The standard meal allowance rate for 2010 is $1.17 breakfast, $2.21 lunch/supper and $.66 snack. The rates for Alaska and Hawaii are higher (ask me if you want to know). If you use this method you don't have to save any food receipts.

The reason providers have the standard meal allowance rate is because I lobbied the IRS to adopt it! The change happened in 2003. Providers always had a hard time keeping all their food receipts and trying to figure out how much was business food. So I proposed to the IRS that they allow a standard meal allowance rate and they accepted it. They figured it saves providers over a million hours of record keeping each year.

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