Mileage glossary

Mileage glossary: tax, reimbursement, vehicle, policy, GPS, documents and regulatory bodies. 200 terms in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

Tax & Compliance

• Accountable plan — US IRS reimbursement structure that meets three tests to make the payment tax-free.
• Actual expense method — Alternative to the IRS standard rate: deduct real vehicle costs in proportion to business use.
• AEAT (Spanish Tax Agency) — Spain's national tax authority, responsible for income tax, VAT and corporate tax — and for setting the €0.26/km tax-free mileage cap.
• AMT (US) — US Alternative Minimum Tax: a parallel income tax that limits certain deductions for high earners.
• Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira (Portuguese Tax Authority) — Portugal's tax authority. Accepts up to €0.40/km tax-free for own-vehicle business mileage reimbursement.
• CLT employee (Brazil) — Brazilian formal employee registered under the Consolidação das Leis do Trabalho.
• CNPJ (Brazil) — Brazil's federal tax ID for legal entities (Cadastro Nacional da Pessoa Jurídica).
• CPF (Brazil) — Brazil's federal individual tax ID (Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas).
• FGTS (Brazil) — Brazilian severance fund where the employer deposits 8% of CLT salary monthly.
• FICA (US) — US Federal Insurance Contributions Act payroll taxes funding Social Security and Medicare.
• Form T2200 (Declaration of Conditions of Employment) — Canadian form signed by the employer that lets an employee deduct vehicle and other employment expenses on Form T777.
• Fringe Benefits Tax — Tax on non-cash employee benefits (Australia, New Zealand) including private use of a company car.
• GSA per diem rate — US General Services Administration per diem rates used by federal agencies and adopted as a safe harbor by private employers.
• GST — Goods and Services Tax used in Australia, Canada, India and elsewhere; the local name for VAT.
• HMRC AMAP rate — UK HMRC Approved Mileage Allowance Payment: 45p/mile up to 10,000 miles, 25p thereafter.
• INSS (Brazil) — Brazil's federal Social Security institute (Instituto Nacional do Seguro Social).
• IRPF deduction (Brazil) — Recognition of business expense as deductible on Brazil's personal income tax filing.
• IRPF tax-free per diem (Spain) — Spanish meal and lodging allowance exempt from IRPF, capped daily by the IRPF Regulation.
• IRS (Personal Income Tax — Portugal) — Portuguese personal income tax. Determines taxation of mileage reimbursement above the €0.40/km cap.
• IRS standard mileage rate — Per-mile rate published annually by the IRS for vehicle deduction in the US.
• ISR (Mexico) — Mexico's federal income tax on individuals and corporations.
• ISSQN (Brazil) — Brazilian municipal services tax (Imposto Sobre Serviços), 2%–5% depending on city.
• Itinerary slip (Portugal) — Portuguese document recording a business trip in a personal vehicle, required by the AT for tax-free reimbursement.
• IVA (Mexico) — Mexico's value-added consumption tax at the standard 16% rate.
• IVA (Spain) — Spain's value-added tax; standard 21% rate.
• LCT Article 106 (Argentina) — Argentine Labour Contract Law section that separates per diems from wages, conditional on per-trip documentation.
• Livro Caixa (Brazil) — Required bookkeeping ledger for self-employed professionals in Brazil to record deductible expense.
• MEI taxation (Brazil) — Simplified flat-tax regime for Microempreendedor Individual (sole proprietor) in Brazil.
• Mexican Business Activity regime — Mexican ISR regime for self-employed individuals who deduct actual expenses.
• Mileage Allowance Relief (MAR) — UK tax relief for employees whose employer reimburses below the AMAP rate, claimed via Self-Assessment or Form P87.
• Monotributo (Argentina) — Argentina's simplified tax regime for small taxpayers, bundling VAT, Income Tax and social contributions into a fixed monthly tier.
• NIF (Spain) — Spain's unified tax ID, equivalent to Mexico's RFC and Brazil's CPF.
• Non-accountable plan — Reimbursement or allowance that fails the accountable-plan tests and is taxed as wages.
• Per diem (taxation) — Daily allowance for meals and lodging on travel; tax-free up to the GSA/IRS limit with business purpose.
• RAT (Brazil) — Brazilian work-risk payroll contribution to INSS at 1%–3% based on industry risk.
• RESICO — Mexico's simplified-trust tax regime for individuals earning up to MXN 3.5 million per year.
• Revenu Québec — Quebec provincial tax authority operating in parallel to the federal CRA. Requires separate forms TP-64.3-V and TP-59-V for vehicle expenses.
• RFC (Mexico) — Mexico's federal tax ID for individuals and entities (Registro Federal de Contribuyentes).
• Royal Decree 462/2002 (Spain) — Spanish rule governing service-related indemnities for public-sector employees, including a €0.19/km mileage rate.
• SAT deduction (Mexico) — Recognition of vehicle expenses as deductible by Mexico's SAT tax authority.
• Schedule C (US) — Form 1040 attachment where US sole proprietors report deductible expense including vehicle.
• Tax deduction — Subtracting business expense from taxable income to lower tax owed.
• Tax-free reimbursement — Mileage payment that is not taxable when it follows accountable-plan rules.
• VAT — Value Added Tax, the consumption tax used in most countries (other than the US).
• Withholding tax — Tax deducted at source by the payer before paying the recipient.

