Using Your Own Car for Work in California? Here’s How Mileage Reimbursement Works

When an employee is at work, the employer has to pay them for their time. When the employee uses their own car for activities done in the furtherance of work, the employer also needs to pay them for out-of-pocket expenses.

If your job requires you to use your own car, the cost of each trip, no matter how minor it may seem, will quickly add up. Think of driving between job sites, making a delivery, or picking up supplies as requested by your employer. California law may require your employer to reimburse the necessary cost of all that driving.

The question is which trips were for work and which were part of your ordinary commute.

The rule

California Labor Code section 2802 generally requires an employer to indemnify an employee for all necessary expenditures or losses the employee incurs in direct consequence of doing the job, or of following the employer's directions.

Using your own vehicle for work is one of those expenditures. The statute does not carve out small amounts, and it does not depend on whether you asked for reimbursement at the time.

Two details in the same statute are easy to miss. Reimbursement awards carry interest, running from the date you incurred the expense. And "necessary expenditures" is defined to include reasonable costs, including attorney's fees, incurred in enforcing the right to be reimbursed.

Which miles count

Not every mile you drive in connection with a job is reimbursable. In identifying which ones are reimbursable, start by thinking about the purpose of the trip. Is it just an ordinary drive between your home and the workplace? Then it is a commute, therefore, generally not compensable. Is the drive to carry out your job duties? Then the costs incurred may be reimbursed. Now, whether you must also be paid for the driving time is a separate question.

What changes the picture is when the employer is directing the driving. The Labor Commissioner's office has applied that principle to several situations:

• Driving between work sites during the day. Travel required by the employer during the workday is work travel.

• Being sent to a different, temporary site. Where an employee with a fixed assigned workplace is required on a short-term basis to report somewhere more than a trivial distance away, the additional travel counts — measured by the difference between the normal home-to-work trip and the trip to the temporary site.

• Carrying the employer's equipment, goods, or materials. Where the employer requires the employee to transport equipment, goods, or materials, the Labor Commissioner's position is that the travel is compensable regardless of length.

If the assignment at a new worksite lasts more than about a month, the Labor Commissioner may treat the trip there as a regular commute. The analysis can also depend on the job: construction workers, for example, may routinely report to different sites as a normal part of their work.

Mileage and time are two different claims

Mileage reimbursement and pay for driving time answer two different questions.

Time is a wage question: were you working, or under the employer's control, while driving? If so, those are hours worked.

Mileage is an expense question under section 2802: what did operating your vehicle actually cost you?

The same drive can produce both, one, or neither. Being paid for the time spent driving does not necessarily reimburse you for using your car. Likewise, receiving mileage reimbursement does not automatically mean that the driving time should have been paid. An unpaid work drive may be a wage claim and a reimbursement claim at the same time, and they are calculated differently.

What rate applies

Section 2802 requires reimbursement of what the driving actually cost you; it does not itself name a cents-per-mile figure. In practice, the reference point is the IRS standard mileage rate, which the Labor Commissioner's office has generally treated as a reasonable measure of expenses. For 2026, there are two such rates, because the IRS changed the rate mid-year:

Just to make it clear: the IRS figure is not a ceiling on what you are owed. The Labor Commissioner's office has said that the IRS allowance, while generally treated as reasonable, "is not dispositive with respect to the issue of indemnification of expenses actually incurred," because it is a national average that ignores what your particular car costs to buy, insure, maintain, and fuel where you live.

An employer seeking to justify a lower rate must show lower actual costs, while an employee seeking more than the IRS-rate payment schedule must show higher actual costs. These are evidentiary issues that must be resolved when dealing with the reimbursement process.

Simply put, California law requires employers to reimburse necessary work-related expenses, and the IRS rate schedule serves as a benchmark.

What to keep

Good records make it easier to identify the trips and compare them with what you were paid. Here’s what you should keep:

1. A log of work drives — date, purpose, start and end point, and miles. Contemporaneous notes are worth far more than a later reconstruction.

2. Your own odometer readings at the start and end of the year.

3. Any written instruction that sent you somewhere: texts, emails, dispatch messages, schedules, route assignments.

4. Pay stubs and any line item labeled reimbursement, allowance, or per diem — including where it was folded into commission or salary.

5. Fuel, insurance, registration, maintenance, and repair receipts for the vehicle you used.

6. The employer's written expense or mileage policy, and any version of it that changed.

If your employer says mileage reimbursement is included in your regular pay, keep any document or pay record showing how much of that payment is meant to cover vehicle expenses. The employer must have a way to show that the reimbursement is distinguished from wages, and must be able to show how it was calculated.

When to seek legal guidance

It may be worth speaking with an employment lawyer if you regularly drive your own vehicle for work and are not reimbursed at all; if you are reimbursed at a flat monthly amount that does not appear to cover your work-related driving; if you are paid a per-mile rate below the current IRS figure; if you were told mileage is included in your commission or salary without any explanation of how much; or if reimbursement stopped after you raised a concern at work.

If that describes your situation, Java & Jebreil can review what you drove, what you were paid, and what the records show. Employees who have not been reimbursed for necessary work-related driving may be facing a wage-and-hour violation by their employer.