Meal Allowance Germany 2026: €28, €14 and All Travel Expenses

Key points

• Germany 2026: €28 for each full day (24 hours away), €14 for arrival and departure days and for day trips of more than 8 hours (Section 9 (4a) EStG). No change has been passed for 2027.
• Provided meals: breakfast minus €5.60, lunch or dinner minus €11.20 each, always calculated from the full daily rate.
• Three-month rule: at the same outside location, the allowance applies only for the first three months.
• Abroad: separate rates per country and for some cities, for example €58 in Paris and €70 in Switzerland for a full day.
• Other travel costs: €0.30 per kilometre driven, hotel and incidentals at cost. The self-employed get no flat rate for accommodation.
• Claiming it: the self-employed as a business expense in the EÜR, GmbH directors tax-free through the GmbH, employees in Anlage N.

Meal allowance 2026: the domestic rates

On the arrival and departure day of a trip with an overnight stay you get €14 no matter how long you travel that day. On a day trip the hours count: more than 8 hours away from home and your regular workplace gives €14, anything less gives nothing. You never need food receipts, and an expensive restaurant bill does not raise the amount.

The rates have applied since 2020. The increase to €16 and €32 planned in the Growth Opportunities Act was dropped in 2024, and no change has been passed for 2027 (as of October 2026).

The allowance requires work away from your regular place: you work outside your home and your regular workplace, at a client, a trade fair or a site. The free per diem calculator works out your trip day by day, abroad too.

Reduction for provided meals

If a meal is provided to you on the trip, you reduce the daily allowance. Provided means your employer pays for it, or a third party does at the employer's request: the breakfast at a hotel your GmbH booked, or the lunch at a seminar your employer paid for. The reduction is always calculated from the full daily rate, on arrival and departure days too:

The allowance never drops below €0. For example, a full day with breakfast and dinner provided gives 28 − 5.60 − 11.20 = €11.20. A departure day with breakfast provided gives 14 − 5.60 = €8.40.

The self-employed who pay the hotel themselves calculate differently. The breakfast is then not provided but bought. The allowance stays in full, but the breakfast is not part of the accommodation cost. If the hotel does not show it separately, you subtract €5.60 per breakfast from the hotel bill. Claiming the full allowance and the hotel including breakfast overstates your costs by €5.60 per night.

The three-month rule

If you work at the same outside location for more than three months, the allowance stops from the fourth month. The clock only runs if you work there on at least three days a week. A break of at least four weeks, for holidays, illness or another project, restarts it. Travel and hotel costs stay deductible after three months.

Foreign rates 2026

For trips abroad, the rates from the BMF letter of 5 December 2025 apply. An extract:

The place you last reach before midnight local time counts. On a one-day trip abroad, the rate of the last place of work abroad applies. For a country missing from the table, the rate for Luxembourg applies (€63 and €42). Provided meals are reduced as in Germany, but by 20% and 40% of the foreign rate. Only an employer may use the BMF accommodation rates for a tax-free reimbursement; the self-employed deduct the real hotel bill.

All travel expenses 2026 at a glance

The meal allowance is one of four parts of business travel expenses. All four are fully deductible if the trip has a business purpose:

Business trip or commute? The €0.30 per kilometre applies to every kilometre of a business trip, there and back. The daily commute to your own place of business is not a trip: it falls under the commuter allowance, since 2026 a flat €0.38 from the first kilometre, for the one-way distance only. The distinction with examples is in commuter allowance for the self-employed.

Trip with holidays: if you add two private days to a trade fair, only the business days count. You split the travel cost by business and private days if the trip is not clearly mainly for business.

Meals with clients are not meal allowance but entertainment: 70% deductible and only with an entertainment receipt. More in entertainment expenses for the self-employed.

Example: one business trip, fully calculated

A self-employed consultant drives her own car from Monday 7 am to Wednesday 7 pm to a client in Hamburg, 280 km one way. She pays €238 for two hotel nights, breakfast included and not shown separately, and €24 for parking.

The allowance stays in full because she paid for breakfast herself. At a personal tax rate of 30%, the trip saves about €142 of income tax.

The same trip as a GmbH managing director: if the GmbH books and pays the hotel with breakfast, the breakfast is provided. The GmbH reimburses €56 − 2 × €5.60 = €44.80 for meals and €168 mileage tax-free (Section 3 No. 16 EStG). The GmbH pays hotel and parking directly as a business expense. This almost always beats claiming the costs yourself: the GmbH saves corporate and trade tax, and the director receives the money without wage tax. In Anlage N an expense only counts once all work expenses exceed the employee lump sum of €1,230.

Booking in SKR03 and SKR04

The self-employed usually pay for trips privately or by card; you book the receipt-free allowances against private contributions. A shareholder managing director is an employee for tax purposes, so the GmbH uses the employee accounts.

For every trip, record the date and times, the destination, the business purpose and, for car trips, the kilometres. Keep receipts for 8 years (Section 147 AO), the trip records as part of your books too.

Why clean travel expenses pay off

Travel is one of the biggest costs of small businesses. In our business expenses report on the spending of businesses from sole traders to UG and GmbH (July 2025 to June 2026), travel makes up about 12% of all expenses, the second biggest block after subcontractors at about 17%. About 4 in 10 businesses had at least one travel expense in twelve months. The data comes from digitally run businesses, and travel varies strongly with the season.

Download CSV

Money is lost most often because travel days are never booked: the allowance has no receipt, so no receipt reminds you of it.

Expert opinion

Record the allowance and don't overthink it: the rates are fixed, you just need to log your travel days properly.

How to do it with Norman

In Norman you book the meal allowance for free, without a receipt and with the official rates for 2025 and 2026:

1. Open Bookkeeping, choose Add transaction and then Create manually.
2. Choose Expense and the category Travel meal allowance.
3. Enter the Trip Dates and the Destination. Norman fills in the travel days and the full days and shows the deduction, for Germany and every country in the BMF table.
4. For the drive, choose the category Private car usage, type Business trip, and enter the distance driven. Photograph hotel and parking receipts in the app.
5. Norman books the allowances as a private contribution without VAT, and they land in their own line of your EÜR. The tax autopilot also suggests meal allowances for trips you have not recorded yet.

Bookkeeping is included in the free plan. Norman builds the EÜR from your bookings, and you file it straight from the app from Klein at €9 a month, paid yearly. For UG and GmbH, full double-entry bookkeeping is free as well; you book the reimbursement to the director on 4664 or 6664. If you are only employed, you claim the allowance in the income tax return for employees.

The starter book for your self-employment

Free e-book: registration, accounting, your first invoice, and taxes, plus a tax calendar, deductions cheat sheet, and invoice template.

Email *

Company website

I want to receive the starter book and agree that Norman may send me related emails with tips and product info. Details in the privacy policy. Unsubscribe anytime. *

Get the free book