MilesheetIreland 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 electric cars slotted into a petrol row.
Update, April 2026: the UK approved rate for cars and vans rose from 45p to 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles. The 25p rate above that, and the 5p passenger payment, are unchanged. This post describes the position as it stood when it was written.
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. Bands by cubic centimetres, with a low band, a middle band and a band for larger engines. A bigger engine attracts a higher rate per kilometre.
Distance already travelled this year. The rate falls as your annual business distance rises, in several steps rather than Britain's single one at 10,000 miles.
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: an electric car is assigned to one of the middle engine capacity bands, on the basis that its running costs sit roughly there.
It is a workaround, and it is at least explicit. Britain, by contrast, simply applies the same approved rate to an electric car as to a diesel, which is more generous to the EV driver and 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's cliff at 10,000 miles is a single event you can plan around. Ireland's taper is gentler and more continuous, which is arguably fairer and 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 | Several | Several | One, at 10,000 miles |
| Electric vehicles | Assigned a petrol band | Uplift on the table figure | Same rate as any car |
| Employee claims shortfall | No direct equivalent | Deduction on the return | Yes, Mileage Allowance Relief |
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 steps down 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 in April.
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.
