The Second Odometer
You drove your truck to a job site last Monday. The IRS says that mile is worth 76 cents. You think that means you get 76 cents back.
Not quite.
Two Rates, One Year
The IRS bumped the business mileage rate on July 1. First half of 2026: 72.5 cents a mile. Second half: 76 cents. Gas jumped 34% between January and mid-July, so the IRS adjusted. They've done this only five times since 2000.
Your 2026 tax return needs two mileage numbers now. One for January through June. One for July through December. Two rates. One truck. Keep a clean log.
Quick note on who this covers. Congress locked the door permanently last year in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The W-2 employee mileage deduction has actually been gone since 2018 — OBBBA just made the suspension permanent. If you don't file a Schedule C, this whole system is nearly closed to you. Business owners and the self-employed, plus narrow exceptions for certain W-2 workers like reservists and performing artists.
That's the story every other outlet is running. It's not the interesting part.
What's Inside the 76 Cents
Crack that rate open.
Of the 76 cents the IRS "gives" you per business mile, 35 cents is depreciation. The IRS assigns that to your vehicle whether you asked for it or not. You don't see it. You don't feel it. But every business mile you claim shaves 35 cents off what the IRS thinks your truck is worth.
I mean, think of it as a second odometer. The one on your dash counts miles up. This one counts your truck's tax value down.
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The Basis Trap
Here's where the pipe leaks.
Every year you use the standard mileage rate, the IRS forces you to reduce your vehicle's "basis." Basis is what the IRS says you paid for the truck. It's the number that matters when you sell.
In 2026, the depreciation piece is 35 cents a mile. Drive 15,000 business miles, and the IRS knocks $5,250 off your truck's basis. That's one year. The rate was a bit lower in prior years, but the meter has been running since you started claiming. Four years of this eats $18,900 of basis.
On paper, your truck gets cheaper and cheaper. Not because the market says so. Because the IRS says so.
And the IRS collects on that number the day you sell.
The Honda CR-V Problem
Make it real.
You buy a $40,000 Honda CR-V on January 1, 2023. You use it for business. You drive 15,000 business miles a year. You claim the standard mileage rate every year through 2026. Good. Normal. What everyone does.
Four years of that depreciation piece drop your adjusted basis to $21,100.
Now you sell the truck in early 2027 for $24,000. You lost money on this thing, right? You paid $40,000. You got $24,000 back. That feels like a loss.
The IRS sees a $2,900 gain.
$24,000 minus $21,100. Gain. And under §1245, that gain is taxed as ordinary income. Not the lower capital gains rate. Your regular tax rate. The one that hurts.
Look. Nobody is lying to you. Here's what the notice says:
"For automobiles a taxpayer uses for business purposes, the portion of the business standard mileage rate treated as depreciation is 26 cents per mile for 2022, 28 cents per mile for 2023, 30 cents per mile for 2024, 33 cents per mile for 2025, and 35 cents per mile for 2026."
One line. Buried in Section 4 of Notice 2026-10. No bold. No warning. Just a number sitting next to other numbers. And that number has been quietly eating your truck's basis for years.
Sure.
The emergency order nobody's talking about
Last week, wholesale electricity prices in Northern Virginia spiked from $40 to over $2,000 per megawatt-hour.
In one afternoon.
The largest power grid in America - serving 67 million people - declared an emergency.
The government ordered power plants to ignore pollution limits and run at maximum.
Factories were told to shut down.
All because of a heat wave and too many data centers pulling power from a grid that can’t keep up.
Solar couldn’t help. It was evening. Wind was dead.
Three miles underground, the temperature hasn’t changed in 4.5 billion years.
It doesn’t care about the weather. It runs at midnight, in a heat wave, in a blizzard.
Always.
One company has spent sixty years building the only system that can tap it.
Google just locked in 15 years. Gates wrote the check.
August 18th, a federal auction could hand them the territory where their crew already broke every drilling record.
The grid is breaking. This company has the fix.
P.S. The government just declared a power emergency for the largest grid in America. The one energy source that could have prevented it?
The Frozen Rate
One more thing. Quick.
The charitable mileage rate is 14 cents. It has been 14 cents since 1998. Congress set it by statute. The IRS cannot touch it. Gas was about $1.06 a gallon when they locked it in. Gas is $4.11 now.
76 cents for business. 14 cents for charity. Same truck. Same gas. Congress just never got around to it.
Right.
The Real Split
So here's your truck in 2026. Two rates stapled to one calendar year. A 35-cent depreciation charge ticking inside every business mile. And a charitable rate frozen in 1998.
The real split isn't July 1. It's between what the mileage rate looks like and what it is. One odometer counts up. The other counts down.
The IRS reads the second one.
