Free CRA Mileage Log Template (2026)

Most mileage log templates you’ll find are wrong for Canadians in one of two ways. They’re built in miles for the IRS, or they include a column that multiplies your kilometres by 73¢ and calls the result a deduction.

If you’re self-employed, that column is a lie. Your deduction is actual vehicle costs multiplied by a business-use percentage — the 73¢ figure is a ceiling on what an employer may pay an employee tax-free, and it has no place on your return. A template that hands you a dollar figure is training you toward a number you can’t claim.

So this one doesn’t have that column. It produces the percentage, which is what the calculation on Form T2125 actually needs.

Three versions below, because the right template genuinely differs depending on whether you’re self-employed, an employee claiming expenses, or someone tracking a reimbursement. Plus the part almost no template page explains: the CRA’s base-year method, which lets you keep a full log once and a three-month sample thereafter.

Key takeaways

• The CRA requires four fields per business trip: date, destination, purpose, kilometres — plus odometer readings at the start and end of your fiscal period.
• A self-employed log should output a business-use percentage, not a dollar amount. The 73¢/67¢ rate is an employer allowance ceiling.
• Log personal trips too. The deduction is a ratio, and personal kilometres are the denominator.
• After one full base year, you may use a three-month sample in later years — if the result stays within 10 percentage points of the base year.
• Keep records six years. A base-year logbook must be kept six years from the last year it was used.
• Separate log for each vehicle, with expenses calculated separately.

Download the templates

Every version is in kilometres and built for Canadian rules. Nothing here asks for an email address.

• Excel workbook — all templates, with formulas (.xlsx) — five sheets: self-employed, employee, reimbursement, the base-year worksheet, and a reference card. The business-use percentage calculates itself.
• Printable PDF, one month per page (13 pages) — a reference page plus twelve ruled monthly sheets, sized for hand entry and the glovebox.
• Self-employed log, plain CSV — opens in anything.
• Employee (T777) log, plain CSV
• Reimbursement log, plain CSV
• Base-year worksheet, plain CSV

What the CRA actually requires

The CRA’s position is direct: the best evidence to support your use of a vehicle is an accurate logbook of business travel maintained for the entire year, showing for each business trip the destination, the reason for the trip, and the distance covered.

For each business trip:

Plus, for the vehicle as a whole:

• Odometer reading at the start and end of each fiscal period.
• If you change vehicles during the period, the date of the change and the odometer reading when you buy, sell or trade.
• If you use more than one vehicle for business, a separate record for each — showing total and business kilometres — and each vehicle’s expenses calculated separately.

That’s the whole requirement. Four fields and two odometer readings.

The part people skip

You need total kilometres, not just business kilometres. The deduction is business kilometres divided by total kilometres, so the trips you take to the grocery store are load-bearing — they’re the denominator.

Skip them and you have a numerator with nothing underneath it.

Template 1 — Self-employed (Form T2125)

This is the version most readers need. It produces a percentage.

Per-trip columns:

Summary rows, covering the whole fiscal period:

Capital cost allowance is calculated separately and goes on line 9936; our vehicle CCA guide covers that side.

What is deliberately not in this template: a rate column, and a dollar column. Neither belongs on a self-employed log. If you’ve been using a template that has them, the dollar figures it produced were never claimable.

Two costs sit outside the percentage entirely and are deductible in full: business parking fees and supplementary business insurance for the vehicle. Track them separately rather than folding them into the prorated pile. The full calculation is in our T2125 vehicle expenses guide.

Template 2 — Employee claiming expenses (Form T777)

If you’re an employee who pays your own vehicle costs and doesn’t receive a tax-free allowance, you may be able to deduct them — but the mechanism is the same as the self-employed one. Actual costs multiplied by an employment-use percentage. Not a per-kilometre rate.

The per-trip columns are identical to Template 1; only the framing changes. The summary produces an employment-use percentage, which you apply to your actual vehicle costs on Form T777. The total flows to line 22900 of your T1.