Reimbursement & Payment

• Allowance — Recurring fixed payment covering an ongoing business expense such as personal-vehicle use.
• AMAP rate (Approved Mileage Allowance Payment) — HMRC-approved per-mile rate for tax-free reimbursement of business mileage in the UK: 45p / 25p for cars in 2026.
• Business mileage — Miles driven for a specific business purpose, the basis for tax-free reimbursement and deduction.
• Car allowance — A flat monthly payment covering an employee's use of a personal vehicle for business.
• Charitable mileage — Miles driven in service of a charity, deductible at US$0.14/mile under US tax law.
• Commute mileage — Regular home-to-work-and-back trips, usually NOT deductible or reimbursable.
• CRA reasonable per-kilometre allowance — The Canada Revenue Agency benchmark: 72¢ for the first 5,000 km of employment-related driving, 66¢ thereafter (2026); +4¢ in YT/NT/NU.
• Daily mileage limit — A mileage cap defined per working day rather than per trip or month.
• Expense advance — Travel money paid up front, with a duty to substantiate and return any excess.
• FAVR plan — US IRS-approved reimbursement model combining a region-calibrated fixed amount with a variable per-mile rate.
• Fixed and variable rate (FAVR) — Reimbursement model combining a fixed monthly payment with a variable per-km rate.
• Fringe benefit — Non-cash perk given to employees beyond salary, often taxable.
• Fuel card — Prepaid or corporate card dedicated to fuel purchases as an alternative to per-receipt reimbursement.
• Gross-up — Increasing a gross payment so that the net after tax matches the intended figure.
• Lump-sum reimbursement — One-time payment covering an entire trip's or period's estimated business expenses.
• Medical mileage — Miles driven for medical treatment, deductible at the IRS reduced rate.
• Mileage cap — Maximum reimbursable distance per trip, day, or month set by policy.
• Mileage rate — Monetary amount paid per unit of distance (km or mile) driven on a business trip.
• Mileage reimbursement — Employer payment refunding the cost of using a personal vehicle for work travel.
• Mileage stipend — A flat monthly payment sized to cover expected personal-vehicle use for a given role.
• Mobility allowance — Flexible monthly stipend the employee can spend on any transport mode — car, transit, bike.
• Moving mileage — Miles driven for a qualified move, deductible only for active-duty US military.
• Multi-stop trip — Trip with several business stops between starting point and final destination.
• One-way mileage — Distance from origin to destination with no return leg.
• Per diem — A daily flat amount paid to a traveling employee to cover meals, lodging, and incidentals.
• Per-kilometer rate — A mileage rate expressed in kilometers, used in metric-system countries.
• Per-trip rate — Reimbursement model paying a flat amount per trip rather than per km driven.
• Rate cap — Maximum per-km reimbursement rate the policy allows, often aligned with the IRS/HMRC/SAT benchmark.
• Recoupment — Returning the unsubstantiated portion of an advance to the employer within the reasonable period.
• Reimbursable mileage — Subset of business mileage actually payable under company policy.
• Reimbursement vs deduction — The difference between getting paid back by the company (reimbursement) and subtracting from tax (deduction).
• Round-trip mileage — Doubled distance accounting for the return drive to the starting point.

