A per diem is a flat daily allowance covering lodging, meals and incidentals during business travel, in lieu of itemised reimbursement. Setting per-diems against a published reference (GSA in the US, HMRC in the UK) keeps the allowance defensible at audit.

How is a per diem calculated?

Multiply the city's published lodging rate by the number of nights, then add the daily M&IE rate multiplied by the number of meal days. Most policies pay the first and last day of travel at 75% of M&IE.

Are per diems taxable?

In the US, per diems paid up to the GSA-published rate under an accountable plan are non-taxable. Above the rate or outside an accountable plan, the excess is W-2 income. The UK, Mexico and Brazil have analogous rules with different thresholds.

What if my city isn't in the per-diem table?

Default to the country's standard CONUS / standard rate, or to the nearest larger city's rate. Document the fallback rule in your policy so it isn't decided per traveller.

ExpensePolicy.AI

Create a professional expense policy in minutes. Free AI generator with templates, country-specific rules and instant PDF/DOCX export.

What is the GSA standard per-diem rate for 2024?

166 USD/day — GSA CONUS standard rate (lodging $107 + M&IE $59) for fiscal year 2024.

Why this expense-policy library exists

Every page on this site is built from the same opinionated framework: an explicit per-category cap, a named approver chain, a documented exception path, and a review cadence anchored to the controller's close calendar. We publish the framework openly so finance leaders, controllers, and operations teams can adopt it without a vendor lock-in or a six-figure consulting engagement. The expense-policy generator turns the framework into a finished document in three languages, with country-specific tax compliance baked in from the first draft.

Behind every URL is a typed registry — landing pages, glossary entries, calculators, country pillars, and learning hubs are all generated from the same data layer that powers the policy generator itself. That means the per-diem rate you see in the calculator, the GSA-aligned mileage benchmark in the rates table, and the threshold language in the generated PDF are all sourced from one canonical place and refreshed on the same cadence. There is no drift between what we write here and what the generator produces.

Trust signals are non-negotiable: every editorial page lists the reviewer, the review date, and the underlying source — IRS publication, HMRC manual, SAT criterio, Receita Federal IN, or peer-reviewed research. When a regulator updates a per-diem schedule, the change propagates to the calculator, the country pillar, the glossary entry, and the policy template in the same release. That is the bar we hold ourselves to, and the reason controllers across the US, UK, Mexico, Brazil, and the broader LATAM region rely on this library when they re-issue their expense policy each fiscal year.

The editorial program is organized into four parallel surfaces. The industry vertical (SaaS, FinTech, Manufacturing, Retail, Hospitality, Agency, Healthcare, Nonprofit) gives every reader a starting template tuned to the cost categories, regulators, and audit findings that dominate their sector. The country pillar (United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Spain, and Portugal) layers on the local tax-compliance overlay — CFDI, NF-e, DIAN, AFIP, SII, IRS Form 8027, HMRC P11D — so the generated policy is enforceable in every jurisdiction where you operate. The persona track (CFO, controller, finance manager, head of operations, founder) reframes the same building blocks around the buyer's specific quarterly priorities. Finally, the calculator suite (per-diem, mileage, VAT-recovery, T&E benchmark, carbon, tax-id validator) gives finance teams the specific numerical inputs they need to set thresholds, justify caps, and back-test the policy against actual spend before it ships.

Cross-linking between these surfaces is deliberate, not accidental. A SaaS reader landing on the industry page is one click from the country overlay that matches their primary entity, the calculator that backs the per-diem cap they are about to commit to in writing, and the glossary entry that defines whatever IRS or SAT term they have not seen before. We measure the ratio of internal links per page weekly and refuse to publish a new landing without at least four anchors into the topical hubs. That single discipline is why a CFO can land on any page in this library and reach the policy generator in under three clicks — no matter which surface their search engine routed them through.