Per Diem Calculator
The trip, the federal rate and the taxable part
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Planning indicator only. It does not assess every part of a household's finances or replace individualized professional advice.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter the days of travel counting the first and the last, then the nights you were away and paid for lodging. They are counted separately on purpose: M&IE follows the DAYS and lodging follows the NIGHTS, so a four-night trip is usually five travel days.
- 02
Enter what your employer actually pays you — a lodging figure per night and a meals-and-incidentals figure per day. Those two fields are what turn this from a federal-rate lookup into an answer about your own package.
- 03
Enter the M&IE you must deduct for any meals provided at no cost. GSA publishes a breakfast, lunch and dinner breakdown for each rate tier, which is why this is a dollar figure rather than a checkbox.
- 04
Enter your top federal bracket, then check the GSA rates: the FY2026 CONUS standard of $110 lodging and $68 M&IE, and the 75% share the first and last travel day take. Every locality has its own rates and they reset each 1 October, so look yours up rather than accepting the defaults.
- 05
Read the tax-free ceiling and the taxable excess, then open Advanced for the high-low substantiation rates ($319 and $225 under Notice 2025-54), the FICA rate applied to the excess, and the 80% M&IE limit for DOT hours-of-service workers.
Formula
First-and-last days = the lesser of travel days and 2. Full days = travel days − that. M&IE allowed = full days × M&IE rate + first-and-last days × M&IE rate × 75%, less any provided-meal deduction, floored at zero. Lodging allowed = nights × the lodging rate. Lodging is never prorated. Federal maximum = lodging allowed + M&IE allowed. This is the most that can be paid tax-free. What the employer pays = nights × its lodging figure + travel days × its M&IE figure. Taxable excess = employer pays − federal maximum, floored at zero. Tax on it = excess × (your marginal rate + FICA). Unused tax-free room = federal maximum − employer pays, floored at zero. High-low comparison = travel days × the elected flat rate. DOT deductible M&IE = M&IE allowed × 80%.
Example
Five travel days and four nights at the FY2026 CONUS standard of $110 lodging and $68 M&IE. Lodging is 4 × $110 = $440. M&IE is three full days at $68 ($204) plus two travel days at 75% of $68, which is $51 each ($102) — $306 in total. The federal maximum for the trip is therefore $746, which averages $149.20 across the five days. The employer pays $130 a night and $75 a day, which is $520 + $375 = $895. So $746 passes tax-free and never touches the W-2, and the $149 above it is Box 1 wages — a figure that happens to sit very close to the daily average, and is not the same thing. Tax on that excess is $44 at 22% plus 7.65% FICA, leaving the allowance worth $851 after tax. The 75% rule costs $34 on this trip. The same five days would be $1,595 under the high-low high-cost rate of $319 or $1,125 at the $225 other-locality rate, and a DOT driver could deduct 80% of the $306 M&IE, which is $245.
Definitions
- Per diem
- A daily allowance for lodging, meals and incidentals while travelling away from home on business. Paid instead of reimbursing actual receipts.
- M&IE
- Meals and incidental expenses. The daily half of a per diem, prorated to 75% on the first and last travel day and reduced for any meal provided at no cost.
- CONUS
- The continental United States. GSA sets a standard CONUS rate — $110 lodging plus $68 M&IE for FY2026 — that applies to any locality it has not priced separately.
- Accountable plan
- A reimbursement arrangement meeting three tests: business connection, timely substantiation, and return of any excess. Failing any of them makes the whole allowance taxable wages.
- High-low substantiation
- An employer-level election applying one flat rate to high-cost localities and another to everywhere else — $319 and $225 under Notice 2025-54 — for a whole calendar year.
- Tax home
- The regular place of business you maintain and return to, and at which you bear duplicated living costs. A stipend is only untaxed if you are travelling away from one.
