Self-employed, always drives from home to clients and back, no other business location. However, there is no home office because there is no space allocated to exclusive business use. It's a side-gig, bringing in less than $1K/year, less during covid, but the travel expenses are typically between 5% and 20% of revenue.

In some cases, the timing and distance is enough to justify a stay overnight, usually with friends, so those can be justified as traveling away from the tax home. It's the closer clients, the ones where the vehicle expense is just 5% of revenue, that are the issue.

The amounts are small enough that forgoing the vehicle deduction isn't a big deal, especially since it's not the primary source of income, so we wouldn't sweat "not deductible" as an answer. I just want current expert opinion on what's right (i.e., CPA or EA answers preferred).