You also need a Form T2200, Declaration of Conditions of Employment, signed by your employer. You don’t file it — you keep it with your records. Without it, the deduction isn’t available. The CRA accepts an electronic signature on the T2200.

And if you received a non-taxable allowance for the same driving, you can’t also deduct those costs.

Template 3 — Reimbursement or allowance (the only one with a dollar column)

This is where the 73¢ figure belongs.

If you’re an employee receiving a per-kilometre allowance, or an employer paying one, the calculation is genuinely kilometres × rate. The 2026 ceilings prescribed under section 7306 of the Income Tax Regulations:

Per-trip columns: date, destination, business purpose, business kilometres, cumulative kilometres, amount.

The running total matters. The rate steps down after 5,000 business kilometres in the calendar year, so the template needs a cumulative kilometre column to know when to switch from 73¢ to 67¢. The threshold is per person, per calendar year, and resets January 1.

The Excel version handles the awkward case most templates get wrong: a single trip that straddles the threshold is split, with the kilometres below 5,000 paid at the higher rate and the remainder at the lower one. Full detail on the rate itself is in our CRA mileage rate guide.

Label the output what it is: a reimbursement, not a deduction. An allowance paid at these rates and based solely on kilometres driven is generally non-taxable to the employee.

The base-year method: log once properly, then sample

This is the part worth reading twice, and almost no template page explains it.

The CRA introduced a simplified logbook in June 2010, after the Canadian Federation of Independent Business identified the logbook as the most burdensome part of the motor vehicle rules. It works like this.

Step 1 — keep a full logbook for one complete 12-month base year. Every trip, all four fields, odometer at both ends.

Step 2 — in later years, keep a three-month sample. You may then project that sample across the year, provided the result is within 10% of the base year’s business use, and provided the base year remains representative of how you normally use the vehicle.

The formula:

(Sample year period % ÷ Base year period %) × Base year annual % = Calculated annual business use

A worked example:

Base-year business use by quarter: 52%, 46%, 39%, 67% — an annual figure of 49%.

In a later year, you keep a sample for April, May and June, which shows 51%. Those same three months in the base year showed 46%.

(51% ÷ 46%) × 49% = 54%

The CRA would accept 54% as the annual business use for that year, absent contradictory evidence.

”Within 10%” means percentage points

This trips people up, and the CRA is explicit about it. The band around a 49% base year is 39% to 59% — ten percentage points either side, not a 10% relative movement. The calculated 54% sits comfortably inside it.

If your figure lands outside the band, the base year is no longer an appropriate indicator. The sample then supports only the three months it covers; the rest of the year needs actual records; and you should consider establishing a new base year with a fresh 12-month logbook.

The prerequisite nobody mentions

Look at the formula again. It needs a “Base year period %” — the business-use percentage for the same three months in your base year.

The CRA doesn’t spell this out in a separate sentence, but it follows unavoidably from the arithmetic, and from the CRA’s own example being broken into quarters: your base-year logbook has to be recorded in a way that can be split into sub-annual periods. A base year that yields only one annual number can’t produce the figure the formula demands.

In practice that means odometer readings at least at each month or quarter end, across the entire base year. Manually, very few people keep them. Which is why most people who intend to use the three-month shortcut in year two discover, in year two, that they can’t.

The base-year worksheet in the download pack has twelve monthly rows for exactly this reason, and a sample-check block that computes the projection and tells you whether it lands inside the band.

Are spreadsheets and apps acceptable to the CRA?

Yes. The CRA is technology-neutral on format — what matters is content, readability and retention.

Electronic records are acceptable, and if your records were created electronically you must keep them in an electronically readable format for the full retention period, even if you also have paper copies. You have to be able to produce an accessible, usable copy that the CRA can actually read.