Good to know
Two counters: days for meals, nights for lodging
A per diem has two halves and they are counted on different clocks, which is where most of the arithmetic errors come from. Meals and incidental expenses — M&IE — follow the DAYS you were travelling, including the day you left and the day you returned. Lodging follows the NIGHTS you were actually away and paid for a room. A trip that leaves Monday morning and returns Friday evening is five M&IE days and four lodging nights, which is exactly the default on this page. On top of that split sits the proration rule: the first and last day of travel take 75% of the M&IE rate and not the whole of it, regardless of what time you actually left or landed. Leave at 6am and arrive back at midnight and it is still 75%. Lodging works the other way and is not prorated at all — you either paid for a night or you did not. So the default trip produces three full M&IE days at $68 ($204), two travel days at $51 ($102), and four nights of lodging at $110 ($440), giving a federal maximum of $746 for the trip, or an average of $149.20 across the five days. That average is a useful sanity check but it is not the rate for any particular day, and a per diem is always built day by day rather than by multiplying the standard combined rate by the day count. The other reduction to know about is provided meals. Where a conference registration, a hotel rate or a host supplies a meal at no cost, the corresponding portion of the M&IE rate comes out — GSA publishes a breakfast, lunch and dinner breakdown for each rate tier, which is why the page asks for a dollar figure rather than guessing. The incidentals portion always survives the deduction; it is only the meal components that come out.
The line between a reimbursement and Box 1 wages
One rule decides whether any of this money is taxed, and it has a name: the accountable plan. Paid at or below the federal rate under an accountable plan, a per diem is a REIMBURSEMENT. It is not wages, it is not reported on your W-2, no income tax is withheld from it, and no Social Security or Medicare touches it. Every dollar paid above the federal rate is Box 1 wages, withheld on and subject to FICA like any other pay. On the default trip the employer pays $895 against a federal ceiling of $746, so $149 is taxable and costs $44 at a 22% bracket plus 7.65% FICA — leaving the allowance worth $851 after tax. Note that the $149 excess happens to sit close to the $149.20 daily average; those are two different numbers that coincide on these particular inputs and nowhere else. What makes an accountable plan accountable is three requirements, and all three must hold. There must be a business connection for the expense. It must be substantiated as to time, place and business purpose within a reasonable period. And any amount paid in excess of substantiated expenses must be returned. Miss any one of them and the consequence is far bigger than the excess: the ENTIRE allowance becomes taxable wages, not merely the portion above the federal rate. The mirror image of the taxable excess is the stat for unused tax-free room, and it is the one to raise with an employer. Money paid as salary is fully taxed; the same money paid as a per diem up to the federal ceiling is not taxed at all. An employer paying $60 a day for meals in a locality where the federal rate is $80 is handing its travellers a worse deal than it needs to, at no saving to itself, usually because nobody has looked the locality up.
Where the rates come from, and when they move
The GSA rates on this page are inputs rather than constants for two reasons, and both matter. First, they reset every 1 October. FY2026 runs from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026 at the CONUS standard of $110 lodging plus $68 M&IE — $178 a day combined — and FY2027 is already published at $113 and $68, or $181. A trip that straddles the end of September uses different rates for its two halves. Second, and more importantly, the standard rate is a FLOOR rather than a typical figure. GSA prices several hundred localities individually, and in a high-cost city the lodging rate can be several times the standard $110, with seasonal variation on top of that in resort and convention markets. A page that hardcoded $110 would be wrong for most business travellers on the day it shipped and wrong for all of them the following October, which is why the lodging and M&IE fields here carry the standard as a default and invite you to overwrite it with the figure for the city you are actually going to. Alongside the locality system sits the high-low method, which is a simplification an EMPLOYER elects rather than a rate a traveller can choose. Instead of looking up every destination, it applies one combined lodging-and-M&IE rate to high-cost localities on the IRS list and another to everywhere else — $319 and $225 a day under Notice 2025-54. The election has to be applied to every employee and every trip for the whole calendar year and cannot be switched mid-year, which is why an employer either uses it for everything or not at all. The page shows the same trip under all four methods so the spread is visible: $746 under the GSA standard, $1,595 at the high-cost rate, $1,125 at the other-locality rate, and $895 under the employer's own package. The M&IE component of the high-low rate is published separately by the IRS and still takes the first-and-last-day proration, so the flat day count is a ceiling rather than an exact figure.
