Revenue Mileage Logbook Ireland 2026: The Other Half of Your Travel & Subsistence Claim
Why a Revenue-compliant logbook matters as much as your per-diem records — and what an audit-proof one actually contains.
Most people who claim travel and subsistence in Ireland think of it as one thing — a single expense category, one set of records. It isn't. Subsistence and mileage are two separate Revenue compliance tracks, each with its own rules, its own evidence requirements, and its own way of failing an audit. The mileage half is where it usually goes wrong, and it's the half a per-diem record-keeping system can't fix.
Travel & subsistence is actually two tracks
Both halves sit under the same Revenue heading and both can be paid tax-free, but the resemblance ends there. Get one right and the other wrong and the underpayment — or the overpayment — still costs you.
Subsistence (per-diems)
Flat allowances for time spent away from your normal workplace: €19.25 for 5–10 hours and €46.17 for 10+ hours, plus €205.53 per night overnight. Triggered by time and distance from base; no receipts needed at civil service rates. This is the half Expense.ie has always specialised in — see our full T&S rates reference.
Mileage
Per-kilometre reimbursement at civil service banded rates. The rate isn't fixed — it depends on your engine size and how many business kilometres you've already driven this year. Triggered by every individual journey and only valid with a contemporaneous trip log.
Auditors look at these separately. A perfectly kept subsistence record will not rescue a missing mileage log, and vice versa. If you're claiming both — which most people doing site visits, court appearances or client meetings are — you need both to be defensible on their own.
A 30-second recap of the mileage rates
Three engine bands, four cumulative distance bands. Twelve possible per-kilometre rates that you cycle through over the year, resetting on 1 January. Rates have been unchanged since 1 September 2022 and were re-confirmed by Revenue eBrief 058/25.
| Distance band | Up to 1,200cc | 1,201–1,500cc (incl. EVs) | Over 1,500cc |
|---|---|---|---|
| Band 1: 0 – 1,500 km | €0.4180 | €0.4340 | €0.5182 |
| Band 2: 1,501 – 5,500 km | €0.7264 | €0.7918 | €0.9063 |
| Band 3: 5,501 – 25,000 km | €0.3178 | €0.3179 | €0.3922 |
| Band 4: 25,001 km + | €0.2056 | €0.2385 | €0.2587 |
What Revenue expects in a logbook
Revenue does not prescribe a particular format — paper, spreadsheet or app are all acceptable — but it does prescribe the data that must be captured for every business journey, on or near the day it happened.
Six-year retention. Records must be kept for six years from the end of the relevant tax year, regardless of whether the employer or the employee originally produced them. Revenue can request the underlying log behind any reimbursement reported under ERR.
"Contemporaneous" matters. A log reconstructed three months after the fact from calendar entries and Google Maps is — strictly speaking — not contemporaneous. It may still pass scrutiny if it's accurate, but it will be looked at more sceptically than a log entered on the day of the trip.
Need a starting point? Use our free mileage log template, which lays out all six fields in the format Irish accountants expect.
Why spreadsheets break down at scale
The mileage half of T&S has three sharp edges that catch most home-grown systems out:
1. Cumulative-band maths
The bands are based on year-to-date business kilometres, not per-trip. The single trip that crosses 1,500 km, 5,500 km or 25,000 km has to be split, with each portion at its own rate. Get this wrong on a fleet of ten people and the cumulative error easily runs into thousands of euro per year. Walk through the maths in our step-by-step calculation guide.
2. Commute vs business classification
Home-to-normal-workplace is never claimable. The "lesser of" rule means a trip from home to a temporary location is sometimes shorter than the trip from your office to the same location — and it's the shorter distance you can claim. A spreadsheet that treats every entry equally has no way to enforce this. See our company car vs personal car piece for where this gets really messy.
3. ERR exposure on the employer's side
Since 1 January 2024 employers have had to report mileage and subsistence reimbursements to Revenue at or before the time of payment under Enhanced Reporting Requirements. Anything that isn't backed by a proper log isn't just an employee problem any more — it's the employer's filing.
Sole traders are treated differently
Civil service mileage rates are a reimbursement scheme — they only work when an employer is paying an employee or director. Sole traders cannot use them. Instead, they claim actual motor expenses — fuel, insurance, motor tax, NCT, servicing, repairs and capital allowances on the vehicle — apportioned by business-use percentage on Form 11.
A logbook is still mandatory in this model — arguably more so, because it's the evidence base for the business-use percentage applied to every receipt. Full breakdown in our sole-trader expenses guide.
ERR shifts the centre of gravity to records
Before ERR, mileage claims sat in the employee's monthly expense form, the employer's payroll, and not much else. Revenue saw the totals once a year, if at all. Since 2024, every reimbursement is reported in real time, line by line, with the employee's PPSN attached.
The practical effect: a Revenue compliance check no longer needs to wait for an audit. A pattern — say, identical mileage claims every Friday, or implausible distances for the engine-band totals reported — can be flagged from the ERR feed alone. A clean logbook is the only defence. See our audit triggers guide for the full list.
Two consequences employers and finance teams are still adjusting to: first, the logbook quality of every claimant matters more — one bad logbook can compromise a whole filing. Second, employees and directors who used to "tidy up" their mileage at year-end no longer have that buffer; the claim and the report happen together. Our ERR deadlines guide lays out the timing rules in detail.
Tools that handle the mileage half properly
The right tool depends on which problem you're solving. Most readers will need two — one for subsistence and the broader T&S workflow, and one for the trip-by-trip mileage log that feeds it.
For the subsistence side and the T&S workflow
Expense.ie applies the correct civil service banded rates automatically, tracks year-to-date kilometres across all your vehicles and claimants, handles overnight and day rates in the same workflow, and produces ERR-ready exports for payroll. See the honest comparison against the main alternatives.
For the underlying trip log
A purpose-built Irish mileage logbook is the cleanest source of truth for the per-trip data. odo.ie's trip logbook is built around the exact civil service banded rate table — every trip is classified Business / Commute / Private at the point of entry, year-to-date totals are tracked per band, and accountant-ready CSV and PDF exports cover the six-year retention requirement. Pricing is flat: Solo is free for one vehicle, Family is €3/month for three vehicles plus a co-driver, and the Pro tier — which unlocks the trip logbook and tax exports — is €6/month billed annually (€8/month monthly).
Alternatives like MileIQ or Driversnote do GPS-based auto-tracking well, but they were built for the IRS cents-per-mile or HMRC two-tier model — neither natively understands Ireland's three-engine-band, four-distance-band structure. They're useful for capture; they're not a substitute for an Irish-rate-aware logbook. For a side-by-side, see our mileage tracker app comparison.
Frequently Asked Questions
Keep reading
Get the per-diem half right with Expense.ie
Expense.ie automates civil service banded rates, day and overnight subsistence, and ERR-ready exports — so the T&S workflow stops eating your finance team's afternoon. Pair it with a Revenue-compliant trip logbook and the mileage half is sorted too.
Looking for the trip-logbook side? Start with odo.ie Pro or the odo.ie mileage rates guide.