Vehicle & Fuel

• BEV — Battery Electric Vehicle: the precise technical name for a 100% electric car.
• BYOD vehicle — Bring Your Own Device applied to vehicles — employee uses theirs and gets reimbursed.
• Company car — Company-owned or leased vehicle assigned to a specific employee for business use.
• Dash cam — Windshield-mounted camera that records continuously; useful for accidents and trip audit.
• Electric vehicle (EV) — Battery-only vehicle without an internal-combustion engine.
• Fleet management — Set of processes and tools to manage commercial vehicles, drivers, and expense.
• Fleet vehicle — Vehicle registered to the company with corporate insurance and maintenance.
• Fuel economy — How far a vehicle travels per unit of fuel; expressed in km/L or MPG.
• Fuel surcharge — Temporary add-on to the per-km rate to offset a fuel-price spike.
• Hybrid vehicle — Vehicle with both internal-combustion and electric motors, typically 40%–60% more efficient than pure ICE.
• ICE vehicle — Internal-combustion-engine vehicle running on gasoline, diesel, or LPG.
• Kilometers per liter — Metric fuel-economy measure used in most countries.
• Leased vehicle — Vehicle held under an operating or financial lease as an alternative to purchase.
• Light-duty vehicle — Vehicle class with gross weight up to 3,500 kg: passenger cars, SUVs, light pickups.
• Motor pool — Shared corporate fleet that any employee can reserve.
• MPG — Miles per gallon: the US standard fuel economy measure.
• OBD-II — On-Board Diagnostics 2: standardized diagnostic port mandatory on every vehicle since 1996.
• Owned vehicle — Vehicle owned by the employee or the company, without a lease contract.
• Plug-in hybrid (PHEV) — Hybrid with a rechargeable battery enabling 30–80 km of pure-electric driving.
• Residual value — Estimated value of the vehicle at the end of its useful life or lease term.
• Telematics — Onboard system capturing vehicle data (speed, hard braking, RPM) via GPS and OBD-II.
• Vehicle classification — Regulatory vehicle categories by weight, use, and fuel type.
• Vehicle depreciation — Loss of vehicle value over time, a major component of total cost per km.

Corporate Policy

• Approval threshold — Amount below which manager approval suffices; above requires escalation.
• Approval workflow — Sequence of people and rules a receipt clears before payment.
• Audit trail — Body of evidence that lets an auditor reconstruct the history of an expense.
• Business purpose — Specific professional justification that supports an expense as deductible or reimbursable.
• Contemporaneous record — Log made at or near the time of the trip — considered more reliable than later reconstruction.
• Cost center — Internal accounting unit used to allocate expenses to a department, project, or activity.
• Duplicate detection — Algorithm flagging receipts with identical date, origin, destination, and distance.
• Exception handling — Process for approving out-of-policy expenses when justified.
• Expense approver — Person authorized by policy to approve a given expense category and amount.
• Expense category — Accounting classification of an expense by type (fuel, lodging, meals, mileage).
• Expense fraud — Knowingly submitting false, inflated, or duplicate receipts for improper payment.
• Expense policy — Internal document defining the limits, rates, and rules for reimbursing professional expenses.
• Finance approval — Approval layer after the manager, focused on tax and budget compliance.
• Manager approval — First approval layer in the workflow, done by the employee's direct supervisor.
• Mileage audit — Systematic review of receipts to verify compliance, integrity, and absence of fraud.
• Mileage policy — Internal document detailing rate, caps, documentation, and workflow for mileage reimbursement.
• Privacy and mileage logs — Applying data-protection laws to location data and to names of patients or clients in receipts.
• Project code — Unique identifier tying an expense to a specific client or internal project.
• Reasonable period — IRS-defined window for substantiating expenses and returning excess advances.
• Record retention — Minimum period receipts and supporting documents must be kept.
• Reimbursement cycle — How often pending receipts are batched for payment.
• Submission deadline — Last date the employee can submit period receipts before risking rejection.
• Substantiation — Producing the elements required to prove an expense: date, amount, purpose, place.
• T&E policy — Travel and Expense: unified policy covering travel, mileage, lodging, and meals.

