For entrepreneurs, regardless of the form of business, it is important to take advantage of the opportunities for tax-exempt travel allowances. Travel allowances for business trips can be tax-free for the recipient and deductible for the employer. A business trip is defined as a temporary journey outside the regular workplace to perform work tasks.
For a daily allowance to be tax-free, the work location must be more than 15 kilometers away from the place where the trip began (home or the regular workplace) and at the same time more than 5 kilometers away from both the home and the regular workplace. In other words, you are not entitled to a daily allowance if you make a business trip from your regular workplace to a work site located near your home.
Tax-exempt allowances in 2026 for business travel:
- Kilometer allowance for car: €0.55/km
- Partial daily allowance (over 6 hours): €25
- Full daily allowance (over 10 hours): €54
- Daily allowance in Sweden: €70
- Meal allowance: €13.50
For travel allowances to be deductible for the employer and tax-free for the recipient, it is very important that they are documented correctly and specified with sufficient care.
For limited companies, associations, and other entities that pay travel allowances, it is essential to ensure that the income register notification is submitted at the time of payment. Failure to submit this notification can result in costly late fees and tax increases, even if the amounts paid are small.
Self-employed individuals include their own travel allowances as an additional deduction in the company’s income tax return.
Trips between home and the regular workplace are not considered business trips and do not entitle you to tax-exempt allowances. However, commuting between home and the regular workplace can, to some extent, be deductible in personal income taxation. The personal liability threshold for commuting expenses is €900, meaning you can only claim deductions for travel costs exceeding €900.
The general rule is, that you are allowed to claim expenses by the least expensive means of transportation, which usually is public transport. Car expenses are not deductible unless specific conditions apply, such as when public transport is completely unavailable, or would result in long waiting times, or would result in walking distances exceeding 3 km in one direction.