Commute or Deductible Drill Travel? How the IRS Treats Trips to Your Unit
Every drill weekend starts with a drive, and not every drive is deductible. Publication 463 separates ordinary commuting from reserve travel with a handful of tests, and this guide lays them side by side, then runs three invented drives through them with the numbers shown.
Two different questions
The first question is whether a trip is a commute. Publication 463 says you cannot deduct the cost of driving a car between your home and your main or regular place of work, that these costs are personal commuting expenses, and that this holds no matter how far your home is from your regular place of work. The second question is whether the trip is reserve travel more than 100 miles from home, which can be taken as an adjustment to gross income. A drive to your unit can fail the first test as a commute and still be analysed under the second.
The two tests use different ideas of home. Publication 463 defines your tax home as your regular place of business or post of duty, including the entire city or general area where your work is located. The reservist rule speaks of being more than 100 miles away from home. The sources we reviewed do not tie those two together for someone whose civilian job and unit are in different places, so a close case belongs with a tax professional.
What Publication 463 says about reserve meetings
The publication addresses Armed Forces reservists directly in its chapter on local transportation. The pieces fit together like this.
| Situation | Treatment in the publication |
|---|---|
| The meeting is on a day you work your regular job | The meeting is a second place of business, and getting from one workplace to the other is deductible as transportation |
| The meeting is on a day you do not work your regular job | Generally a nondeductible commuting expense |
| The meeting location is temporary and you have regular places of work | You can deduct your transportation expenses |
| You work in a metropolitan area but not at one location, and the meeting is at a temporary location outside it | You can deduct your transportation expenses |
| You travel away from home overnight to attend the meeting | You can deduct your travel expenses, discussed in chapter 1 |
What counts as a temporary location
The publication says that if you have one or more regular work locations away from home and you commute to a temporary work location in the same trade or business, you can deduct the daily round-trip transportation between your home and that location, regardless of distance. A work location is temporary if the work there is realistically expected to last, and does in fact last, for 1 year or less. If it is realistically expected to last longer than that, it is not temporary.
The publication gives the rule in general terms, and it does not say how those words apply to a unit you report to every month for years. That is the kind of case where reading the passage next to your own facts matters more than anything this guide can say.
Why local deductions rarely reach a reservist's return
Publication 463 notes that an employee's cost of using a car, whether by actual expenses or the standard mileage rate, can no longer be taken as a miscellaneous itemized deduction, because miscellaneous itemized deductions subject to the 2 percent floor are suspended. What is not suspended are deductions that figure into adjusted gross income, and the example the publication gives is reservists deducting unreimbursed employee travel expenses on Schedule 1, line 12.
The instructions for Form 2106 send to that line only the part of the expenses for travel more than 100 miles from home, and Publication 463 repeats that you cannot take travel that does not go more than 100 miles from home as an adjustment to gross income. Reading those together, a local drive that is deductible under the local transportation rules has no obvious place on a reservist's Form 2106. We read it that way, but it is an inference from the text, so ask a professional before relying on it.
Three drives, compared
All three drives below belong to one invented reservist, using the 2025 rate of 70 cents a mile. Her armory is 35 miles from home for twelve of her drills. For six other drills she travels to a unit event 140 miles from home.
- Local drills: 35 miles each way is 70 round-trip miles, and 12 weekends is 840 miles. At 70 cents the value would be $588.00, but the trip is not more than 100 miles from home and is generally a commute, so the amount is not deducted.
- Far events: 140 miles each way is 280 round-trip miles, and 6 trips is 1,680 miles. At 70 cents that is $1,176.00, which belongs on Form 2106 if the other tests are met.
- Job to armory: on a day she works her civilian job, which is 25 miles from home, she drives 18 miles to the armory. At 70 cents that is $12.60, a second-place-of-business trip, subject to the caution in the section above.
| Drive | Round-trip miles | Value at 70 cents | Goes on Form 2106 line 1? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home to local armory, 12 weekends | 840 | $588.00 | No, generally a commute |
| Home to far event, 6 trips | 1,680 | $1,176.00 | Yes, if the other tests are met |
The point of the comparison is to keep two logs in your head, one for drives you cannot deduct and one for the drives you can. If you log all 2,520 miles on line 1, the deduction is overstated by $588.00, and that is the kind of error a reviewer sees quickly.
What Form 2106 asks about commuting
The form itself keeps commuting in view. Line 15 asks for your average daily roundtrip commuting distance, and line 2 describes transportation that did not involve overnight travel or commuting to and from work. If you answer line 15 honestly and your log still shows the same miles as qualifying travel, a reader will see the mismatch.
A reservist's note
As a reservist, I think the easiest way to avoid a mistake here is to decide before the year starts which of your drills are local and which are not, and to log the local ones in a different color. The decision takes a minute against a map, and it keeps the commute from drifting into the deduction by accident.
Common questions
Can I deduct the drive to drill on a day I do not work my civilian job?
Publication 463 says you usually cannot, and that your transportation is generally a nondeductible commuting expense, unless the meeting location is temporary and you have one or more regular places of work.
What if I stay overnight but live fewer than 100 miles away?
The publication treats overnight travel to attend a guard or reserve meeting as deductible travel expenses, but it also says travel that does not take you more than 100 miles from home cannot be taken as an adjustment to gross income. How those two statements apply to a short trip with an overnight stay is a question for a tax professional.
Does a stop at my civilian job on the way count?
The publication allows the cost of getting from one workplace to another when you work at two places in one day, but if for some personal reason you do not go directly, you cannot deduct more than the direct trip would have cost.
Related guides
- Who qualifies: the reserve component, distance and reimbursement tests.
- Mileage records: how to log both kinds of drives.
- Which trips count: kinds of duty compared.
- The 100-mile rule: what the IRS says about distance.
Sources
- IRS Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses
- IRS Instructions for Form 2106
- IRS Form 2106, Employee Business Expenses (2025)
- IRS standard mileage rates