Here are the rules for driving between your home and a regular place of business:

"The most important feature of the local transportation rules is that your commuting costs are not deductible. That is, the fare you pay or the miles you drive simply to get to work and home again are personal and not business miles and no deduction is available. This is the case even if you work during the commute, e.g., via a cell phone, or by performing business-related tasks while on the train. An exception applies for commuting to a temporary work location that is outside of the metropolitan area in which you live and normally work. “Temporary,” for this purpose, means a location where your work is realistically expected to last (and does in fact last) for no more than a year.

On the other hand, once you get to work, the cost of any local trips you take for business purposes is a deductible business expense. So, for example, the cost of travel from your office to visit a client, pick up supplies, etc., is deductible. Similarly, if you have two business locations, the costs of travel between them is deductible."


I think the position that the IRS would take is that you could have stayed at the hospital for the whole day, instead of driving back and forth between your home and the hospital.

Finally, everything changes if you have a home office. All of a sudden, driving between your home office and the hospital would qualify as driving between job sites, making all of that mileage fully deductible.

Zip Code: 01801