Deductions by trade
What a company driver can deduct.
For drivers employed by a carrier and paid on a W-2. If you receive a 1099-NEC, or you own the truck, a different page applies — both are linked at the bottom of this one.
Tax year 2026
On a federal return, a W-2 driver deducts almost nothing.
Unreimbursed employee expenses — per diem you covered yourself, gloves, your own tools, the phone dispatch calls you on — went on Form 2106 until 2017. The 2017 law suspended them and the 2025 law made that repeal permanent, so there is no later year to wait for. That is not the end of the conversation. The money is still there; it just has to come through your carrier's reimbursement plan, through your state return, or through retirement and health accounts, rather than through Schedule A. The rest of this page is where to go looking.
Illustrative. The gap is the point, not the amount — and it is the reason this page is short.
Ask the carrier instead of the IRS
Everything below is worth more as a reimbursement than it ever was as a deduction, because a proper reimbursement is not taxed at all.
- Whether the carrier runs an accountable planUnder an accountable plan you substantiate the expense and return anything left over, and the payment never appears on your W-2 — no income tax, no Social Security, no Medicare. Money handed over without those rules is simply wages.Tax tip. A dollar reimbursed under an accountable plan is worth more than a dollar deducted ever was: no income tax, no Social Security, no Medicare. Ask for the plan in writing before you argue about the pay rate.
- Per diem paid by the carrierA carrier may reimburse qualifying meals up to the applicable federal per diem rate under an accountable plan without treating the reimbursement as wages. The special transportation-industry rate changes on 1 October, so the rate must match the date of travel.
- What per diem pay costs you elsewherePer diem lowers the wages reported on your W-2. That also lowers your earnings record for Social Security, the income a lender sees on a mortgage application, and the base for unemployment and workers' compensation. It is a trade, not free money — worth doing deliberately.
- Reimbursement for your DOT physical, license endorsements and required training
- Out-of-pocket tolls, scales, parking and fuelSubmit them. A receipt you never turned in is worth nothing at all on a federal return.
The overtime deduction, and why it may not reach you
New for 2025 through 2028 and one of the few things that genuinely changed for employees. Most long-haul drivers will not qualify, and it is better to know that before you file than after.
- It covers the premium half of time-and-a-half onlyUp to $12,500, or $25,000 on a joint return, and it shrinks once modified AGI passes $150,000 ($300,000 joint). You can claim it whether or not you itemize.
- Interstate drivers are usually exempt from federal overtime altogetherThe motor carrier exemption in the Fair Labor Standards Act means many interstate drivers never earn statutory overtime in the first place. No qualifying overtime, no deduction.
- Local and short-haul drivers over forty hours a week are the ones who may qualifyIf you are paid by the mile, your employer has to convert cents per mile into an hourly rate before any of this can be worked out.
- For 2026 it belongs on the W-2 in box 12, code TTIf you worked overtime and that box is empty, ask payroll before you file. Fixing a W-2 afterwards is far more work than asking a question in January.Tax tip. Check box 12 in January, not in April. A missing code TT is a corrected W-2 if you catch it early and a lost deduction if you do not.
Your state may still allow what the federal return does not
Federal law generally disallows a W-2 driver's unreimbursed employee expenses, but some states still permit a state-level deduction or adjustment. The rules and eligible expenses vary by state and can change.
- Check the rules for every state in which you fileDo not assume the federal result controls the state return. Eligibility, floors and forms differ, and the applicable rule should be verified for the filing year.Tax tip. If your state allows an unreimbursed-expense deduction, a nights-away log and receipts may still matter. Keep the records during the year rather than trying to reconstruct them at filing time.
- Per diem, required gear, tools, union dues and license fees are the usual entries
- Keep the records even if your state is not on the listPeople move, and jobs change where you file. A year of records you did not keep cannot be recovered later.
What still lowers your federal tax
None of these are employee business expenses, so the repeal above does not touch them.
- The carrier's 401(k), at least up to the matchA match is the only guaranteed return in this business. Leaving it unclaimed costs more than every deduction on this page put together.Tax tip. A dollar the carrier matches is a 100 percent return before any tax question is asked. No deduction anywhere on this site competes with that.
- A traditional or Roth IRAA traditional contribution may still be deductible even when you have a plan at work, depending on income.
- A health savings account, if you are on a high-deductible planDeductible whether or not you itemize, and the balance stays yours when you change carriers.Tax tip. An HSA is deductible going in, untaxed coming out for medical costs, and it moves with you between carriers. For a driver who changes employers it is the only account that does all three.
- Premiums taken out of your pay before taxAlready excluded from the wages on your W-2. Do not deduct them a second time.
- Mortgage interest, state and local taxes and charitable giving, if you itemize
Keep these anyway
Not because of this year's return. Because of the state return, a pay dispute, or the year you buy your own truck.
- Logs or a per diem app showing every night away from homeKeep at least three years. The carrier will not keep them for you, and you cannot rebuild them.
- Settlement statements and pay stubs for the full year
- Anything the carrier deducted from your payAn escrow or damage deduction is not a write-off, but you need the paper to check that the numbers were right.
- The W-2 itself, including the detail in boxes 12 and 14
If your pay does not really look like a job
Worth reading even if you are certain. How you are actually paid decides which of these pages applies to you.
- The label on the paperwork does not settle itControl over how and when the work gets done is what matters, and both the IRS and the Department of Labor look past the contract. Form SS-8 asks the IRS to make the determination.
- Being treated as a contractor moves the whole payroll tax onto you15.3 percent self-employment tax instead of the 7.65 percent withheld from a W-2, plus quarterly payments and no unemployment cover.
- You file based on how you were paid, not how you should have beenReclassification is a separate process with its own consequences. Worth talking through before you start it.
What you cannot deduct
Almost every line here was deductible before 2018. None of it is now on a federal return, and no amount of receipts changes that.
- Per diem you paid for yourself that the carrier did not reimburse
- Gloves, boots, a load bar, a CB radio, tools you bought yourself
- Your phone and data plan, however much of it is dispatch
- The drive from home to the terminalCommuting, however far it is.
- Showers, laundry and parking you covered out of pocket
- CDL renewal, endorsements and your DOT physical
- Meals on the road, whether you kept every receipt or none
- Union and association dues
- A home officeAn employee cannot take one, even when the carrier has no office within 500 miles.
- Escrow or damage the carrier took out of your settlement
Before you file
For a W-2 driver the useful question is not only what to deduct — it is what to ask the carrier to reimburse. Bring the W-2, the employer's reimbursement policy and your logs; the federal and state treatment can then be checked separately.
Open the business checklistNot sure which of these apply to you?
A list is a starting point, not an answer. Bring your own numbers to a free intro call and we will work out which of these belong on your return and what is missing from your records.
This page is general information for the 2026 tax year, not advice about your business. A deduction has to be ordinary and necessary for your own trade, and your records have to support it. Amounts and rules are current as of the date of publication and can change.