Business trips & daily allowances
Tax-free daily allowances for Estonian business trips abroad: €75 then €40 per day, calculated automatically with the trip order document generated as a PDF.
When someone travels abroad for your company — a client meeting in Helsinki, a conference in Berlin — the company can pay them a tax-free daily allowance (päevaraha) for the trip. No income tax, no social tax, no receipts needed for the allowance itself; what's needed is the paperwork around it.
Arvello records the trip, calculates the allowance at the correct rates, generates the trip order document, and tracks how much of the monthly tax-free quota each person has used. You'll find it under Expenses → Business Trips.
Logging a trip
Trip details
Enter the destination country — the list is foreign-only, since domestic trips don't qualify — an optional city, the purpose, the start and end dates, and the traveller, picked from your people list (see People).
Daily allowance
Arvello calculates the tax-free allowance automatically from the dates: how many days fall at the €75 rate, how many at €40, and the total. If the traveller has already used high-rate days on other trips this month, the calculation accounts for that.
Additional expenses
Add the trip's other costs — transport, accommodation and anything else — with receipts attached. Unlike the daily allowance, these do need documentation.
Summary and documents
Review everything and generate the trip order (lähetuskäsk) — the formal document Estonian rules expect for a business trip, listing the company, traveller, destination, purpose, dates and allowance, with a signature line for the director. Download it as a PDF for your records.
The daily allowance rules
The tax-free rates for foreign trips, as of 2026:
| Days abroad in a calendar month | Tax-free rate |
|---|---|
| First 15 days | €75 per day |
| Day 16 onwards | €40 per day |
The 15-day high-rate quota is per person per calendar month, counted across all their trips — Arvello tracks this for you, so a second trip in the same month starts from wherever the first one left off. A few more facts about how the allowance works:
- It applies to foreign trips only — there is no tax-free daily allowance for domestic travel in Estonia.
- The destination must be at least 50 km from the workplace's settlement, and the trip must involve an overnight stay.
- A written trip order is required; Arvello generates it in step 4.
- No receipts are needed for the allowance itself — it's a flat daily rate. Receipts are needed for everything else.
- Where the host covers meals, the allowance may be reduced by up to 70%.
- Anything paid above the tax-free rates is taxed as a fringe benefit.
Allowance vs salary — the numbers
Because the allowance is free of income tax and social tax, the same money in the traveller's pocket costs the company very different amounts depending on how it's paid. Take a 10-day foreign trip in a single month: 10 × €75 = €750.
| Paid as daily allowance | Paid as net salary | |
|---|---|---|
| The traveller receives | €750.00 | €750.00 |
| Gross salary required | — | €961.54 |
| Income tax (22%) | €0.00 | €211.54 |
| Social tax (33% on gross) | €0.00 | €317.31 |
| Total cost to the company | €750.00 | €1,278.85 |
The lowest total tax cost is the allowance — €528.85 less for the same €750 received. The trade-off runs the other way too: the allowance only exists for qualifying foreign trips and is capped at the daily rates, while salary has no such constraints. Arvello shows the same comparison (income tax and social tax, as above) on each trip and in the annual summary.
Approving and paying out
A logged trip starts as a Draft. When you approve it (Approve & Create Entry), Arvello posts the journal entry for the daily allowance — this can't be undone, so it's the point of commitment.
Then pay the traveller from the business account as normal. When the payment shows up in your bank feed, reconcile it as a Business Trip Allowance and pick the trip — Arvello marks it Paid. See Reconciling transactions.
Key Takeaways
- 1Foreign trips earn a tax-free daily allowance: €75/day for the first 15 days per calendar month, €40/day after
- 2The quota is per person per month across all trips — Arvello tracks it
- 3Approve the trip to post the allowance, then reconcile the bank payment to mark it paid
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