What is the standard meal allowance for business travel?

Two ways to figure travel meals

When you travel away from home on business and need to stop for substantial sleep or rest, Publication 463 (2025) lets you figure your meal expenses by actual cost or by the standard meal allowance. Actual cost needs records of what you spent. The standard meal allowance is a set daily amount for meals and incidental expenses, so you skip the meal receipts, though you still keep records proving the time, place and business purpose of the travel. Either way the general rule is that you can deduct only 50% of unreimbursed meal costs. Lodging has no standard amount: your lodging deduction is your actual cost.

Where the rate comes from

The standard meal allowance is the federal M&IE rate. It is set by area, and most major cities and many other localities are designated high-cost areas with higher rates. You look it up by ZIP code or city and state in the GSA per diem tables on GSA.gov. If you travel to more than one place in a day, use the rate where you stop for sleep or rest. Rates follow the federal fiscal year (October 1 to September 30), and the publication lets you use either the 2024 or the 2025 fiscal-year tables for 2025 travel, as long as you use the same tables for all travel on your return. For 2025 it states that the rate for most small localities is $68 per day, and that rates for Alaska, Hawaii and other non-continental places come from the Defense Department, with foreign rates set by the State Department.

Departure and return days

The allowance is for a full 24-hour day, so you prorate it on the day you leave and the day you return. Method 1 is to claim 3/4 of the allowance for each of those days. Method 2 is to prorate with any method you apply consistently and that is in accordance with reasonable business practice. The publication’s example is a three-day trip from New Orleans to Washington, DC, leaving Wednesday at 10 a.m. and returning Friday at 8 p.m.: under Method 1 you claim 2½ days of allowance, 3/4 for Wednesday, the full rate for Thursday and 3/4 for Friday. Under Method 2 an employee might reasonably claim 3 days. Our per diem calculator handles the trip-date counting; the calculator above adds the 50% step.

The incidental-expenses-only option

If you paid or incurred no meal expenses, you can instead deduct incidental expenses only, at $5 a day. Incidental expenses mean fees and tips given to porters, baggage carriers, hotel staff and staff on ships. They do not include laundry, cleaning and pressing, lodging taxes, telephone or telegram costs, transportation between lodging or business and places where meals are taken, or the mailing cost of filing travel vouchers. The $5 method is not subject to the 50% limit, cannot be used on a day you use the standard meal allowance, and is also prorated on partial days.

Transportation workers

If your work directly involves moving people or goods by airplane, barge, bus, ship, train or truck, and regularly requires travel away from home to areas with different rates, you may use a special rate: $80 per day, or $86 for travel outside the continental United States, in 2025. If you choose it for any trip you must use it for all trips that year. Separately, meals during Department of Transportation hours-of-service periods are 80% deductible instead of 50% (see the business meals page).

How employers use the same number

An employer paying a per diem can use the regular federal rate, the standard meal allowance or the high-low rate to stay within the federal rate. Under the high-low method for January through September 2025 the per diem was $319 (including $86 for M&IE) in certain high-cost areas and $225 (including $74 for M&IE) elsewhere, and the publication says those amounts remained the same from October 1, 2025. For the accountable plan rules around these amounts, see accountable plan reimbursements.

Worked example

Take an M&IE rate of $68 and a trip with one full day and two travel days. Days of allowance: 1 + 0.75 + 0.75 = 2.5. Allowance before the limit: 2.5 times $68 = $170. At 50%, the deductible amount is $85. For an interstate trucker at the 2025 transportation rate of $80 and an 80% limit over the same days, the figure is 2.5 times $80 = $200, then 80% = $160. The $68 and the trip are our illustration; look up the rate for your own destination. For the meal rules in general, see are business meals deductible at 50 percent.

Sources

• IRS Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses (2025): Chapter 1, Meals; Standard Meal Allowance (Incidental expenses, Incidental-expenses-only method, Amount of standard meal allowance, Special rate for transportation workers, Travel for days you depart and return); chapter 6, The standard meal allowance; High-low rate; Regular federal per diem rate method. Read November 2, 2026.

Edition read: Publication 463 (2025), for use in preparing 2025 returns. Rates and dollar limits on this page are the 2025 figures printed in that edition; check the current publication, form instructions and GSA.gov per diem tables for your tax year. This page summarizes the publication and does not replace it.