Trucker Per Diem Rates: Daily Deduction and Calculator (2026)

The per diem rate as of 14 September 2026

Most business travelers look up a federal meal rate for each city they stop in. The transportation industry gets one special meal and incidental expense rate instead, published in an annual IRS notice. Notice 2025-54 sets the rates below. The partial day and deductible rows apply Rev. Proc. 2019-48 and Publication 463 to the notice's figures.

The incidental expenses only rate is $5 a day anywhere. It is for a day with no meal expenses, it is not cut to 80%, and the Schedule C instructions rule it out on any day you claim the meal rate.

Every notice from 2019 to 2025 took effect on 1 October and ran to 30 September. The IRS had not published the notice for travel from 1 October 2026 when these figures were read, so the table stays on Notice 2025-54 until it does.

Trucker per diem calculator

Pick the period your travel falls in, then enter full and partial days inside and outside the continental US. The tax rate is optional. If you enter one, the calculator multiplies the deductible amount by it.

With the starting figures of 200 full days and 40 partial days in the continental US, the allowance comes to $16,000 plus $2,400, or $18,400, and $14,720 of it is deductible. A sole proprietor enters the deduction on line 24b of Schedule C with other business meals. The other owner-operator operating costs, such as fuel and insurance, are broken down on a separate page.

Who qualifies for the transportation rate

Two tests apply. One decides whether you can use the transportation rate at all. The other decides whether 80% of it is deductible instead of the usual 50%.

• Your work directly involves moving people or goods by truck, bus, train, ship, barge or airplane.
• It regularly takes you away from home, and a single trip stops in places with different federal meal rates.
• For the 80% share, the meals fall during or incident to a period under Department of Transportation hours-of-service limits. Publication 463 lists interstate truck operators and bus drivers under DOT regulations in this group.

The first two come from section 4.04 of Rev. Proc. 2019-48. You also have to be away from your tax home. Publication 463 defines the tax home as your regular place of business, including the whole city or general area, wherever your family lives. A driver with no regular place of business can treat the home where they regularly live as the tax home if they meet the publication's three-factor test. A driver who meets only one of the three is an itinerant: the tax home is wherever they work, so they are never away from it and have no travel deduction.

Publication 463 counts you as traveling away from home when your duties keep you away from the general area of your tax home substantially longer than an ordinary day's work and you need to sleep or rest to meet the demands of the work. A local driver who ends every shift at home does not meet that test.

The choice holds for the calendar year. Once you use the special rate for any trip, Publication 463 says you use it for every trip that year, and Rev. Proc. 2019-48 bars a switch between the special rate and the regular federal rates before 1 January.

Partial days and the 75 percent rule

A full day of travel runs from 12:01 a.m. to midnight. The day you leave home and the day you return are partial days. Section 6.04 of Rev. Proc. 2019-48 requires a self-employed driver deducting per diem to count each one at three-fourths of the rate, which is $60 inside the continental US.

A trip that leaves on a Monday morning and ends on Friday evening adds up like this.

Rev. Proc. 2019-48 treats the whole daily amount as food and beverage, so the 80% limit applies to all of it, including the part meant for incidental expenses.

Record keeping

Under section 4.03 of Rev. Proc. 2019-48, the rate stands in for meal receipts only when you can show the time, place and business purpose of each day or partial day away. A daily log covers it with three entries.

• The date, and whether it was a full or partial day.
• Where you stopped for sleep or rest, which the revenue procedure calls the locality of travel.
• The load or trip the travel served.

Paperwork a truck already produces, such as bills of lading, fuel receipts and electronic logging device records, carries the same dates and places and backs up a daily log. Publication 463 says to keep the records that support a deduction for three years from the date you file the return that claims it.

Rates since 2019

The table lists every transportation rate from Notice 2019-55 to Notice 2025-54, with a link to each notice on irs.gov.

The rate held at $66 for two periods and at $69 for three. The $11 rise to $80 from 1 October 2024 is the largest change in the seven years, and Notice 2025-54 kept the rates the same for the following period. The incidental expenses only rate stayed at $5 throughout.

A tax year runs from January to December, so one year of travel spans two notices. Days from 1 January to 30 September use the notice issued the year before, and the new notice applies to travel from 1 October. Section 4.06 of Rev. Proc. 2019-48 carries transition rules for those last three months.

Method: how each number was obtained

Each figure on this page comes from one of three groups of IRS sources.

• The full day rates and the incidental expenses only rate come from sections 3 and 4 of each annual notice, read from the PDF on irs.gov.
• Who counts as transportation industry, the partial day share, the calendar-year rule and the proof required come from Rev. Proc. 2019-48.
• The 80% share, the tax home rules, how long to keep records and the treatment of an employer's per diem allowance come from Publication 463. The Schedule C line comes from the Schedule C instructions, and who can still deduct employee travel from the Form 2106 instructions.

The partial day and deductible amounts, the changes between years and the worked examples are our arithmetic on the published rates. Pages across the site follow our rating methodology.

What we could not verify

Four points on this page have no primary source we could confirm.

• The rate for travel from 1 October 2026. The next notice had not been published when these figures were read.
• Which partial day method a self-employed driver uses. Publication 463 describes two, three-fourths of the rate or any consistent and reasonable method, while section 6.04 of Rev. Proc. 2019-48 requires three-fourths for a deduction under section 4.03. The calculator uses three-fourths.
• Whether a driver on the special rate can keep the earlier notice's rate for October to December. Section 4.06(1) lets taxpayers keep the first nine months' continental US rates, and the special rate rule in section 4.06(2) does not say the same.
• Whether the 80% share reaches a driver who works only inside one state. Publication 463 names interstate truck operators under DOT regulations and does not address intrastate drivers.

Window and limitations

The data covers seven notice periods, from 1 October 2019 to 30 September 2026. The transportation rate is one national figure with no state or city version, so there is no state breakdown. The calculator covers a self-employed driver deducting meals at the special rate. It does not model per diem a carrier pays its employee drivers, the high-low method for lodging, or a deduction for actual meal costs from receipts. The tax effect is the deductible amount times the rate you enter. Your real change in tax depends on your bracket, self-employment tax and state, and a tax professional can confirm it for your return.

How to cite this

Cite the page with its update date, and the IRS notices as the source of the rates.

Small Fleet HQ, "Trucker Per Diem Rates: Daily Deduction and Calculator (2026)", updated September 14, 2026, https://smallfleethq.com/owner-operator/per-diem. Rate data: Internal Revenue Service, Notice 2025-54 and earlier annual special per diem notices, retrieved September 14, 2026.