Benefits
Staff meals, canteens and meal vouchers: what is taxed since October 2025
Last updated 16 October 2026
Meals on your employer's premises, open to all staff, are tax-free. Meal vouchers are taxed at full face value since 1 October 2025, with no 19 cent deduction.
Food from your employer can be tax-free or a benefit in kind (a taxed perk). It depends on where you eat it and who else can. Revenue updated the rules from 1 October 2025.
Tax-free
- Meals on the premises, open to all staff. Free or subsidised meals are not taxed if every employee can have them and they are eaten on your employer's premises. Before October 2025 this applied only to a staff canteen.
- Working lunches. Food for a smaller group is tax-free if there is a specific work reason, such as a meeting over lunch or working late. It must be eaten on the premises. It must cost no more than €19.25 a person per day (the civil service day rate for five to ten hours).
- Seasonal parties and events open to all staff, such as a Christmas party or sports day, at a reasonable cost.
- Client entertainment. If you pay for a business meal with a client and your employer refunds the vouched cost, it is not your benefit.
Taxed
- meals only some staff can have, unless they meet the working lunch conditions
- meals in outside restaurants or cafés, before and after October 2025
- meal vouchers, at their full face value
Until 30 September 2025, 19 cent was deducted from the value of each meal voucher before tax. That deduction no longer applies. Where meals are taxable, the cost is shared among the employees who actually ate them.
What vouchers cost you
An employee on €42,000 in 2026 who receives a €8 meal voucher on each of 220 working days:
| Vouchers for the year, taxed as pay | €1,760.00 |
| Income tax, USC and PRSI on them | €479.42 |
| What the vouchers are worth after tax | €1,280.58 |
That is roughly €2.18 of tax on each voucher. A daily voucher can't use the Small Benefit Exemption, which covers at most five benefits a year.
Travelling for work
Meals while you are away on business are a separate matter. Your employer can refund costs backed by receipts, or pay a subsistence allowance at up to the civil service rates, tax-free. And where you work at a temporary location, accommodation and meals provided instead of subsistence are not taxed if the costs are reasonable.
Work it out
Sources
- Revenue: Taxable employer benefits (medical insurance, shares and others) (checked 16/10/2026)
- Revenue: Small Benefit Exemption: up to five benefits worth €1,500 a year from 2025 (checked 16/10/2026)
General information, not tax advice. HeyPenny is not a tax agent.