One rule catches people out. The CRA requires records to be kept at your place of business or residence in Canada, unless you have written permission otherwise — and its position is that records kept outside Canada and merely accessed electronically from Canada are not considered records kept in Canada.

To be precise about what that means: the CRA does not ban cloud storage, and plenty of businesses use foreign-hosted software without issue. But if the only authoritative copy of your log lives on a server outside Canada, that may not satisfy the “kept in Canada” test without permission. Keeping the record on a device in Canada, or exporting to storage in Canada, sidesteps the question entirely.

The CRA also suggests keeping a backup copy at another location within Canada.

Retention

Six years from the end of the tax year the records relate to.

A base-year logbook has a longer life: six years from the end of the tax year for which it was last used to establish business use. If you set a base year in 2026 and rely on it through 2031, you’re keeping that logbook until the end of 2037.

What gets a log rejected

Without a logbook, the CRA may reduce or deny a vehicle claim outright. The claim rests on your records.

The CRA applies a rough sliding scale: a modest business-use claim attracts less documentation pressure, while a high percentage and a large dollar claim attract more. Someone claiming 90% business use on a household’s only vehicle should expect the file to be looked at properly.

The recurring failures:

• No log at all. Total kilometres with no trip detail is a conclusion, not a record.
• No business purpose recorded. Date and distance alone don’t distinguish a client visit from a personal errand to the same plaza.
• Vague destinations. “Various clients” and “around town” tell a reviewer nothing.
• Missing odometer readings at the start and end of the fiscal period, which makes the denominator — and therefore the percentage — unverifiable.
• Round numbers. Exactly 500 kilometres every month is not what real driving looks like.
• A log reconstructed after the fact. Rebuilding a year from a calendar, card statements and location history produces a document that comes apart under examination. The CRA’s standard is a log maintained for the entire year.
• Personal trips omitted, leaving no defensible total.

Any of these can turn a routine review letter into a disallowed claim. Our guide to CRA audits and reviews covers what those letters actually ask for, the deadline to respond, and how far back the CRA can reassess.

Quebec

For self-employed Quebecers, the logbook expectation mirrors the federal one: determine business use as business kilometres over total kilometres for the fiscal period, supported by a log. Motor vehicle expenses go on line 220 of Form TP-80-V, with capital cost allowance at line 240. Guide IN-155-V is the reference.

But Quebec has one rule with no federal equivalent, and it carries a penalty.

Where an employer makes an automobile available to an employee, the employee must keep a logbook and give a copy to the employer — no later than January 10 of the following year, or the tenth day after the vehicle is returned.

That logbook must show the total days the vehicle was available, the total kilometres travelled, and, daily for each duty trip, the place of departure and destination, the distance between them, and information establishing that it was a duty trip.

The penalty for failing to provide it is $200.

This applies to employees with employer-provided vehicles, not to self-employed people using their own. If that’s you, the January 10 deadline is a real date with a real consequence attached.

The honest limitation of a paper log

A template solves the format problem. It does not solve the actual problem, which is that a full year of trip records requires you to remember, every time, in the moment.

Three specific ways manual logs fail:

The personal trips don’t get written down. You’ll record the client visit because it feels like work. You won’t record the seven-kilometre detour to pick up your kid. The denominator quietly shrinks, and your percentage quietly inflates into something you can’t support.

The purpose field decays. By month four it’s “client meeting” every time, which is exactly the vagueness that gets flagged.

The base year needs monthly segmentation. Odometer readings at each month end, for twelve consecutive months, so the shortcut is available in year two. Nobody sustains that with a notebook.

EveryLastMile, an iOS mileage tracking app, detects drives on-device using your iPhone’s motion and location sensors, so trips are captured whether or not you remembered. Each is classified business or personal from rules you set once — which produces the ratio, not just the numerator. Every trip carries the date, route, distance and business purpose, and a CSV export hands the whole year to your accountant in one file.