Driver Roles

• 1099 contractor — US non-employee worker who receives Form 1099-NEC and files Schedule C.
• Brazilian autônomo — Brazilian self-employed professional working outside CLT, with or without MEI status.
• Cents-per-mile driver — US truck driver compensated per mile driven; the dominant pay model in road freight.
• Courier — Professional dedicated to urgent urban delivery of documents and small packages.
• Deadhead mileage — Kilometers driven on a business trip without a paying passenger or cargo.
• Delivery driver — Professional making local deliveries of food, packages, or goods.
• Field auditor — Professional traveling to audit a supplier, client, or company site in person.
• Field technician — Professional performing on-site technical service: install, maintenance, repair.
• Freelancer — Self-employed professional providing project-based services to multiple clients.
• Gig worker — Self-employed professional whose work is mediated by a digital platform without an employment relationship.
• Home care worker — Caregiver providing continuous personal care at the patient's home.
• Independent contractor — Generic term for a self-employed worker with no employment relationship.
• Mobile workforce — Set of employees whose work happens at multiple locations throughout the day.
• Outside sales — Sales motion based on in-person visits to clients in the field.
• Outside sales rep — Salesperson visiting clients in person, with no fixed shop or office post.
• Real estate agent — Professional showing properties to buyers and tenants.
• Rideshare driver — Self-employed driver providing rides through apps like Uber, Lyft, or Didi.
• Rideshare vehicle — Vehicle registered and outfitted to operate on a rideshare platform.
• Taxi driver — Licensed traditional taxi driver with regulated meter fare.
• Truck driver — Professional driver of cargo trucks for interstate or local road freight.
• Visiting nurse — Healthcare professional making in-home patient visits.
• W-2 employee — US formal employee with withholding on payroll; receives Form W-2 annually.

Distance & GPS

• Breadcrumb trail — Chronological GPS-point sequence reconstructing the exact path the vehicle drove.
• Distance calculation — Determining the kilometers between origin and destination for reimbursement.
• Geocoding — Converting a written address ("123 Main St") into coordinates (lat, lon).
• Geofence — Virtual perimeter defined by coordinates that triggers an event when a vehicle enters or exits.
• GPS app — Smartphone software that captures coordinates and route in real time for trip logging.
• GPS drift — GPS-fix wobble while the vehicle is stationary, accumulating ghost "distance".
• GPS tracking — Automatic real-time capture of routes using device GPS coordinates.
• Great-circle distance — Shortest distance between two points across the surface of a sphere.
• Haversine formula — Trigonometric equation computing the great-circle distance between two GPS points on Earth.
• Haversine vs routed distance — Difference between straight-line (Haversine) and real driven distance through streets.
• Hub-and-spoke model — Logistics pattern where deliveries converge at a distribution center before fanning out to destinations.
• Location accuracy — Margin of error of a GPS fix in meters, varies by device and conditions.
• Map matching — Algorithm aligning noisy GPS points to the nearest road on the map to reconstruct the route.
• Mileage calculator — Digital tool that returns distance and reimbursement amount from origin, destination, and rate.
• Odometer reading — Recording start and end odometer values to compute trip distance.
• Odometer vs GPS — Comparing distance measured by the vehicle's odometer with the smartphone's GPS.
• Point-to-point — Direct distance calculation between exactly one origin and one destination.
• Reverse geocoding — Converting (lat, lon) coordinates into an approximate written address.
• Route optimization — Choosing the most efficient path by distance or time across multiple stops.
• Routing API — External service (Google Maps, Mapbox, OSRM) that computes real driving distance and time.
• Term of the Day — Highlighted glossary term that rotates every 24 hours across all categories.
• Time stamp — Automatic recording of exact date and time at each route point.
• Trip detection — Feature that identifies trip start and end via acceleration and speed, with no manual button.
• Waypoint — Intermediate stop coordinate on a multi-stop route between origin and final destination.

