Are business meals tax deductible?
Half. A meal with a client, customer or anyone you do business with is 50% deductible, if you talk business and it isn’t lavish.
The rule
A meal counts when you, or someone who works for you, are there, it is with a current or likely client, customer, supplier or adviser, and it has a real business purpose. Half of the bill, tax and tip included, is deductible.
Meals on a work trip away from home overnight are deductible at 50% too, even when you eat alone. The self-employed can use the government’s daily meal allowance for the city instead of receipts.
Your own lunch on an ordinary working day is personal, even at your desk.
An $86 lunch with a client puts $43 on the return.
Priced at 36¢ on the dollar, the rate of a $95,000 sole proprietor in California. Work out yours.
- Where it goes
- Schedule C line 24b, deductible meals
- What to keep
- The receipt, and a note of who was there and what the business was. Reimburse asks “Who was this with?” when a meal is missing it.
- Watch for
- Entertainment is not deductible at all: concert tickets, a golf round, a ballgame. If food at an event is bought and billed separately, the food is still 50%.
Checked on September 25, 2026 against Publication 463, Travel, Gift and Car Expenses and Instructions for Schedule C. An estimate for your records, not tax advice.
By the kind of work
What else each of these can deduct, and what they tend to miss.
See it on every receipt.
Snap it and Reimburse files it on the right Schedule C line, takes the deductible share and shows what it puts back.