MilometryIreland pays by engine size, and by how far you have already gone
The civil service motor travel rates are a grid, not a rate: engine capacity down one side, distance bands across the other, and EVs in a petrol row.
Information générale, pas un conseil. Rédigé à titre d’information générale et exact à notre connaissance au 27 septembre 2026. Les règles fiscales changent et leur application dépend de votre situation. Ceci n’est pas un conseil fiscal, juridique ou financier : vérifiez auprès d’un expert-comptable, d’un conseiller fiscal ou de l’administration fiscale avant de vous y fier.
Ireland sits closer to France than to Britain, which surprises people who assume a shared border and a shared language imply a shared system.
The civil service rates
Irish business mileage is reimbursed by reference to the civil service motor travel rates. They were designed for public sector travel and have become the benchmark the private sector uses, because Revenue accepts reimbursement at those rates as tax free.
The table has two axes, like the French one.
Engine capacity. Three bands by cubic centimetres: up to 1,200cc, 1,201cc to 1,500cc, and 1,501cc and over. A bigger engine attracts a higher rate per kilometre.
Distance already travelled this year. Four bands of annual business kilometres, counted over the calendar year, rather than Britain's single step at 10,000 miles. The rate does not simply fall as you go: the second band (1,501 to 5,500 km) pays considerably more per kilometre than the first, and the rate then drops sharply above 5,500 km and again above 25,000 km.
So the rate applying to a given journey depends on the car you drove it in and on how much you had already driven that year. The same route in January and in November can be worth different amounts.
Electric cars borrow a petrol row
Ireland's handling of electric vehicles is pragmatic rather than principled: a fully electric car is claimed at the rates for the 1,201cc to 1,500cc band, the middle one. Hybrids are claimed at the rates for their equivalent engine capacity.
It is a workaround, and it is at least explicit. Britain, by contrast, simply applies the same approved rate (55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles from 6 April 2026, then 25p) to an electric car as to a diesel, which is less defensible as a costing exercise.
Why this is not the British system
The differences that bite:
Reimbursement, not relief. Like Spain, the Irish mechanism is about what an employer can pay tax free. There is no direct Irish equivalent of claiming the shortfall yourself when an employer underpays.
No single number. You cannot quote "the Irish rate" any more than you can quote "the French rate". You quote a cell.
Several steps, not one. Britain has a single step at 10,000 miles. Ireland has four distance bands that go up before they come down, which is definitely harder to do in your head.
The grid, in outline
| Ireland | France | UK | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depends on the car | Yes, engine capacity | Yes, fiscal horsepower | No |
| Bands by annual distance | Four | Several | One, at 10,000 miles |
| Electric vehicles | 1,201cc to 1,500cc rates | Uplift on the table figure | Same rate as any car |
| Employee relief on a shortfall | No direct equivalent | Deduction on the return | Yes, Mileage Allowance Relief (tax relief on the gap) |
What to record
The Irish requirement is unremarkable and identical in substance to everywhere else: date, destination, purpose, distance, contemporaneously.
The wrinkle is the running total. Because the rate changes band as the year progresses, an Irish log that does not keep an accurate cumulative distance cannot value its own journeys. That is a good argument for something that keeps the total for you rather than a spreadsheet you tot up at the end of the year.
Sources
- Civil service rates (Revenue)
- Travel and subsistence (Revenue)
- Travel, mileage and fuel rates and allowances (HMRC), for the British comparison
General information for drivers in Ireland and the UK, not tax advice. The civil service rates are revised: take your figure from the current Revenue table.
