How do staff canteens and meal allowances work — and when do they become taxable?

If you subsidise staff meals in Ireland, the rules changed on 1 October 2025 and most employers have not caught up.

Revenue updated its guidance on the provision of staff meals in Tax and Duty Manual Part 05-01-01o. The underlying law, section 118 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, has not moved. What changed is how far the exemption reaches — and, in one case, how much more expensive a common approach has become.

This is a practical guide to where the lines now sit, and what you need to be able to prove if Revenue asks.

Key takeaways

• Canteen meals available to all staff remain exempt from benefit-in-kind. That has not changed.
• New since October 2025: meals brought onto and eaten on your premises are also exempt, provided they are available to all employees. You no longer need a formal canteen.
• Working lunches for specific groups are exempt where there is a genuine business reason, the meal is eaten on site, and the cost stays within the Civil Service day subsistence rate of €19.25 per person.
• Go over that limit and the entire cost becomes taxable, not just the excess.
• Meal vouchers are now fully taxable. The old 19c daily deduction has been removed.
• You must keep records — date, total cost and the number of employees who availed. Revenue may spot check.

The basic position

Revenue's guidance is direct: free or subsidised meals provided in a staff canteen are not a taxable benefit in kind, provided the facility is available to all employees. If the canteen is open only to certain employees, the meals become taxable benefits.

That "available to all" condition does more work than people expect. It does not require every employee to receive the same subsidy — only that the facility is open to all of them. A tiered arrangement where different groups receive different daily allowances can still sit inside the exemption, as long as nobody is excluded from access.

The meals must be provided in a staff canteen or on your premises. Third-party restaurants and cafés are outside it.

What actually changed in October 2025

Two extensions, both helpful, and one removal that is not.

Meals no longer need a canteen. Revenue now accepts that meals brought onto and consumed on the employer's premises will not be treated as a taxable BIK where they are available to all staff. As Crowleys DFK noted in its summary, "meals" is interpreted broadly — hot food, sandwiches, snacks, fruit, biscuits, tea, coffee, water, juice and soft drinks. Alcohol is excluded. This is the change that matters for smaller sites and offices with no kitchen.

Working lunches for specific groups are covered. Where there is a clear operational reason — staff must remain on site for a meeting, or people are working overtime — meals provided to a subset of employees are exempt, provided they are eaten on the premises and the cost per employee does not exceed €19.25.

Meal vouchers got worse. Grant Thornton's summary is blunt on this point: from 1 October 2025 the full value of employer-provided meal vouchers is a taxable BIK, subject to Income Tax, PRSI and USC, and the 19c deduction is gone.

That last point has a strategic consequence worth sitting with. Vouchers used to be the low-admin option. They are now the tax-inefficient one, while on-premises provision has become both broader and cheaper. If you are running a voucher scheme today, the arithmetic has changed underneath you.

The €19.25 cliff edge

The working-lunch threshold deserves particular attention, because of how it fails.

Exceed €19.25 per person and the whole cost becomes taxable — not the portion above the line. A €22 lunch does not generate a €2.75 BIK. It generates a €22 one, for every person in the room.

That is a difficult thing to control if your process is "someone orders in and finance sees the invoice three weeks later". It is straightforward if the limit is enforced at the point of purchase, so an employee simply cannot spend past their entitlement. This is the sort of thing a digital canteen account handles quietly: set the daily allowance, let the till refuse anything above it, and the compliance question never arises.

The same mechanism handles the harder case — different allowance levels for different groups, or different employers on the same site.

The records requirement

The part most employers overlook. As legal commentary on the change noted, the broader exemption comes with an evidential expectation. You need to be able to show the date refreshments were provided, the total cost, and how many employees availed of them. Revenue may conduct spot checks.

On a cash or honour-system canteen, that record does not really exist. You have supplier invoices and a guess at headcount. On a digital system it is a by-product: every transaction is already attributed to an employee, with a timestamp and a value, so the report writes itself.

