What You Need to Know About HMRC Meal Allowances

Most people enjoy the upside of travelling for work—new places, new faces and the occasional decent lunch on the company. Nobody enjoys the paperwork that follows. To make things easier for you, this guide sets out the official 2026/27 rates, the conditions attached to them, what happens when someone spends more, and how it all gets reported.

What is an HMRC meal allowance? 

An HMRC meal allowance (you’ll also hear it called a subsistence allowance) is an amount an employer can pay an employee, free of tax and National Insurance, to cover meals bought while travelling for work. It’s designed for situations where you’re away from your normal workplace on business and end up paying for food you wouldn’t otherwise have needed to buy.

The key is that the expense has to be “reasonable” and meet HMRC guidelines—so you can’t go all out on a five-course meal at a fancy restaurant, unless it’s within the limits set by your company’s expense policy. 

When do HMRC subsistence rates apply?

 HMRC subsistence rates apply when: 

• You’re travelling away from your usual workplace for business purposes.
• Your business trip requires you to be away for a significant part of the day or overnight.
• You end up with extra costs, like meals or accommodation, because of the travel. 

Imagine you work in sales and have a client meeting in another city. You leave early in the morning and return late at night. During this time, you buy lunch at a café and dinner at a restaurant because you can’t go home to eat.  

You can claim these meal expenses as part of HMRC’s subsistence allowance, as long as they’re reasonable and meet the set guidelines. 

HMRC gives employers three broad ways to handle this:

• Reimburse the actual cost: the employee keeps evidence of what they spent on a qualifying journey and the employer pays it back.
• Use HMRC’s benchmark scale rates: flat amounts (£5, £10 or £25) that can be paid without a receipt for every meal, so long as the qualifying conditions are met. Employers don’t need to run a formal checking system to do this. What HMRC does expect is that the employer has no reason to know or suspect the travel didn’t happen, so most employers still keep some light-touch records as good practice, even though it’s no longer a legal requirement.
• Agree a bespoke scale rate: an employer-specific rate agreed with HMRC, based on evidence of what employees actually spend. HMRC explains how this is agreed in EIM30250, with the approval process set out in EIM30260.

This article focuses mainly on the benchmark rates, because that’s what most people mean when they search for “HMRC meal allowance”. The underlying rules on what counts as a qualifying business journey come from HMRC’s general guidance on travel in the performance of duties and necessary attendance at a workplace.

HMRC meal allowance rates for the 2026/27 tax year

Here are the official benchmark rates for business travel within the UK. They come straight from HMRC’s Employment Income Manual (the EIM references in the table are the manual pages).

HMRC UK benchmark rate	Amount in 2026/27	Qualifying condition	Effective status	Official source
One meal (five-hour rate)	£5	Qualifying business journey lasting at least five continuous hours away from the normal workplace	Unchanged since 22 May 2014; no change from 2025/26	EIM30240
Two meals (ten-hour rate)	£10	Qualifying business journey lasting at least ten continuous hours away from the normal workplace	Unchanged since 22 May 2014; no change from 2025/26	EIM30240
Full day (15-hour rate)	£25	Away for at least 15 continuous hours and the journey is still ongoing at 8pm; covers all meals in the 24-hour period	Unchanged since 22 May 2014; no change from 2025/26	EIM30240
Supplementary late rate	£10	Paid on top of the £5 (five-hour) or £10 (ten-hour) rate when the qualifying journey continues beyond 8pm but does not reach the 15-hour threshold for the £25 rate; covers extra expenses necessarily incurred as a result of working late	Confirmed in current EIM30240 guidance; rate unchanged	EIM30240
UK accommodation	No fixed benchmark	Reasonable qualifying accommodation costs may be reimbursed based on actual cost under the travel and subsistence rules	No national HMRC night rate exists	EIM30240 and related travel guidance

 

A few things worth spelling out, because they trip a lot of people up:

• The rates are based on journey length and timing, not on named meals: HMRC doesn’t publish a separate lunch limit or dinner limit. The £25 is the total maximum for a qualifying 15-hour day, and there’s no official rule that says, for example, dinner can be up to a certain amount within it.
• A £10 late supplement can apply too: If the £5 or £10 rate already applies and the journey runs past 8pm without hitting the 15-hour mark, HMRC allows an extra £10 for the cost of working late. It sits on top of whichever rate’s already been paid, separate from the £25 rate.
• £25 isn’t a general daily allowance: It only applies when both the 15-hour and 8pm conditions are met. A nine-hour day with a single lunch is a £5 day under the benchmark system.

This works well for organisations with predictable travel patterns, but be aware that if your employees regularly spend more than these amounts (in central London, say), the benchmark rates may feel tight. That’s where actual-cost reimbursement or a bespoke rate comes in, which we’ll cover below.

When do the rates apply, and when don’t they?

