driving an older or moderately priced personal vehicle, standard mileage is simpler and often produces a similar or better result without the added complexity of tracking depreciation separately.
Sources
Mileage rate figures come from the IRS’s 2026 standard mileage rate notice.