German Travel Expenses & Per Diems 2026: EUR 28, the Three-Month Rule and the Meal Deduction

If you travel for work in Germany, you probably leave money on the table every year – simply because the travel-expense report looks complicated. Yet behind per diems, mileage and lodging there are only a handful of fixed rules. This article explains plainly what employees and the self-employed can claim in 2026: the domestic per diems of EUR 28 and EUR 14, the three-month rule, the deduction for provided meals and the often-missed difference between a business trip and the commuter allowance.

Why the travel-expense report is worth it

Every business trip – the visit to a client, training in another city, an assignment on a distant site – creates costs you can claim against tax. As an employee, either your employer reimburses these costs tax-free, or you deduct them in your tax return as work-related expenses (Werbungskosten). As a self-employed person, you subtract them from your profit as business expenses (Betriebsausgaben). In both cases the totals quickly reach three figures a year.

German travel-expense law has four big building blocks: travel costs, meal allowances (Verpflegungsmehraufwand), lodging costs and incidental costs such as parking or tolls. The rules sit in the Income Tax Act and are specified each year by the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF). For 2026 the domestic rates are unchanged; abroad, the BMF re-rated roughly 40 countries. We go through the blocks one by one.

First place of work or off-site work: the key distinction

Before you claim any allowance, one question decides everything: do you have a first place of work (erste Tätigkeitsstätte), and are you currently there or elsewhere? The first place of work is where you are permanently assigned – usually your employer's office. For the trip there, you get no meal allowance and no full mileage, only the flat commuter allowance.

Per diems, mileage for the round trip and lodging costs exist only during off-site work (Auswärtstätigkeit), that is, when you work away from both your home and your first place of work. Anyone without a first place of work – a field-service rep, say – is essentially always working off-site. This distinction is the single most important one in the whole system, because it governs every amount that follows.

Domestic per diems 2026: EUR 28 and EUR 14

Meals are not reimbursed against receipts but through fixed per diems – whether you buy a coffee at the station or a full menu at a restaurant. For domestic trips, two rates apply in 2026, unchanged: EUR 28 per calendar day for an absence of at least 24 hours and EUR 14 for an absence of more than 8 hours. These amounts have applied since 2021 and were not raised for 2026.

On a multi-day trip with an overnight stay, you also get the EUR 14 for the arrival and departure day, with no check of the number of hours. A typical example: you travel out on Monday afternoon, work all day Tuesday and return Wednesday morning. That gives EUR 14 (Monday) plus EUR 28 (Tuesday) plus EUR 14 (Wednesday), so EUR 56 in per diems. A one-day trip without an overnight stay needs more than 8 hours of absence for the EUR 14; below that, you get nothing.

If the employer reimburses more than these per diems, the excess is taxable and subject to social contributions. However, the employer may tax up to twice the per diem at a flat 25 percent. Important for employees: if the employer pays nothing, you can claim the per diems yourself as work-related expenses in your tax return.

The three-month rule at the same site

The meal allowance is capped in time. If you work long-term at the same off-site location, you may claim the per diems only for the first three months. The lawmaker assumes that after that period you have adjusted to the local food situation – there is no longer any extra cost compared with everyday life.

The limit applies per location and is tied to continuous work on at least three days a week. If you visit the same place only once or twice a week, the three-month clock never even starts – the per diem stays available indefinitely. The second way out is interruption: if work at that location is interrupted for at least four weeks – for any reason, including holiday or illness – the three-month period starts again from scratch.

Deduction for provided meals: 20 and 40 percent

If a meal is provided during the trip – breakfast in the hotel rate, lunch at the client, dinner at the training – your per diem is reduced. The logic is simple: a paid meal creates no extra cost for you. The reduction is always calculated from the full daily rate of EUR 28, regardless of whether you are entitled to EUR 28 or only EUR 14 that day.

The rates: 20 percent for breakfast, which is EUR 5.60, and 40 percent each for lunch and dinner, so EUR 11.20 apiece. An example: on a full travel day with a EUR 28 entitlement, the hotel provides breakfast and the client provides lunch. The reduction is EUR 5.60 plus EUR 11.20, leaving EUR 11.20. If all three meals are provided, the reductions add up to EUR 28 – the per diem drops to zero, but it can never go negative.

It gets tricky on arrival and departure days with only a EUR 14 entitlement: the reduction stays at EUR 5.60 or EUR 11.20. A provided dinner on the arrival day therefore cuts the EUR 14 by EUR 11.20, leaving EUR 2.80. Check the hotel bill closely – a breakfast included flat in the room rate counts as a provided meal, even if you never eat it.

