Per diem and the records behind it

Per diem is the subject where bad information travels furthest, because the number changes every year and last year's number looks exactly as authoritative as this year's.

So this article does not contain a rate. That is deliberate, and it is explained below. What it does contain is how the mechanism works, why the figure moves, and which records any per diem conversation depends on.

Why there is no number on this page

Publication 463 notes that per diem rates are listed by the federal government's fiscal year, and points readers to the government's own published rates at GSA.gov/travel/plan-book/per-diem-rates.

A federal fiscal year does not line up with a calendar year, and the rates are revisited on that cycle. Any figure printed on a page like this one is therefore correct for a window and wrong afterwards — and nothing about the page announces the moment it becomes wrong.

That is the failure mode worth avoiding. A driver who reads a stale rate on a marketing site has no way of knowing it is stale, because it is presented with exactly the same confidence as a current one. Every article on this site that would otherwise print an annually-updated figure says this instead: go to the source, which is always current, and confirm with your preparer.

What per diem is, structurally

Broadly, a per diem approach substitutes a standard allowance for the work of substantiating the actual cost of every individual meal while travelling away from home. It is a simplification mechanism.

Publication 463 describes a special standard meal allowance for workers in the transportation industry, and defines that category by reference to workers subject to the Department of Transportation's hours of service limits. Whether you fall inside that category, and how the allowance applies to your situation, is precisely the sort of determination to make with a professional rather than from a website.

The recordkeeping consequence, though, is general and worth understanding.

A simplified amount is not simplified records

This is the part most often misunderstood, and it is the part that actually matters for how you work during the year.

Using a standard allowance may remove the need to substantiate the amount of each individual meal. It does not remove the other elements. Publication 463 is clear that the elements to prove for travel are amount, time, place, and business purpose — and a per diem approach addresses the first of those while leaving the rest exactly where they were.

So the records that matter become:

• Time — the dates you were travelling away from home, day by day
• Place — where you were
• Business purpose — why you were there

In other words, the travel record replaces the meal receipt as the thing you have to be able to produce. A driver who assumes per diem means "no paperwork" has swapped one documentation requirement for a different one and kept records for neither.

Which records establish travel

Nothing here is exotic. The point is that these are records you have to actually retain rather than assume are recoverable later:

• Logs and electronic logging device records showing where you were and when
• Trip records, dispatches, and bills of lading tying dates to destinations
• Settlement statements, which corroborate the same movements
• Fuel and toll receipts, which independently place you somewhere on a date

That last one is worth dwelling on. Ordinary purchase receipts are also location-and-date evidence. A fuel receipt from a truck stop is a record of a fuel purchase and a record that you were at that place on that day. When other travel records are thin, receipts are frequently what corroborates them — which is another reason for capturing them while they are legible.

Publication 463's emphasis on records being timely kept applies here as much as anywhere. A contemporaneous log carries weight that a reconstruction assembled from memory in April does not.

If a carrier runs a per diem program

Some carriers operate their own per diem arrangements, structuring part of a driver's pay in relation to travel. If that applies to you, the details of how it works are set by the carrier and the consequences for your return are firmly a question for a tax professional — there is genuine variation here and it is not something to reason about from a general article.

The recordkeeping point stands regardless, and it is the same one that applies to settlement statements generally: keep your own copies. A carrier program is documented on the carrier's system, and your access to that system lasts exactly as long as the relationship does. If you leave, or the arrangement ends unexpectedly, the paperwork explaining how your pay was structured may become difficult or impossible to retrieve at precisely the moment somebody asks you to explain it.

Save the statements as they arrive rather than assuming you can pull them later.

Partial days, and why the calendar matters

Per diem rules involve treatment of days on which travel begins and ends, and those rules have specific requirements. This article is not going to summarise them, because summarising rules of that kind badly is how misinformation spreads and the current Publication 463 states them properly.

What is worth taking away is the recordkeeping implication: the boundaries of a trip are a detail that matters, which means the dates you left and returned are worth recording accurately at the time rather than approximately from memory afterwards.

Why the records matter either way

There is a version of this where a driver concludes the whole subject is somebody else's department, keeps nothing, and hands the question to a preparer in spring. It does not work, and it is worth being clear about why.

A preparer can make determinations. What no preparer can do is manufacture a record of where you were on a Tuesday in March. If the travel record does not exist, the options that depend on it are closed off before the conversation starts — not because anybody decided against them, but because there is nothing to work from.

That asymmetry is the reason to keep the records regardless of how the treatment question eventually resolves. Keeping a dated log of days away costs a few seconds a day and preserves the option. Not keeping it forecloses the option quietly, months before anyone notices.

What to actually do during the year

Whatever you and your preparer decide about how meals are handled, none of the following is wasted effort:

• Keep a dated record of days away from home, kept as you go.
• Retain the trip documentation that corroborates those dates.
• Keep purchase receipts anyway — they are independent evidence of place and date.
• Check the current rate at the government source, not from an article.
• Have the treatment conversation with a professional, once, properly.

The last two are the ones people skip, and they are the two that determine whether any of the rest of it holds up.

For the surrounding paperwork, see truck driver expense records. For how long any of it needs to survive, see how long to keep tax records.

Sources: IRS Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses — for the four elements, the timely-kept standard, the special standard meal allowance for workers subject to Department of Transportation hours of service limits, and the statement that per diem rates are listed by the federal government's fiscal year at GSA.gov. Reviewed on irs.gov August 5, 2026. Rates change annually and are not reproduced here. Confirm current figures at the government source and confirm treatment with a qualified tax professional.

CabSnap is a receipt capture and recordkeeping tool. It is not a tax preparation service and does not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult a qualified tax professional about your own circumstances.