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IRS per diem rate going up by $3 next month

First move in 3 years sets rate in lower 48 at $69

John Kingston
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Making money in trucking is always difficult. (Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves)

For the first time in three years, the allowable driver per diem is going up.

The Internal Revenue Service said the per diem for transportation workers in the 2021-22 period will be rising to $69 for travel in the continental U.S. and up to $74 for travel outside the continental U.S. Both figures represent an increase of $3.

The new rate goes into effect Oct. 1, the start of the federal budget year. The earlier rate had been in effect since 2018-19.

While what the IRS permits as the per diem does not automatically convert into the per diem paid to drivers, it largely works out that way.

In an email to FreightWaves, Steve Pletcher and Kelli Block, partners at Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary, said that “in practice, many motor carriers effectively adopt the IRS meal and incidental expense rate as their per diem rate, which makes a certain amount of sense because that is the amount the IRS has effectively deemed it reasonable for certain transportation workers to incur in meal and incidental expenses while traveling away from home on business.”

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    4 Comments

    1. Robert

      One of the main reasons why the lifestyle of a trucker is in decline; the inflation of the cost of fuel makes it tough to accept $1 a mile. Feds limit how many miles a trucker is allowed to travel, fuel tax surcharge exceeds wages. So from that standpoint, all truckers are slaves. Allowing legal weed in all states is the other issue, Feds expect truckers to have a valid medical card. This is why all developers of battery powered trucks are engineering an autopilot solution. Electric trains are moving tonnes of freight too, CSX, CN, BNSF. Days are short for the superman trucker. I’d love to hear your comments on this.

    2. miced

      I get paid over $87 per hour working from home with 2 kids at home. I never thought I’d be able to do it but my best friend
      earns over 10k a month doing this and she convinced me to try. The potential with this is endless. Here’s what I’ve been doing… w­w­w.j­o­b­s­7­0.c­o­m

    4. FLE+LLC

      Realistically, because of the cost of goods, food and hotel rooms the per diem should be at least $120 per night … In the IRS wisdom you don’t even get the full amount to begin with

    Comments are closed.

    John Kingston

    John has an almost 40-year career covering commodities, most of the time at S&P Global Platts. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment, one for steering coverage of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the other for the launch of a public affairs television show, Platts Energy Week.