Per diem rates 2026
This is education, not tax advice. I'm not a CPA or EA. State taxes are not covered.
One transportation day, read end to end: the federal per diem rate that covers it, the percentage of it the form lets a transportation worker deduct, and the record that has to exist underneath both. The rates on this page are final — they are set by IRS notice, not by a form still in draft. The rules text is read in Publication 463's 2025 edition, the latest posted, and is labeled as that edition wherever it matters.
The rate: $80 a day, $86 outside CONUS
The notices name the rate for the transportation industry and ground the method in Rev. Proc. 2019-48, the revenue procedure that carries the per diem substantiation rules. The rate is the one a worker whose work is the road — the long-haul driver is the case this site reads — meets in the notice.
| Travel period | CONUS | Outside CONUS | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 1, 2016 – Sep 30, 2017 | $63 | $68 | Notice 2016-58, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2017 – Sep 30, 2018 | $63 | $68 | Notice 2017-54, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2018 – Sep 30, 2019 | $66 | $71 | Notice 2018-77, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2019 – Sep 30, 2020 | $66 | $71 | Notice 2019-55, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2020 – Sep 30, 2021 | $66 | $71 | Notice 2020-71, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2021 – Sep 30, 2022 | $69 | $74 | Notice 2021-52, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2022 – Sep 30, 2023 | $69 | $74 | Notice 2022-44, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2023 – Sep 30, 2024 | $69 | $74 | Notice 2023-68, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2024 – Sep 30, 2025 | $80 | $86 | Notice 2024-68, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2025 – Sep 30, 2026 | $80 | $86 | Notice 2025-54, §3 |
| Oct 1, 2026 – Sep 30, 2027 | $80 | $86 | Notice 2026-60, §3 |
Three rate levels in a decade, then the current one: $80 a day inside the continental United States, $86 outside it, unchanged across the last three notices. For a 2026 return this matters at the calendar seam: days through September 30, 2026 fall under Notice 2025-54, days from October 1, 2026 under Notice 2026-60 — and because both notices print $80, a 2026 year never has to split the rate.
Two smaller figures ride in the same notices. Each notice also prints an incidental-expenses-only rate of $5 a day (§4) — the figure for a day when only incidental expenses, not meals, are being substantiated; it has been $5 in every period in the table. And each prints a separate high-low method, with totals of $319 and $225 in the Notice 2025-54 period and $329 and $230 in the Notice 2026-60 period. High-low is a different method with its own totals. It is not the transportation rate, and its totals are not added to the $80.
The percentage that applies to the rate is a separate question, answered in a different document, and it turns on a different list. That is the next section.
From rate to deduction: the percentage is not in the notices
No notice in the table prints a deduction percentage. The notices substantiate amounts. The limit that turns an amount into a deduction is printed in Publication 463 — read here in its 2025 edition, the latest posted.
Publication 463's general rule: business meals are 50 percent deductible. The same chapter carves out one group: individuals subject to the Department of Transportation hours-of-service limits deduct 80 percent of meal expenses while traveling away from their tax home. The chapter's list expressly includes interstate truck operators and bus drivers under DOT regulations, alongside FAA air workers, railroad workers, and merchant mariners.
At the current rate, the arithmetic is:
| Rate | Worker's rule | Deductible per day |
|---|---|---|
| $80 (CONUS) | DOT hours-of-service — 80% | $64.00 |
| $80 (CONUS) | General meals rule — 50% | $40.00 |
| $86 (OCONUS) | DOT hours-of-service — 80% | $68.80 |
| $86 (OCONUS) | General meals rule — 50% | $43.00 |
Read the wrong answers against the right one, because both wrong answers are printed numbers from this same material. The deductible figure for a driver under hours-of-service limits is not $80: the full substantiated amount is not the deduction. And it is not $40: that is what the general 50 percent rule produces, and the 50 percent rule is not the one the publication prints for this worker. Eighty dollars a day substantiates; sixty-four dollars a day is the deductible amount.
Away from home: the frame the rate hangs on
A per diem day is an away-from-home day, and that phrase has a test. Publication 463 — 2025 edition, Chapter 1 — turns being away from home on sleep or rest: the traveler must be away from their tax home long enough to require sleep or rest before returning. The publication's own truck-driver example draws the line exactly where drivers draw it in practice: a run that leaves in the morning and returns the same day, with a meal break on the road, is not an away-from-home day. No per diem amount attaches to it, at any rate, in any notice period.
Days are counted on that test first, and priced second. The rate table above prices only the days that pass it.
What the rate does not prove
The rate substantiates the amount — the dollars — and nothing else. That division is printed in Rev. Proc. 2019-48, the method document both notices rest on: time, place, and business purpose for each day claimed are still proved by records. Publication 463 prints the same division for the standard meal allowance in its first chapter: a traveler who uses the allowance must still keep records to prove the time, place, and business purpose of the travel, and the sentence sends the reader to the recordkeeping chapter.
That chapter — Chapter 5, "Recordkeeping," read here in the 2025 edition — prints what the records must carry, in its Table 5-1: amount, time, place or description, and business purpose, each supported by documentary evidence kept with the record. A record counts as timely when the elements are recorded at or near the time of the expense or use; the chapter treats a weekly log as a timely kept record. And its note stands over every figure on this page: "You can't deduct amounts that you approximate or estimate." A day count reconstructed at filing time is not the record the chapter describes.
The per diem log this site gives away is built to those columns — date, city or place, whether the day was an away-from-home overnight day, the rate used, whether the hours-of-service percentage applies, and the deductible amount it figures. It is linked below.
Where the figure lands
On the return, the deductible meal figure for a self-employed traveler lands on Schedule C, line 24b — deductible meals (2026 form, read in the IRS draft). Travel itself sits on the line above it, line 24a. Notice what reaches the form: one figure, already limited by the percentage. The rate, the day count, and the notice number never appear on the form — they live in the records behind the return, which is why the two sections above this one exist.
What this page is not
- Not a locality rate table. The general standard meal allowance is priced per locality, in tables that run to hundreds of places; no single national figure exists to print. This page prints the one rate the notices state as a single figure — the transportation industry's — and the rules that govern any per diem day.
- Not a lodging page. The $80 is an M&IE rate — meals and incidental expenses. It is not a lodging rate, and no lodging figure is printed here.
- Not a savings estimate. This page states rates, percentages, and arithmetic with their documents. What a deduction is worth depends on a whole return, and no figure here is presented as tax saved.
- Not state coverage. State taxes are not covered, here or anywhere on this site.
Sources
Every figure on this page, with the document that prints it. Checked dates are the dates each document was read in the project's own records.
Update log
Changes are dated and kept. Old figures are never silently overwritten.