Documents & Forms

• Audit report — Final document consolidating findings and conclusions of an expense audit.
• CFDI (Mexico) — Comprobante Fiscal Digital por Internet, Mexico's official electronic invoice.
• CFDI complementario (Mexico) — Mexico's digital tax invoice used to back expenses such as fuel and maintenance.
• CSV export — Producing a comma-separated values file to integrate with downstream systems.
• Digital signature — Cryptographic mechanism authenticating the issuer and integrity of an electronic document.
• Driver's license — Official document authorizing operation of a motor vehicle.
• Expense app — Mobile app to capture, classify, and submit business expenses.
• Expense receipt — Document evidencing the occurrence and amount of a business expense.
• Expense report — Document consolidating business expenses over a period for reimbursement or bookkeeping.
• Form 1040 — US annual individual income tax return.
• Form 1099 — US family of statements for payments to non-employees; 1099-NEC for services.
• Form 2106 (US) — US form for employee business expense deduction — restricted use after TCJA.
• Form W-2 — US annual wage statement from employer showing pay and withholding.
• Fuel receipt — Pump cash receipt or fuel invoice used for the actual-expense method or CFDI substantiation.
• Insurance policy — Contract covering vehicle damage and third-party liability in accidents.
• Integrity hash — Cryptographic fingerprint of the receipt proving no tampering occurred.
• Mexican Annual Return — Mexican individual annual income tax return, equivalent to US Form 1040.
• Mexican travel voucher — Bundle of documents supporting Mexican business-travel deductions at SAT.
• Mileage log — Periodic record of every business trip; the basis for the receipt and tax audit.
• Mileage receipt — Standardized document evidencing a business trip for reimbursement or deduction.
• Mileage statement — Periodic (typically monthly) report totaling mileage by employee, project, or cost center.
• NF-e (Brazil) — Brazil's electronic tax invoice, equivalent to Mexico's CFDI.
• PDF receipt — Universal digital format for mileage receipt delivery, with hash and metadata.
• Route sheet — Plan of the expected stop sequence for a day's field work.
• Schedule SE — Form 1040 attachment that computes self-employment Social Security and Medicare tax.
• Time sheet — Daily record of hours worked, often paired with the mileage log.
• Vehicle registration — Document evidencing vehicle registration, ownership, and tax compliance.

Regulatory Bodies

• AFIP — Argentina's Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos tax authority.
• ATO — Australian Taxation Office: federal tax authority.
• DIAN — Colombia's Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales tax and customs authority.
• GSA — US General Services Administration responsible for federal logistics and procurement.
• HMRC — UK's His Majesty's Revenue and Customs tax authority.
• IMSS (Mexico) — Mexican Social Security Institute, equivalent to Brazil's INSS.
• INFONAVIT (Mexico) — Mexican workers' housing-fund institute, equivalent to Brazil's FGTS.
• IRS — US federal Internal Revenue Service responsible for tax collection and enforcement.
• OECD guidance — OECD organization's guidelines on international taxation, widely adopted by national tax authorities.
• OECD model treaty — OECD model tax convention used to prevent double taxation between countries.
• OSHA — US Occupational Safety and Health Administration overseeing workplace safety.
• Receita Federal — Brazil's federal tax administration, equivalent to the IRS and SAT.
• SAT (Mexico) — Mexico's Servicio de Administración Tributaria, equivalent to the IRS.
• Spanish Hacienda — Spain's Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria (AEAT) tax authority.
• US DOT — US Department of Transportation regulating road, aviation, and rail transport.
• US Treasury Department — US cabinet department overseeing the IRS and issuing Treasury Regulations.