The benchmark rates only work where the travel itself qualifies as a business journey under HMRC’s rules. That means the rates apply when:

• You’re travelling away from your normal workplace for business (a client site, a training venue, a different office).
• You’re away for at least the minimum period—five, ten or 15 hours—and, for the £25 rate, still travelling or working at 8pm.
• You actually buy a meal. The benchmark rates cover food you paid for, not food you skipped or brought from home.
• The travel genuinely happened as claimed—HMRC no longer requires a formal checking system for benchmark payments, but the employer still needs no reason to know or suspect otherwise.

The rates don’t apply, and a payment may be taxable, when:

• The journey is ordinary commuting between home and your permanent workplace.
• No meal or drink was purchased.
• Meals are already provided (as part of a conference, training course or hotel package, for instance).
• The spending is clearly excessive for the circumstances.
• There’s a reasonable basis to suspect the travel or spending didn’t actually take place.

A quick example: you work in sales and have a client meeting in another city. You leave the office at 8am, grab lunch at a café, and get back at 6pm. That’s a ten-hour qualifying journey, so the benchmark maximum is £10. If the meeting runs late, you buy dinner and you’re still on the road at 8pm having been away for 15 hours or more, the £25 rate becomes available instead.

A lot of organisations don’t realise that the conditions attach to each journey individually. You can’t average a week’s travel into a daily figure, and you can’t apply the £25 rate to a day that ended at 7pm just because it was a long one. It’s a small distinction, but it’s exactly the kind of thing HMRC looks at during an employer compliance check.

Overnight stays, accommodation and incidental expenses

This is where the most confusion happens, so let’s untangle three separate things.

• Meals during an overnight stay: HMRC’s guidance in EIM30240 says the £25 15-hour rate “will generally apply” where an employee is required to stay away overnight, provided meals aren’t already included in the accommodation cost. So if your hotel rate includes breakfast, the employer shouldn’t also pay the breakfast element through a scale rate.
• Accommodation itself: HMRC doesn’t publish a fixed UK hotel or “night rate” in the benchmark scale-rate system, and no HMRC meal allowance figure covers overnight accommodation. Any figures you see quoting a set amount per night for London versus elsewhere come from company policies, corporate travel policies or commercial guides, not from HMRC. Instead, reasonable accommodation costs on a qualifying business trip can be reimbursed tax-free based on what was actually paid, as long as the normal travel and subsistence rules are met.
• Personal incidental expenses: HMRC operates a separate, small exemption for personal incidental costs (a newspaper, a phone call home, laundry) when an employee stays away overnight. This is distinct from both meals and accommodation, and it has its own limits set out in HMRC guidance. It’s not a meal allowance and shouldn’t be added to the £25 figure, so check the current GOV.UK guidance for the exact amounts before building it into your policy.

It’s worth noting that the actual-cost approach for hotels gives employers flexibility to book what’s sensible for the location. But also stay vigilant, because “reasonable” isn’t defined by a number, so a clear internal cap in your expense policy helps everyone avoid awkward conversations later.

Travelling outside the UK

The £5, £10 and £25 HMRC meal allowance figures apply to travel within the UK. For business trips abroad, HMRC publishes a separate table of worldwide subsistence rates, set out by country and city and shown in local currency. You’ll find the current version on GOV.UK.

Destination	Currency	5-hour rate	10-hour rate	24-hour rate (plus room)
Paris, France	Euros	40 euros	86.50 euros	117 euros
Berlin, Germany	Euros	22 euros	65.50 euros	72 euros
Tokyo, Japan	Japanese yen	4,445.50 yen	10,534.50 yen	11,290.50 yen
Toronto, Canada	Canadian dollars	46 Canadian dollars	118 Canadian dollars	151.50 Canadian dollars
Beijing, China	Chinese yuan	232 yuan	563 yuan	605.50 yuan
Sydney, Australia	Australian dollars	57.50 Australian dollars	147.50 Australian dollars	195 Australian dollars

These figures are correct as of publication, but they fluctuate independently of the UK benchmarks—a city’s rate can move without any change to the £5, £10 or £25 UK figures. If your team travels internationally, always check the current GOV.UK table for the destination and date of travel, and record which version of the table you used.

This works well when travel is occasional, but be aware that organisations with frequent overseas travel often find it simpler to build the GOV.UK rates into their expense system, so the right figure is applied automatically rather than looked up trip by trip.

Are meal allowances taxable, and what if someone spends more than the benchmark?

Meal payments can be made free of tax and National Insurance when they relate to a qualifying business journey and are paid through one of the three routes: actual-cost reimbursement with evidence, HMRC benchmark scale rates, or an approved bespoke rate. Outside those conditions, a payment is normally treated as earnings and taxed accordingly.

Here’s how the three routes compare.

