OTR truck driver taxes and deductions

The DOT per diem is worth more than most drivers claim: $80 a day, deductible at 80% under the hours-of-service rules, for every night away from home.

Owner-operators and lease-purchase drivers are self-employed; company drivers on a W-2 are not, and the W-2 driver lost the per diem deduction entirely when miscellaneous itemized deductions went away. Truck depreciation and the per diem are the two biggest lines, and the per diem needs only a log of nights out.

The deductions with a rule attached

These are the lines where the answer is not simply "keep the receipt"each has a cap, a percentage or a test that decides how much of the spend you actually get:

DOT per diem: $80 for each day subject to the hours-of-service rules, deductible at 80%. So $64 a day of actual deduction, without keeping a single meal receipt. Two hundred nights out is $12,800 off your profit.

The rest of the OTR truck driver deduction list

Ordinary and necessary business expenses, deductible in full in the year you pay them, provided they are genuinely for the business:

Truck depreciation
Fuel
DOT fees
Maintenance

That is what is specific to this trade. The larger deductions are the universal ones, see the full checklist.

What each deduction is worth to you

On $100,000 of profit with no state income tax, $1,000 deducted saves $305, 30.5%, because it comes off self-employment tax and income tax together:

Net profit	Saved per $1,000 deducted	Effective
$40,000	$231	23.1%
$100,000	$305	30.5%
$200,000	$297	29.7%

The last row is worth less than the one above it, and that is not a mistake: past the Social Security wage base the self-employment part of the saving drops from 15.3% to 2.9%, and the higher income-tax bracket does not quite make up the difference. A deduction is worth most in the middle.

Add a state income tax and every row rises. The 1099 calculator applies that layer.

Where this comes from

The rules on this page that are specific rather than general are cited below. Follow a link to read the provision itself rather than taking our word for it:

Meal expenses of individuals subject to DOT hours-of-service limits are 80% deductibleIRC 274(n)(3)
Employee drivers cannot deduct it: the bar on miscellaneous itemized deductions was made permanentIRC 67(g), as amended by P.L. 119-21 sec. 70110

What these words mean

Depreciation: Spreading the cost of something long-lasting, a vehicle, a camera, a tractor, across the years you use it, rather than deducting it all at once.
Per diem: A fixed daily amount you can deduct or be paid for time away from home, instead of adding up individual receipts.
Owner-operator: A truck driver who owns or leases their own truck and runs as their own business, rather than driving a company’s truck for wages. Owner-operators are self-employed; company drivers are employees, and the tax treatment is completely different.
Lease-purchase driver: A driver buying their truck through instalments paid to the carrier they haul for. Treated as self-employed for tax, like an owner-operator.

General information about how these deductions work, not tax advice. Whether a particular expense is deductible for you depends on facts this page does not have, check with a tax professional before claiming anything listed here.