Standard Meal Allowance: Business Travel and Vehicle Expenses (2025 IRS Guide)
This guide covers “Standard Meal Allowance” within business travel and vehicle expenses. The following material presents the IRS treatment of this topic, including the qualifications, exceptions, and examples in the source section. Read the rules alongside the facts of your own situation before deciding what to report, deduct, or document.
Adapted from Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses, published by the Internal Revenue Service. This guide retains the source edition’s years, amounts, deadlines, and examples. It is guidance for that edition, not a statement that the same figures apply to every tax year.
Context for these rules
You can deduct a portion of the cost of meals if it is necessary for you to stop for substantial sleep or rest to properly perform your duties while traveling away from home on business. Meal and entertainment expenses are discussed in chapter 2.
Standard Meal Allowance
Generally, you can use the “standard meal allowance” method as an alternative to the actual cost method. It allows you to use a set amount for your daily meals and incidental expenses (M&IE), instead of keeping records of your actual costs. The set amount varies depending on where and when you travel. In this publication, “standard meal allowance” refers to the federal rate for M&IE, discussed later under Amount of standard meal allowance. If you use the standard meal allowance, you must still keep records to prove the time, place, and business purpose of your travel. See the recordkeeping rules for travel in chapter 5.
Incidental expenses.
The term “incidental expenses” means fees and tips given to porters, baggage carriers, hotel staff, and staff on ships.
Incidental expenses don’t include expenses for laundry, cleaning and pressing of clothing, lodging taxes, costs of telegrams or telephone calls, transportation between places of lodging or business and places where meals are taken, or the mailing cost of filing travel vouchers and paying employer-sponsored charge card billings.
Incidental-expenses-only method.
You can use an optional method (instead of actual cost) for deducting incidental expenses only. The amount of the deduction is $5 a day. You can use this method only if you didn’t pay or incur any meal expenses. You can’t use this method on any day that you use the standard meal allowance. This method is subject to the proration rules for partial days. See Travel for days you depart and return, later in this chapter.
Note:
The incidental-expenses-only method isn’t subject to the 50% limit discussed below.
Caution:
Federal employees should refer to the Federal Travel Regulations (FTR) at eCFR.gov for changes affecting claims for reimbursement.
50% limit may apply.
If you use the standard meal allowance method for non-entertainment-related meal expenses and you aren’t reimbursed or you are reimbursed under a nonaccountable plan, you can generally deduct only 50% of the standard meal allowance. If you are reimbursed under an accountable plan and you are deducting amounts that are more than your reimbursements, you can deduct only 50% of the excess amount. The 50% limit is discussed in more detail in chapter 2, and accountable and nonaccountable plans are discussed in chapter 6.
Caution:
There is no optional standard lodging amount similar to the standard meal allowance. Your allowable lodging expense deduction is your actual cost.
Who can use the standard meal allowance.
You can use the standard meal allowance whether you are an employee or self-employed, and whether or not you are reimbursed for your traveling expenses.
Use of the standard meal allowance for other travel.
You can use the standard meal allowance to figure your meal expenses when you travel in connection with investment and other income-producing property. You can also use it to figure your meal expenses when you travel for qualifying educational purposes.
Amount of standard meal allowance.
The standard meal allowance is the federal M&IE rate.
Most major cities and many other localities in the United States are designated as high-cost areas, qualifying for higher standard meal allowances.
You can find this information (organized by state) at GSA.gov/travel/plan-book/per-diem-rates. Enter a ZIP code or select a city and state for the per diem rates for the current fiscal year. Per diem rates for prior fiscal years are available by using the drop-down menu.
If you travel to more than one location in one day, use the rate in effect for the area where you stop for sleep or rest. If you work in the transportation industry, however, see Special rate for transportation workers, later.
Federal government’s fiscal year.
Per diem rates are listed by the federal government’s fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30. You can choose to use the rates from the 2024 fiscal year per diem tables or the rates from the 2025 fiscal year tables, but you must consistently use the same tables for all travel you are reporting on your income tax return for the year. See Transition Rules, later.
Standard meal allowance for areas outside the continental United States.
The standard meal allowance rates above don’t apply to travel in Alaska, Hawaii, or any other location outside the continental United States. The Department of Defense establishes per diem rates for Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Midway, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Wake Island, and other non-foreign areas outside the continental United States. The Department of State establishes per diem rates for all other foreign areas.
You can access per diem rates for non-foreign areas outside the continental United States at Travel.dod.mil/Travel-Transportation-Rates/Per-Diem/Per-Diem-Rate-Lookup/. You can access all other foreign per diem rates at aoprals.state.gov/web920/per_diem.asp.
Special rate for transportation workers.
You can use a special standard meal allowance if you work in the transportation industry. You are in the transportation industry if your work:
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Directly involves moving people or goods by airplane, barge, bus, ship, train, or truck; and
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Regularly requires you to travel away from home and, during any single trip, usually involves travel to areas eligible for different standard meal allowance rates.
Using the special rate for transportation workers eliminates the need for you to determine the standard meal allowance for every area where you stop for sleep or rest. If you choose to use the special rate for any trip, you must use the special rate (and not use the regular standard meal allowance rates) for all trips you take that year.
Travel for days you depart and return.
For both the day you depart for and the day you return from a business trip, you must prorate the standard meal allowance (figure a reduced amount for each day). You can do so by one of two methods.
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Method 1: You can claim 3/4 of the standard meal allowance.
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Method 2: You can prorate using any method that you consistently apply and that is in accordance with reasonable business practice.
Example.
You are employed in New Orleans as a convention planner. In March, your employer sent you on a 3-day trip to Washington, DC, to attend a planning seminar. You left your home in New Orleans at 10 a.m. on Wednesday and arrived in Washington, DC, at 5:30 p.m. After spending 2 nights there, you flew back to New Orleans on Friday and arrived back home at 8 p.m. Your employer gave you a flat amount to cover your expenses and included it with your wages.
Under Method 1, you can claim 2½ days of the standard meal allowance for Washington, DC: 3/4 of the daily rate for Wednesday and Friday (the days you departed and returned), and the full daily rate for Thursday.
Under Method 2, you could also use any method that you apply consistently and that is in accordance with reasonable business practice. For example, you could claim 3 days of the standard meal allowance even though a federal employee would have to use Method 1 and be limited to only 2½ days.
Using the guidance
Keep the documents that establish the dates, amounts, and circumstances described above. References to other chapters, forms, worksheets, or earlier and later sections refer to the linked IRS publication. Check the full publication and its updates before relying on a rule for a different tax year or a situation not addressed here.
Sources and further reading
- Publication 463 (2025), Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses: Travel — What Travel Expenses Are Deductible? — Meals — Standard Meal Allowance — Internal Revenue Service; 2025 edition.
The cited U.S. government text is in the public domain. Source accessed October 28, 2026. Fynoptic has organized this material for educational use and is independent of, and not endorsed by, the IRS.