The IRS mileage rate changed mid-year: what it means for your drive to Shows

If you drive to Shows, you're closing out the biggest mileage year most vendors will log in 2026 — and this is the first year in a while where that log needs two numbers instead of one. The IRS raised its standard mileage rate mid-year, something it hasn't done since 2022, which means a drive you made in March and a drive you made in October are worth a different amount per mile on your return. Here's what actually changed, why the split happened, and how to sort your log before you're sitting down with a full year of trips to Markets and Festivals and no idea which ones fall on which side of the line.

What changed, and when

The IRS set the 2026 standard business mileage rate at 72.5 cents per mile back at the start of the year, a routine 2.5-cent bump from 2025. Then, in July, it did something it almost never does mid-year: it raised the rate again, to 76 cents per mile, effective for miles driven on or after July 1. The agency pointed to rising fuel costs as the reason — the same kind of in-year adjustment it last made in 2022, when gas prices spiked hard enough to justify breaking from the usual once-a-year schedule.

That leaves 2026 split into two periods for anyone using the standard mileage method:

• January 1 through June 30: 72.5 cents per mile
• July 1 through December 31: 76 cents per mile

The dividing line is the date you actually drove, not the date you file or the date you're reconciling your log. A trip to a spring Market in April gets the first-half rate even if you're only now getting around to adding up your mileage.

Why this is more than a rounding difference for a vendor

A few cents a mile sounds small until you add up a real show season. A vendor who's driving 4,000 business miles a year — a reasonable number once you count every Market, Festival, supply run, and post office trip tied to selling — is looking at roughly $150 more in deduction for the second half of the rate change alone, on top of the 2.5-cent bump already built into the January rate versus last year. That's real money for a business that runs on thin margins between a booth fee and a weekend's sales, and it's money you only capture if your log actually tracks which miles fall in which half of the year.

The split also matters because fall and holiday Shows are usually the heaviest driving stretch of the season — more Events packed closer together, often farther from home as you chase the Events worth adding to a tighter calendar. Most of your highest-mileage months this year likely fall after July 1, at the higher rate, which is one more reason it's worth getting the log right rather than averaging the two rates together out of convenience.

How to actually split the log

If you've been tracking mileage the way most vendors do — a running note, a mileage app, or a notebook in the glovebox — the fix isn't a new system, it's one more column:

1. Keep the basics you already track: date, starting point, destination, and purpose (which Show, which supply run, which bank trip for the business).
2. Add which half of the year it falls in. A trip dated before July 1 goes in one subtotal; a trip on or after July 1 goes in the other. If you've been tracking all year in one running list, this is as simple as drawing a line at the right row and totaling each side separately.
3. Apply each half's rate to its own subtotal, then add the two dollar totals together. Don't apply one rate to the full year's miles — that either understates or overstates the deduction depending on which rate you picked.
4. Keep the trip-level detail, not just the two totals. If a return is ever questioned, the IRS wants the log that shows individual trips, not a single annual mileage figure you can't trace back to actual drives.

If your record for the year so far is thinner than that — total miles with no dates attached — it's worth reconstructing what you can now, while a show season's trips are still somewhat fresh, rather than guessing at tax time.

The standard rate isn't your only option — but switching has rules

The standard mileage rate is the simpler of two ways to deduct vehicle costs; the other is tracking actual expenses (gas, maintenance, insurance, depreciation) and deducting the business-use share of those instead. Which one you're allowed to use, and whether you can switch between them in a later year, depends on choices you made when you first put the vehicle into business use — it isn't a free choice every April. If you've never compared the two methods against your actual driving and vehicle costs, or you're not sure which one you're even using, that comparison is worth doing with a tax professional rather than assuming the standard rate is automatically the better deal.

Self-employed vendors reporting on Schedule C don't need a reimbursement form for any of this — the mileage total (split correctly by rate) goes straight into your vehicle expense calculation. The complexity here is entirely about getting the math right, not about extra paperwork.

This post is a general explainer, not tax advice for your specific situation — mileage rates, the standard-versus-actual-expense choice, and what counts as business mileage all have edge cases a general article can't cover. Check your own numbers and filing approach with a CPA or other tax professional before you file.

Having a calendar of exactly which Shows you worked and when makes this kind of reconstruction far easier than it sounds — if you're using the Tracker to log your booth dates through the year, you already have the dated list of trips a mileage log needs; you just have to add the destination and miles. Artisans Almanac offers a 30-day free trial if you want your show calendar and your mileage records working off the same dates instead of two separate systems.