Tracking expenses and mileage for craft-vendor taxes

If you sell at craft shows, you're running a small business — and that means a chunk of what you spend to do it is deductible. Booth fees, supplies, the miles you drive to a show: handled right, these lower the income you pay tax on. Handled wrong (or not tracked at all), you either overpay or you panic every April trying to reconstruct a year of receipts from memory.

This is a plain-English guide to what craft vendors can typically track and deduct, with the emphasis on building a habit you'll actually keep. One important caveat up front: this is general information, not tax advice, and tax rules vary by situation and by state. For anything specific to you, talk to a tax professional.

Why tracking matters more than it seems

Every dollar of legitimate business expense you track is a dollar of income you don't pay tax on. For a craft vendor, those dollars add up fast — and the single biggest one for a lot of vendors is mileage, which is easy to forget precisely because you never write a check for it.

The flip side: if you ever get audited, the burden is on you to show your numbers were real. "I think I drove about a thousand miles" doesn't hold up. Contemporaneous records — logged at the time, not guessed at later — are what make a deduction defensible.

Expenses craft vendors commonly track

This isn't exhaustive, and not everything applies to everyone, but these are the usual categories:

• Booth and application fees — both your booth fees and (typically) the non-refundable jury/application fees you pay even when you're not accepted.
• Materials and supplies — the raw materials that go into your products.
• Booth equipment — tents, tables, displays, racks, signage, tablecloths, lighting.
• Packaging and bags — what you wrap and hand products over in.
• Payment processing fees — the cut your card reader takes on every sale.
• Business mileage — driving to and from shows, to buy supplies, to the post office (more on this below).
• Travel and lodging — for shows far enough that you stay overnight, hotel and certain travel costs may qualify.
• Marketing — business cards, a website, ads, printed materials.
• Software and subscriptions — tools you use to run the business.
• Home office / studio space — sometimes deductible if you have a dedicated space used regularly and exclusively for the business; the rules here are specific, so this is one to ask a pro about.

The principle across all of these: an expense generally needs to be ordinary and necessary for your business. A new tent for shows, yes. A new tent for a family camping trip, no.

The big one: mileage

For 2026, the IRS standard mileage rate for business driving is 72.5 cents per mile (up from 70 cents in 2025). That means a single 200-mile round trip to a show is worth about $145 in deduction — and most vendors do many of those a year.

You generally have two methods for vehicle costs:

1. Standard mileage rate — multiply your business miles by the per-mile rate. Simpler, and what most small vendors use.
2. Actual expenses — track the real costs of operating your vehicle (gas, maintenance, insurance, depreciation) and deduct the business-use portion. More record-keeping, sometimes a bigger deduction.

A rule worth knowing: if you want the flexibility to switch methods in later years for a car you own, you generally have to use the standard mileage rate in the first year the vehicle is used for business. So if you're not sure, many vendors start with standard mileage. (This is exactly the kind of thing to confirm with a tax pro for your situation.)

Whichever method you choose, you need a mileage log. For each business trip, record the date, the purpose, and the miles. A trip to a show, a run to buy supplies, a drive to drop off shipments — all potentially business miles. The note about purpose matters: "March 14 — drive to Springtime Market, 96 mi round trip" is the kind of record that survives scrutiny.

Build a habit, not a shoebox

The vendors who handle taxes calmly aren't more organized by nature — they just capture as they go instead of saving it all for one miserable session. A workable system:

• Separate your money. A dedicated business checking account and card means most of your expenses are already itemized on a statement. This one move saves more pain than any app.
• Log mileage the day you drive. Not in April. A quick note per trip — date, purpose, miles — is all it takes, and it's the part people most regret skipping.
• Photograph receipts immediately. Cash purchases especially vanish. Snap it before it lives in your glovebox.
• Categorize as you go. Tagging an expense when it happens beats sorting 400 mystery charges at year-end.
• Reconcile monthly. Fifteen minutes a month to confirm everything's captured beats a lost weekend in the spring.

The thread through all of this: record it at the time. Memory is not a record, and reconstruction is both stressful and weaker if anyone ever asks for proof.

Don't forget the income side

Tracking expenses is half the picture. You also need a clean record of what you made — total sales per show, not just the net after fees. If you take card payments, your processor may report your gross sales to the IRS, so your own records should match. Keeping per-show sales totals also tells you which shows are actually worth doing, which is its own reward.

The takeaway

Craft-vendor taxes get overwhelming only when you let a year of expenses and miles pile up unrecorded. The deductions are real and often substantial — booth fees, supplies, equipment, and especially mileage at 72.5 cents per business mile in 2026. The whole game is capturing each expense and each trip when it happens, in a system simple enough that you'll actually stick with it. Do that, and tax time stops being a reconstruction project and becomes a matter of reading numbers you already have.

This article is general information for craft vendors, not personalized tax advice. Rules differ by situation and state — check with a qualified tax professional about your specifics.