Processing happens on your phone, and the record lives on the device — which, given the “kept in Canada” rule above, is one fewer question to think about.

Use the template if a spreadsheet suits how you work. Plenty of people keep excellent manual logs. Just be honest with yourself about whether you’re one of them, because the year you find out is the year it’s too late to fix.

Frequently asked questions

What does the CRA require in a mileage log?

For each business trip: the date, the destination, the purpose, and the kilometres driven. Plus odometer readings at the start and end of each fiscal period, the date and odometer reading whenever you change vehicles, and a separate record for each vehicle used for business.

Do I have to record my odometer for every trip?

No. The CRA requires odometer readings at the start and end of the fiscal period, and when you buy, sell or trade a vehicle. Per-trip odometer readings aren't required, though they strengthen a log considerably if you're inclined to keep them.

Can I use the 73¢ per-kilometre rate to calculate my self-employed deduction?

No. That rate is the ceiling on what an employer may pay an employee tax-free as an allowance, prescribed under section 7306 of the Income Tax Regulations. Self-employed people deduct actual vehicle costs multiplied by business-use percentage on line 9281 of Form T2125. There is no per-kilometre deduction method in Canada.

Do I have to log personal trips too?

Yes, in effect. Your deduction is business kilometres divided by total kilometres, so you need the total. Recording your odometer at both ends of the fiscal period gives you the total; logging business trips gives you the numerator. Without both, there's no percentage.

What is the CRA simplified (base-year) logbook method?

After keeping a full logbook for one complete 12-month base year, you may keep a three-month sample in later years and project it across the year, provided the result stays within 10 percentage points of the base year and the base year still represents your normal use.

Is the 10% rule ten percentage points or ten percent?

Percentage points. In the CRA's own example, a base year of 49% gives an acceptable band of 39% to 59%.

What happens if my sample is more than ten points off the base year?

The base year is no longer an appropriate indicator for that year. The sample supports only its own three months, the rest of the year needs actual records, and you should consider establishing a new base year with a fresh 12-month logbook.

How long do I have to keep my mileage log?

Six years from the end of the tax year the records relate to. A base-year logbook must be kept six years from the end of the last tax year in which it was used to establish business use — which can be well over a decade.

Is a spreadsheet or app-based log acceptable to the CRA?

Yes. Electronic records are acceptable, and records created electronically must be kept in an electronically readable format for the full retention period. You need to be able to produce a usable copy the CRA can read.

Does the CRA require my records to be kept in Canada?

Records must be kept at your place of business or residence in Canada unless the CRA gives written permission otherwise. The CRA's position is that records kept outside Canada and accessed electronically from Canada are not considered records kept in Canada.

How do employees and self-employed people claim vehicle expenses differently?

The calculation is the same — actual costs multiplied by a use percentage — but the forms differ. Self-employed people use Form T2125, line 9281. Employees use Form T777, flowing to line 22900, and need a signed Form T2200 from their employer.

What is Form T2200, and do I need one?

It's the Declaration of Conditions of Employment, signed by your employer, confirming you were required to pay your own vehicle expenses. You keep it with your records rather than filing it, but without it the deduction isn't available to you as an employee.

What if I forgot to keep a log — can I reconstruct one?

The CRA's standard is a logbook maintained for the entire year, and a reconstruction is by definition not that. A log built afterward from calendars and statements tends to be internally inconsistent in ways that are visible on review. The better answer is to start recording now: a partial year of genuine records is worth more than a full year of reconstruction.

Do I need a separate logbook for each vehicle?

Yes. Keep a separate record for each vehicle showing total and business kilometres, and calculate each vehicle's expenses separately.

Are there special logbook rules in Quebec?

For self-employed people, Quebec mirrors the federal approach, reported on Form TP-80-V. But where an employer makes an automobile available to an employee, the employee must keep a logbook and give the employer a copy by January 10 of the following year, or within ten days of returning the vehicle. The penalty for failing to do so is $200.