Travel costs: EUR 0.30/km – and the difference from the commuter allowance

If you use your private car for the business trip, you can either prove the actual cost per kilometer or claim the flat mileage rate of EUR 0.30 per kilometer driven. For a motorcycle or moped it is EUR 0.20. These rates are unchanged in 2026. The key point: on off-site work, both the outbound and return trip count, so every kilometer actually driven.

This is exactly where the most common mix-up happens. The commuter allowance (Entfernungspauschale) for the trip to your first place of work is something entirely different: it applies only to the one-way distance and, since 1 January 2026, is a uniform EUR 0.38 from the first kilometer – the earlier tiered model with EUR 0.30 up to 20 kilometers has been dropped. A business trip, by contrast, stays at EUR 0.30, but for both directions.

A worked example: 50 kilometers to the client and back is 100 kilometers driven times EUR 0.30, so EUR 30 in travel costs. Were it 50 kilometers to the first place of work, you would get only the one-way distance times EUR 0.38, so EUR 19. Confusing a business trip with the commute quickly costs you money either way.

Lodging: flat rate or actual cost

For overnight stays an important split applies. The employer may reimburse you a flat lodging allowance of EUR 20 per night in Germany tax-free without a receipt. If instead you claim the cost yourself in your tax return – or you are self-employed – only the actual, documented lodging cost counts. The EUR 20 flat rate is therefore purely an employer tool.

One detail on the hotel bill: if breakfast is not shown separately but included in the total price, the tax office reduces the deductible lodging cost by a flat 20 percent of the full meal rate, that is by EUR 5.60. So have breakfast itemized separately where possible. Foreign overnight stays have country-specific lodging flat rates from the BMF table, but for the expense deduction there, too, only the actual cost counts.

Trips abroad: the BMF country table 2026

For trips abroad, EUR 28 and EUR 14 do not apply; instead there are country-specific flat rates that the Federal Ministry of Finance sets each year. The current notice is dated 5 December 2025 and applies from 1 January 2026; it re-rated around 40 countries. For each country the table gives a full daily rate and a reduced rate for arrival/departure days and days with more than 8 hours of absence.

The logic mirrors the domestic one: the full foreign daily rate corresponds to the EUR 28 tier, the reduced rate (usually 80 percent of it) to the EUR 14 tier. The meal deduction also works the same way in percentages – 20 percent for breakfast, 40 percent each for lunch and dinner – just applied to the relevant full country rate. What matters is the place you last reach before midnight local time. The full table is on the BMF website; it is far too long to reprint here.

Self-employed: travel costs as a business expense

For the self-employed and freelancers the same per diems apply, only they land not in work-related expenses but reduce profit directly as business expenses. The meal allowance of EUR 28 and EUR 14, the three-month rule and the EUR 0.30 mileage rate apply one to one. There is one difference for lodging: the EUR 20 flat rate is not available to you; you claim only the actual, documented hotel cost.

Watch the VAT: meal and lodging invoices contain input tax that you, as a VAT-registered business, can reclaim – but only from the actual receipt, not from the meal per diem. There is no input-tax deduction from the flat EUR 28 meal allowance. In your bookkeeping, therefore, cleanly separate documented costs (with input tax) from flat rates (without).

Receipts and the expense report: what you must collect

You do not need to prove the meal per diem – it is a fixed amount. Everything else you do: travel costs via the kilometers driven or tickets, overnight stays via the hotel bill, incidentals such as parking, tolls or public transit via receipts. For each trip, record the date, destination, purpose, departure and arrival time and any provided meals in a simple expense form.

The times matter more than many think: whether a day trip runs over or under 8 hours decides between EUR 14 and nothing. So note departure from home and return to the minute. Keep receipts at least until the tax assessment becomes final. If you travel often, a small table or app in which every trip is logged straight away works best – it saves hours at year-end.

How tools on CalcSI help

In the end the expense report is a lot of arithmetic, and a few tools take the busywork off your hands. With the Date Difference Calculator you count the days of a multi-day trip exactly and check whether the three-month rule at the same site is already running or restarts after a four-week break. The Percentage Calculator is ideal for the meal deduction – 20 percent for breakfast, 40 percent each for lunch and dinner – and for the 80-percent reduction of foreign rates. With the Real Hourly Wage Calculator you see what a long business trip actually earns per hour after travel time and costs. And for the self-employed, the VAT Calculator cleanly separates the net amount from the deductible input tax on hotel and incidental receipts.