Tax home, travel packages, and the self-employed half
Everything above assumes you are travelling AWAY FROM HOME in the tax sense, and that assumption is where travel-nurse and travelling-contractor packages come apart. A tax home is a regular place of business you maintain and return to, and at which you bear duplicated living costs — you are paying for somewhere while paying for somewhere else. If you have no such home, you are itinerant, your tax home travels with you, and there is nowhere to be away from: every dollar of the stipend is ordinary taxable wages however the agency labels it and however the offer letter is structured. The second trap is duration. An assignment realistically expected to last more than one year is not temporary, and the whole allowance for it is taxable from the outset — not from the point it passes a year, but from day one, because the expectation is what the test turns on. An agency package quoting a low taxable hourly rate and a large tax-free stipend is quoting the best case, and the best case is a fact about your circumstances rather than a feature of the contract. Keeping a genuine tax home means real evidence: a lease or mortgage you are actually paying, returns filed from that address, and a pattern of returning to it. For the self-employed the rules split down the middle. You may use the federal M&IE rate without keeping meal receipts — $306 on the default trip — but you may NOT use the federal per diem rate for lodging; lodging must be substantiated with what you actually paid. Employees are the reverse case and considerably worse off: unreimbursed employee travel has not been deductible since 2018, so an employee whose employer reimburses nothing deducts nothing, which is what makes the reimbursement itself the entire benefit. One special case with a genuinely different number: a worker subject to Department of Transportation hours-of-service limits may deduct 80% of M&IE rather than the 50% that limits everybody else, which on the default trip is $245 instead of $153.
Frequently asked questions
Is per diem taxable?
At or below the federal rate under an accountable plan, no — it is a reimbursement, not wages, and it never appears on your W-2. Every dollar above the federal rate is Box 1 wages, subject to withholding and to Social Security and Medicare. In the default trip the employer pays $895 against a federal ceiling of $746, so $149 is taxable and costs $44 at 22% income tax plus 7.65% FICA. The whole allowance becomes taxable, not just the excess, if the plan fails the accountable-plan requirements.
Why does the page ask for days and nights separately?
Because the two halves of a per diem are counted differently. Meals and incidentals follow the days you travelled, including the day you left and the day you got back. Lodging follows the nights you actually stayed and is never prorated. So a trip leaving Monday and returning Friday is five M&IE days and four lodging nights — which is exactly the default here, producing $306 of M&IE and $440 of lodging.
What is the 75% first-and-last-day rule?
The first and last day of travel take 75% of the M&IE rate rather than the full amount, regardless of when you actually left or landed. Leave at 6am and get back at midnight and it is still 75%. On the default trip that is two days at $51 rather than $68, costing $34. It applies only to M&IE — lodging is not prorated at all, it simply follows the nights.
What is an accountable plan, and what happens if mine is not one?
An accountable plan has three requirements: a business connection for the expense, substantiation of the time, place and business purpose within a reasonable period, and the return of any amount paid in excess of substantiated expenses. Meet all three and the reimbursement stays off your W-2. Fail any of them and the ENTIRE allowance becomes taxable wages, not merely the part above the federal rate — which is a far larger consequence than most travellers realise.
What is the high-low method?
A simplification the EMPLOYER elects, not a rate you can pick per trip. Rather than looking up every locality, it applies one combined lodging-and-M&IE rate to high-cost localities on the IRS list and another to everywhere else — $319 and $225 a day under Notice 2025-54. The election must be used for every employee and every trip for the whole calendar year and cannot be switched mid-year. On the default five-day trip those come to $1,595 and $1,125 against a GSA-standard $746.
I am a travel nurse. Is my stipend really tax free?
Only if you have a TAX HOME to be away from — a regular place of business you maintain and return to, and at which you carry duplicated living costs. An itinerant worker with no such home has no tax home to travel away from, so every dollar of the stipend is ordinary taxable wages however the agency labels it. The second trap is duration: an assignment expected to last more than one year is not temporary, and the whole allowance is taxable from the outset. A package quoting a low taxable rate and a large tax-free stipend is quoting the best case.
My employer pays nothing. Can I deduct per diem myself?
As an employee, no. Unreimbursed employee travel expenses have not been deductible since 2018, so an employee whose employer pays nothing deducts nothing — which is why the reimbursement itself is the entire benefit and why the 'tax-free room your employer is not using' stat matters. The same money paid as salary would be fully taxed; paid as per diem up to the federal ceiling it would not be taxed at all.
I am self-employed. Can I use the federal rate?
For meals and incidentals, yes — you may use the federal M&IE rate without keeping receipts, which is $306 on the default trip. For lodging, no: a self-employed traveller must substantiate lodging with what was actually paid. Separately, a driver whose work is subject to DOT hours-of-service limits may deduct 80% of M&IE rather than the 50% everyone else is limited to, which is $245 rather than $153 here.