The General Services Administration’s per diem rates cap what federal employees can be reimbursed for lodging, meals, and incidental expenses on official travel within the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia. For fiscal year 2026, the standard rate is $110 per night for lodging and $68 per day for meals and incidental expenses. About 300 higher-cost locations have individually calculated rates that exceed the standard, and both the standard lodging and M&IE figures are unchanged from FY2025.
Rates follow the federal fiscal year, running October 1 through September 30. A January 2026 trip uses FY2026 numbers, not calendar-year figures.
Looking Up the Rate for Your Destination
The GSA’s lookup tool at gsa.gov/perdiem is the authoritative source. Enter a zip code, city, or state and it returns the current lodging maximum and M&IE rate for that location. Confirm the fiscal year displayed matches your travel dates.
Non-standard M&IE rates fall into tiered brackets rather than a single elevated figure. For FY2026 those tiers run from $68 to $92 per day. Each tier has its own meal-by-meal breakdown, which you’ll need if the government or a conference provides one of your meals and you have to subtract its value from your claim. The GSA publishes that breakdown table alongside the rates.
What the Lodging Portion Covers
The lodging figure is a ceiling, not a flat payment. If your hotel costs less than the maximum, you’re reimbursed only what you actually spent; you don’t keep the difference. You need a receipt for every night.
Lodging taxes sit outside the per diem rate. They’re reimbursable separately as a miscellaneous travel expense, but only on the portion of lodging the government actually covers. Book a room above the cap and you can claim taxes only on the allowable amount, not the full bill.
What Meals and Incidental Expenses Covers
M&IE is a fixed daily amount. No receipts are required for individual meals. It covers breakfast, lunch, dinner, and incidentals, which the regulation defines as tips for porters, baggage carriers, bellhops, hotel housekeeping, and similar service workers. Taxes and tips on meals are already built into the rate, so you can’t claim them on top of it.
Laundry and dry cleaning are a specific exception worth remembering. For CONUS trips lasting at least four consecutive nights, they’re reimbursable as a separate miscellaneous expense rather than being folded into M&IE. That treatment flips for travel outside the continental U.S., where laundry is included in the per diem and cannot be claimed separately.
Partial Days, Same-Day Trips, and Provided Meals
On the first and last day of travel, you receive 75 percent of the applicable M&IE rate, not the full amount. At the $68 standard, that comes to $51. The reduction applies only to M&IE; lodging is unaffected. It also doesn’t scale with the hour you leave or return. An 8 a.m. departure and a 5 p.m. departure both yield 75 percent.
Same-day travel of more than 12 hours but less than 24 hours uses the same 75 percent M&IE figure for each calendar day involved. Trips of 12 hours or less generally don’t qualify for per diem at all.
When the government furnishes a meal, whether directly or through a conference registration fee, you subtract that meal’s allocated value from your M&IE allowance. On partial travel days you deduct the full meal value from the already-reduced 75 percent figure. Deductions can never push your reimbursement below the incidental expenses amount, which is $5 per day at every tier. Meals provided free by a hotel or airline don’t trigger a deduction. Your agency may also waive the deduction if you couldn’t eat a provided meal for medical or religious reasons and bought a substitute.
When Actual Costs Exceed the Cap
Sometimes the maximum isn’t enough. A sold-out city during a major event, a remote area with limited lodging, or a Presidentially-declared disaster zone with spiking prices can all push costs above the standard cap. The Federal Travel Regulation lets agencies authorize “actual expense” reimbursement in these situations, covering what you actually spend up to 300 percent of the applicable per diem rate, rounded up to the next whole dollar. Your agency can set a lower ceiling than 300 percent under its own policies.
Request actual expense authorization before you travel. After-the-fact approval is possible if your agency accepts the explanation, but not guaranteed.
Alaska, Hawaii, Territories, and Foreign Travel
GSA rates cover only the 48 contiguous states and D.C. Different agencies set the rates everywhere else:
- Alaska, Hawaii, and U.S. territories: the Defense Travel Management Office sets these “non-foreign OCONUS” rates.
- Foreign countries: the Department of State establishes rates under the Department of State Standardized Regulations.
Remember the laundry difference: outside CONUS it’s part of the per diem, so you can’t claim it separately the way you can on domestic trips.
Private Employers and Self-Employed Travelers
GSA rates matter well beyond federal agencies. The IRS recognizes them as a substantiation method for travel reimbursements, so private employers and self-employed workers use them routinely.
An employer reimbursing travel at or below the federal rate doesn’t have to treat the payment as taxable wages, provided the employee submits an expense report within 60 days showing the dates, destination, and business purpose of the trip. Amounts paid above the federal rate become taxable income. This is the accountable-plan framework: stay within the rate, document the basics, and neither side owes tax on the reimbursement.
Employers who don’t want to track hundreds of city-specific rates can use the IRS high-low substantiation method. For travel on or after October 1, 2025, the high-cost locality rate is $319 per day, of which $86 is the meals portion, and all other CONUS locations use a $225 rate with $74 for meals. A locality counts as high-cost when its federal per diem rate is $272 or more.
Self-employed travelers can use the M&IE portion of the federal rate to substantiate the meals component of a travel deduction. Lodging is different: actual receipts are required, and per diem cannot be used in its place.
Federal Contractors
Government contractors work under a parallel rule. The Federal Acquisition Regulation treats lodging, meals, and incidental expenses as reasonable and allowable costs only up to the applicable GSA rate in effect at the time of travel. A contractor can exceed the limit in special or unusual situations, but reimbursement still can’t surpass what a federal civilian employee would receive under actual expense authorization, and extra documentation and approvals apply. Because the GSA doesn’t directly set contractor reimbursement rules, check with your contracting officer for agency-specific policies before you travel.