If you are relying on the exemption, this is the practical reason to digitise rather than the theoretical one. Unified reporting turns a compliance exercise into a query.

What this looks like in practice

Two examples from our own deployments, both dealing with complications the guidance anticipates.

At a Johnson Controls site in Cork, catering is delivered in a multi-tenant environment — a building where more than one employer's staff use the same facility. The deployment handles digital workplace catering across that shared setting, with BaxterStorey operating the service. Shared canteens are explicitly contemplated by the rules: a facility does not have to be restricted to one employer's employees.

Evergreen Marine in the UK is the sharper version of the same problem. Two companies share one catering facility, and each wanted to fund its own employees at its own daily rate. The solution was a single white-label app that reads the employee's email domain and applies the correct allowance automatically. Two funding regimes, one counter, no manual checking — delivered through a branded staff app rather than a separate card scheme.

If your site has any of that complexity — multiple employers, contractors, different entitlement tiers, shift-based rules — the administrative burden is what makes employers give up and default to taxable cash. It does not have to be.

A note for UK sites

If you operate on both sides of the Irish Sea, the regimes are similar in shape and different in detail. In the UK, section 317 of ITEPA 2003 exempts free or subsidised canteen meals where they are available to all employees at a location. HMRC's guidance confirms two useful points: the subsidy need not be equal for every employee, and a contractor employed by one company working at another employer's site can use that site's canteen within the exemption. Cash allowances and off-site vouchers are taxable and reportable on P11D.

Different thresholds, different forms, same underlying logic — provide on site, provide to everyone, and keep records.

Where to start

1. Check whether you are running vouchers. If so, the October 2025 change has made them materially more expensive. Model the alternative.
2. Find out whether you can produce the records. Date, cost, headcount availing. If that takes more than a few minutes, you are exposed.
3. Look at how spend limits are enforced. If the answer is "we trust people", the €19.25 threshold is a live risk on working lunches.
4. Map who is actually on site. Contractors, multiple employers and mixed entitlement tiers are where schemes fall over administratively.

This is general information rather than tax advice, and thresholds change — confirm your position with your own adviser or against current Revenue guidance before acting on it.

If the operational side is what is holding you back, we work on workplace catering across shared and multi-tenant sites and are happy to talk it through.

Frequently asked questions

Are subsidised staff meals a taxable benefit in Ireland?

No, provided they are supplied in a staff canteen or on the employer's premises and the facility is available to all employees. If access is restricted to certain employees only, the meals become a taxable benefit in kind. Since 1 October 2025 the exemption also covers meals brought onto and eaten on the premises, so a formal canteen is not required.

What is the €19.25 limit for working lunches?

Where meals are provided to a specific group of employees for a genuine business reason — an on-site meeting or overtime — they are exempt if eaten on the premises and the cost per employee does not exceed €19.25, the Civil Service day subsistence rate. If the cost exceeds that figure, the full amount becomes a taxable benefit rather than just the excess.

Are meal vouchers still tax efficient?

Not in Ireland. From 1 October 2025 the full value of employer-provided meal vouchers is treated as a taxable benefit in kind for Income Tax, PRSI and USC, and the previous 19c daily deduction has been removed. On-premises provision is now the more efficient route.

Do all employees need the same meal allowance?

No. The condition is that the facility is available to all employees, not that everyone receives an identical subsidy. Different daily allowance levels for different groups can sit within the exemption provided nobody is excluded from access.

What records do I need to keep?

The date the meals or refreshments were provided, the total cost, and the number of employees who availed of them. Revenue may carry out spot checks. A digital canteen account produces this automatically because every transaction is already attributed to an individual employee.

Can two different employers share one canteen?

Yes. A canteen does not have to be restricted to a single employer's staff — shared facilities on business parks and multi-tenant buildings are contemplated by the rules. The practical difficulty is operational rather than legal: applying the right allowance to the right employer's staff at the same counter.

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