Home care pay

Caregiver Travel Time and Mileage Pay

Which travel between clients is paid work time, how it affects overtime and minimum wage, and how to handle mileage.

General information, not legal or tax advice. Checked October 2026. Sources are listed at the end.

Travel is the hidden cost in home care payroll. A caregiver with four short visits can spend an hour or more driving between them, and that time is paid, counts toward overtime, and often never shows up in your scheduling or EVV system. Mileage is a separate question with its own minimum wage trap.

What travel time is paid

Travel	Paid work time?
Home to the first client	Generally no: it's a normal commute
Client to client during the workday	Yes, under 29 CFR 785.38
Office to a client, after reporting to the office	Yes: the workday started at the office
Short gap between visits	Usually yes, if it's too short to use for personal purposes
Long break, fully relieved of duty	Generally no, if the caregiver knows when to be back and can use the time freely
Last client to home	Generally no

Paid travel counts toward the 40-hour week for overtime. It also counts for Arizona paid sick time, which accrues on all hours worked.

Example: one caregiver's day

Three visits in the East Valley

An East Valley caregiver drives from home to a client in Mesa (25 minutes), works a 3-hour visit, drives 20 minutes to a client in Gilbert for 2 hours, waits 15 minutes, then drives 25 minutes to a client in Chandler for 3 hours before heading home. Paid time is 8 hours of visits plus 20 + 15 + 25 = 60 minutes of travel and waiting, or 9 hours. The 25-minute drive from home and the drive home at the end aren't paid. Five days like this is 45 hours, so 5 hours of overtime, even though every visit was scheduled for 8 hours a day.

Why EVV doesn't solve it

AHCCCS requires electronic visit verification for Medicaid-funded in-home services. EVV records the service, the member, the caregiver, the location, and when each visit started and ended, which makes it a good source for visit hours. But travel between visits happens outside EVV, so if payroll pays only EVV hours, it underpays every caregiver who drives between clients. Common fixes:

Calculate paid travel from the gap between one visit's end and the next visit's start, with a cap for unusually long gaps
Pay a set travel time per route, checked periodically against mapped drive times
Have caregivers clock travel separately in your timekeeping app

Whichever you choose, write it down and apply it the same way for every caregiver.

Travel time and the minimum wage

If you pay a per-visit rate, the week's pay still has to average at least the minimum wage across all hours worked, including travel and short gaps. That's $15.15 an hour in most of Arizona in 2026, $15.45 for covered work inside Tucson, and $18.35 inside Flagstaff. Caregivers who visit clients inside those cities can be covered by the higher rate for that work.

Mileage reimbursement

Mileage is not wages. No federal law sets a required reimbursement rate, but under the minimum wage rules in 29 CFR 531.35, wages have to be paid "free and clear." If a caregiver's vehicle costs for driving between your clients push their effective pay below the minimum wage for the week, you owe the difference.

The IRS standard rate for business miles is 72.5 cents a mile for 2026. Reimbursing at that rate is the common way to avoid a minimum wage problem.
Accountable plan: when caregivers document business miles and you reimburse at or below the IRS rate, the reimbursement isn't taxable wages.
Regular rate: genuine expense reimbursement stays out of the regular rate, so it doesn't raise overtime. A flat "car allowance" unrelated to actual miles can be treated as wages.
Which miles: reimburse client-to-client miles. Commuting miles from home to the first client generally aren't business miles.

Questions to ask a payroll provider

How do travel time and mileage get into payroll from our scheduling or EVV system?
Can travel be paid at a different rate from visit time, with overtime on the weighted average?
Can mileage be reimbursed through payroll as a non-taxable item?
How are Tucson and Flagstaff minimum wages applied when caregivers work in those cities?

More on running an agency's payroll: caregiver payroll services.

Free PDF

Free download: the Healthcare Payroll Toolkit

Payroll checklist: setup, new hires, every payroll, year-end
Biweekly payroll calendar with filing dates
Shift pay and overtime worksheet, with the 8-and-80 option

Travel time and mileage questions

Do home care agencies have to pay for travel between clients?

Yes. Travel from one client to the next during the workday is work time. It has to be paid and counts toward overtime. A normal commute from home to the first client, and from the last client home, generally isn't work time.

Are short gaps between visits paid?

Usually. If a gap is too short for the caregiver to use effectively for their own purposes, it's paid. A longer break where the caregiver is completely relieved of duty and knows when to be back generally isn't.

Do I have to reimburse caregivers for mileage?

No federal law sets a required mileage rate, but caregivers' vehicle costs for your benefit can't push their pay below minimum wage for the week. Reimbursing at the IRS standard rate, 72.5 cents a mile for 2026, is the common way to stay clear of that problem.

Is mileage reimbursement taxable?

Not when it's paid under an accountable plan: the caregiver documents the business miles and you reimburse at or below the IRS standard rate. Mileage reimbursement also stays out of the regular rate for overtime.

Does EVV capture travel time?

Not usually. EVV records when each visit starts and ends at the client's location. Travel between visits happens outside those records, so payroll needs a way to capture it.

Pay caregivers right, every route

A payroll provider or PEO can bring visit hours, travel time, and mileage into one payroll. Free quote, no obligation. Use the quote form

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