Hello everyone,
I noticed the standard traveling fee for California is .70 cents per mile. I am a new Mobile Notary. the question I have is who pays for the mileage? Do we collect it from the signers or is it part of the fee we will be receiving from the Lender?
Please advise,
Stacy
To clarify - this $.70/mile is the IRS mileage rate for 2025 - that’s the amount you are allowed to deduct on your 2025 tax return when you file next year (which, while I’m on it, make sure you have obtained an EIN from irs.gov - NEVER give your social security number to anyone).
What you charge for mileage is entirely up to you provided (for GNW ) that your signer agrees to it. When it comes to loan signings, you may find it easier to establish a fee you feel comfortable with and include it in your base fee - for example, my fee includes $35 for loan signings within my county, $50 outside my county .
All that said, the fees are paid to you by the hiring party - either title or signing service. Rarely will you be contracted directly by a lender.
Hope this helps and good luck to you.
For the usual real estate signings where you are being hired by a signing company or a title company, you negotiate a total price that includes travel, notarizations, dropping of the finished package at FedEx or UPS, maybe scanbacks, etc. You should make sure the total price adequately pays you not only for the cost of operating your vehicle, but the time you spend driving.
The 70 ¢ per mile is the IRS allowance for how much it costs to operate your vehicle, including gas, oil, insurance, depreciation, etc. Most states that have income tax adopt the same amount. You can deduct it as a business expense if you have a log that properly documents your travel.
But for mobile notaries, driving is, or should be, a profit-making activity, just like taxi drivers and uber drivers. One way or another, you should set your fee so you are making $30 per hour or more as you drive, after you deduct the 70 ¢ per mile expense of owning and operating your car.
When I used to work for a big company, sometimes I would take a trip during the day to test some electronics, or go to a meeting. The company gave me tax-free reimbursement at the then-current IRS rate. As I was driving, I also was drawing my salary. So I was making more than the IRS rate. The same idea applies to notaries, charge your expense plus a profit for driving.
Some states have laws that say their notaries can only charge the IRS rate, or sometimes even less. The people of those states don’t deserve notarial service because they elected idiots to the legislature.
YOU pay all your expenses. Be sure you include them + PROFIT (what’s your TIME worth to you) in the fee you quote. Know that you won’t know how many notarizations are needed (you’ll learn) nor is that a ‘line item’ in the fee you quote. It’s m/l included in what your TIME/profit is worth to YOU when quoting a fee. As it appears you haven’t even begun to ‘do the math’ and figure your costs of driving, gas, printing, paper, toner, etc–you aren’t ready yet. Use the ‘search’ feature as there are a multitude of posts on calculating YOUR fees. Everybody’s situation is unique. You have to figure out what yours is.
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