Which meals count
| Situation | Deductible |
|---|---|
| Your lunch, coffee or snacks during a normal shift or workday | No |
| A meal with a client, customer or other business contact | 50% |
| Meals on a business trip away from home overnight | 50% |
| Meals away from home for drivers under DOT hours-of-service limits | 80% |
| Tickets to a game, a concert or golf with a client | No |
| Food you buy separately at one of those events | 50% |
Why your lunch on the job is not deductible
This is the question most gig workers ask, and the answer is no. Eating is a personal expense, and working that day does not change it.
The IRS only treats your own meals as a business expense when you are traveling away from home: your work takes you away from the area where you normally work for much longer than an ordinary day’s work, and you need to sleep or rest before you can continue. Its own example is a truck driver who leaves the terminal and comes back the same day, with an hour off to eat. That driver is not traveling away from home, so the meal is not deductible.
A delivery or rideshare shift works the same way. You go home at the end of the day, so the burger between orders is personal. Water or snacks you offer your passengers are a different thing: they are not your own meals, and our deductions guide lists them with your supplies.
Meals with clients and business contacts
You can deduct 50% of the cost of a meal when all of these are true:
- It is an ordinary and necessary expense of your business.
- It is not lavish or extravagant. There is no fixed dollar limit: the IRS looks at whether the cost is reasonable in the circumstances.
- You are present at the meal.
- It is with a current or potential customer, client, consultant or similar business contact.
Tax and tip are part of the cost of the meal. The ride to the restaurant is not: it is a separate expense. And if friends take turns paying for each other’s meals mainly for personal reasons, nobody can deduct anything.
Example: a $60 lunch with a client, with tax and tip, is a deduction of $30.
Meals when you travel for work
When a job takes you away from your tax home overnight, your meals become deductible, whether you eat alone or with others. Your tax home is the city or general area where you work, not necessarily where your family lives.
You can figure these meals in two ways, and the 50% limit applies to both:
- Actual cost. Keep your receipts and deduct 50% of what you spent. For example, $240 of meals on a trip is a deduction of $120.
- The standard meal allowance. Instead of keeping meal receipts, you use the federal daily rate for meals and incidental expenses for the place where you stop to sleep. The General Services Administration publishes the rates for each city. On the day you leave and the day you return, you take three quarters of the rate.
Two things do not change with the daily rate. You still have to keep records that prove the time, place and business purpose of the trip. And there is no daily rate for lodging: you always deduct what the hotel actually cost.
Truckers and other transportation workers
Self-employed drivers who work in the transportation industry and regularly travel away from home have two special rules:
- One rate for every trip. Instead of looking up the rate for each city, you can use the special transportation rate: $80 a day in the continental United States and $86 outside it. The IRS kept the same amounts for the whole of 2026. If you use it for one trip, you have to use it for all your trips that year.
- A higher share. If you are subject to the Department of Transportation’s hours-of-service limits, as interstate truck operators are, you deduct 80% of your meals during those duty periods instead of 50%.
Example: an owner-operator who spends 200 full days on the road has a meal allowance of $16,000 with the transportation rate. At 80%, the deduction is $12,800. At the general 50%, it would be $8,000.
This is for self-employed drivers. Most employees cannot deduct unreimbursed travel expenses on a federal return. And a local delivery driver who sleeps at home every night is not traveling away from home, so none of this applies.
Entertainment is not deductible
You cannot deduct tickets to a game, a concert, a round of golf or a club membership, even if you spend the whole time talking business with a client.
Food at those events can still count as a meal if you buy it separately, or if the bill states its cost separately. In the IRS’s own example, the tickets to a baseball game are not deductible, but the hot dogs and drinks bought at the game are, at 50%.
What it saves in practice
A single freelancer with $60,000 of profit spends $1,200 a year on meals with clients. The deduction is $600, which lowers the federal tax bill by about $138. Business meals are worth claiming, but they never turn a restaurant bill into free food.
Records to keep
- The restaurant receipt, with the name and location, the date, the amount and the number of people served.
- A note of who you ate with and the business reason. Write it on the receipt or in your log the same week.
- For a meal under $75, the IRS does not require the receipt itself, but you still need the record of the amount, date, place and purpose.
- With the daily meal rate, no meal receipts, but proof of your trip: dates, places and the business purpose.
Our guide on what tax records to keep explains how long to keep them.
Where it goes on Schedule C
Meals go on line 24b. You enter the deductible amount, after applying the 50% or 80% yourself. Lodging and transportation for the trip go on line 24a. Our Schedule C walkthrough covers the rest of the form, and our 1099 tax calculator shows what your expenses save you.