Route	How the amount is set	Receipts needed?	Position if spending exceeds the amount paid	HMRC source
Actual-cost reimbursement	Whatever the employee actually spent on a qualifying meal, if reasonable	Yes, suitable evidence of the cost	Not relevant—the actual cost is what’s reimbursed	EIM31815
HMRC benchmark scale rate	£5, £10 or £25 depending on journey length and timing	No receipt for each meal; no formal checking system required since April 2019, but employers should keep evidence the travel was genuine	A flat payment above the benchmark is taxable unless a bespoke rate is agreed	EIM30240
Bespoke scale rate	Employer-specific amount agreed with HMRC based on sampled spending	No receipt for each meal, subject to the agreed conditions	Payments within the agreed rate are tax-free; the rate applies only to that employer	EIM30250 / EIM30260

 

Let’s put that into practice. Imagine an employee at a software company who’s away for 16 hours, still travelling at 8pm, and spends £35 on dinner. Her employer has a few options:

1. Pay the £25 benchmark rate: The employee covers the £10 difference herself. Simple for the employer, and no tax to worry about.
2. Reimburse the actual £35: Where the meal was genuinely part of a qualifying journey, the cost is reasonable and she’s kept the receipt, the employer can reimburse the actual amount tax-free under the normal expense rules. This is a different route from the scale rate, not a breach of it.
3. Pay a flat £35 scale rate: If the employer routinely pays a flat amount above the benchmark without evidence and without a bespoke agreement, the excess over the benchmark is taxable earnings.

Receipts, evidence, and record-keeping

One of the most common questions we hear is “do I need a receipt?”—and the honest answer is “it depends which route you’re on”.

Under the benchmark scale rates, HMRC doesn’t require a receipt for every individual meal, and since 6 April 2019 employers haven’t needed to run a formal checking system either (see EIM30240). What HMRC does expect is that the employer has no reason to know or suspect that the travel didn’t happen or that the qualifying conditions weren’t met. In practice, that means most employers still keep some record — travel bookings, calendars, journey times—so they can show a claim was genuine if HMRC ever asks, even though it’s no longer a strict legal requirement.

Under actual-cost reimbursement, you’ll need suitable evidence of what was spent. A receipt is the obvious choice, though a card statement showing the transaction can support a claim where a receipt has gone missing.

Here’s a snapshot of how this plays out in a real organisation. A regional engineering firm with around 60 field staff used to reimburse meals on actual cost, which meant finance chased dozens of faded café receipts every month. They moved to the HMRC benchmark rates and chose to keep a monthly sample check as their own good practice, asking staff to log journey start and end times against each claim. Receipt chasing dropped sharply, and the sample check gave them a useful audit trail—not because HMRC requires one, but because it made compliance easy to demonstrate if ever questioned. They kept actual-cost reimbursement as an option for the occasional expensive city trip.

A few practical tips:

• Record journey times, not just dates: The five, ten, and 15-hour thresholds are what HMRC will test if a claim is ever queried.
• Keep the 8pm check visible: Make it a specific field or question so the £25 rate isn’t applied by default.
• Write down your approach: Even though a formal checking system isn’t required, having a clear, documented policy on how claims are handled makes it easier to show HMRC that qualifying conditions were met.
• Capture evidence at the point of spending.: Tools that let employees capture receipts and supporting expense evidence on their phone remove most of the “I’ve lost it” problem.

This approach works well for most organisations, but be aware that good intentions on paper aren’t the same as evidence in practice. If HMRC ever asks questions during a compliance review, you’ll want to show that qualifying travel genuinely happened, not just that a policy exists.

How to report meal allowances to HMRC

How you report depends on whether the payments were tax-free or not.

• Payments within the rules don’t need reporting: Where meal payments fall within HMRC’s benchmark rates, an agreed bespoke rate, or reasonable evidenced actual costs, and they relate to qualifying business travel, they’re covered by the exemption. You don’t report them to HMRC and there’s no tax or National Insurance to pay.
• Payments outside the rules do: If an allowance is taxable—because it exceeded the benchmark without a bespoke agreement, covered ordinary commuting, or there’s reason to doubt the qualifying travel took place—it needs to be reported. Depending on how it was paid, that means either putting it through payroll as earnings or reporting it as a benefit on a P11D form for each affected employee, with a P11D(b) to summarise the totals and work out any Class 1A National Insurance contributions due. GOV.UK  has a complete guide to reporting and paying expenses and benefits.

Keep an eye on the move to mandatory payrolling of benefits in kind, which HMRC has confirmed will now be phased in from April 2027. The first phase, starting 6 April 2027, covers company cars and fuel, vans and van fuel, and employer-provided medical benefits—these will move from P11D reporting to being handled through payroll. Most other benefits in kind are expected to follow from April 2028, with loans and accommodation staying outside the mandatory regime for now. It’s worth reviewing how your expense and payroll systems talk to each other well ahead of your relevant start date.

The good news is that for the vast majority of meal claims, nothing needs reporting at all. The harder part is being confident that every claim genuinely met the conditions, which is why clear policy and good records matter more than the reporting itself.

Manage HMRC meal allowances with Capture Expense

Whether you stick to HMRC’s benchmark rates, agree a bespoke rate or reimburse actual costs, the common thread is the same: clear rules, journey times recorded, and evidence captured at the time rather than reconstructed weeks later.

If that sounds like more admin than you’d like, it doesn’t have to be. Capture Expense lets employees submit, track and manage expenses in one place, with expense management and policy-control features that help you apply your own meal and subsistence limits consistently.

And if you’d like to see how this works in practice, book a demo. We’re happy to walk you through it.