Overnight allowance for professional drivers: What applies in 2025?

Professional drivers who sleep in the cab of their lorry can claim a fixed overnight allowance for tax purposes since 01.01.2020. This means that actual costs no longer need to be estimated.

Since 01.01.2024, the overnight allowance is 9 Euro per calendar day (§ 9 Abs. 1 Satz 3 Nr. 5b EStG). This allowance can be claimed in addition to the meal allowance as business expenses.

What is the allowance for?

The overnight allowance is intended to cover typical incidental costs incurred when drivers sleep in their lorry. These include, for example:

• Fees for showers and toilets at service stations
• Parking and storage fees
• Costs for cleaning the sleeping cabin

When can the allowance be claimed?

The allowance can be claimed for:

• the arrival or departure day of a business trip
• every calendar day with a full absence of 24 hours, whether in Germany or abroad

Important: It does not matter how high the actual expenses are – it is sufficient that costs were incurred in principle. If you can prove higher overnight costs, you may claim these instead. However, a combination of allowance and individual proof is not permitted – you must decide uniformly for a whole calendar year.

Uncertainty in application – decision by the BFH pending

The law states that the allowance applies to “calendar days on which the employee could claim a meal allowance”. This raises the question:

Does the allowance also apply if the driver did not sleep in the lorry, e.g. on arrival or departure days?

The Thuringia Finance Court has ruled that the allowance only applies for actual overnight stays in the lorry (judgment of 18.06.2024, Az. 2 K 534/22).

The Federal Fiscal Court (Az. VI R 6/25) must now make a final decision on whether this will remain the case.