Incidental expenses (incidentals)
Small costs of business travel, such as tips to porters and hotel staff. On a hotel bill, incidentals are the extra charges added to the room.
In short
- For the IRS, incidental expenses are fees and tips to porters, baggage carriers, hotel staff and ship staff.
- GSA per diems include $5 a day for incidentals. The NJC pays a separate incidental allowance.
- Hotel incidentals are extras charged to the room, covered by a card hold at check-in.
Incidental expenses, or incidentals, are the small costs that come with travelling for work and don't fit under transport, lodging or meals. The word has two common meanings, and it helps to know which one a policy or a hotel is using.
In US travel tax rules
For tax purposes, the IRS defines incidental expenses narrowly: fees and tips given to porters, baggage carriers, hotel staff and staff on ships. A traveller who had no meal costs on a day can claim an incidental-expenses-only rate of $5 a day instead. The GSA's per diem rates for federal travel are published as meals and incidental expenses (M&IE), and each daily rate includes $5 for incidentals. At the standard M&IE rate of $68 for fiscal year 2027, that leaves $63 for meals.
In Canadian per diems
The National Joint Council's travel directive, which many Canadian employers use as a benchmark, pays an incidental expense allowance on top of the meal allowances: $25 a day as of October 1, 2026, reduced to 75% from the 31st day of a long stay. Our NJC meal allowances and GSA per diem rates pages show the current figures.
On a hotel bill
At check-in, hotels usually place a hold on the guest's card for incidentals: room service, minibar, parking, phone calls and other charges added to the room. The hold is released or adjusted at checkout. For an expense report, these charges show on the folio, the hotel's itemized bill. Many expense policies reimburse some of them, such as parking, and not others, such as the minibar.
Worked example
Four days on NJC rates
An employee travels for four days under a policy that follows the NJC directive. Besides the meal allowances, they receive the incidental expense allowance of $25 a day, $100 for the trip, without receipts for tips or small purchases. The hotel's $14 a night parking, charged to the room, is claimed separately with the folio, because the policy reimburses parking at cost.