Bewirtungskosten: Was das neue BMF-Schreiben verlangt

A business meal is booked quickly – and struck out by the tax office just as quickly. With its letter of November 19, 2025, the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) completely reworked the evidence rules for entertainment expenses (Bewirtungskosten) and aligned them with the e-invoice. What is new above all is that e-invoices and other electronic formats are now expressly covered – while one clause continues to apply unchanged that can cost you the business expense deduction in full. Here are the rules that have applied since January 1, 2025, including a checklist for your receipt.

What the new BMF letter changes

With its letter of November 19, 2025 (reference IV C 6 - S 2145/00026/005/033), the tax administration replaced the previous rules from the BMF letter of June 30, 2021. The trigger was the mandatory e-invoice for domestic B2B transactions, introduced by the Wachstumschancengesetz as of January 1, 2025. Incidentally, handling the entertainment invoice and the self-issued receipt purely digitally was already possible under the 2021 letter – what is new is the inclusion of the e-invoice and further electronic formats.

Important for application: the new letter applies to entertainment from January 1, 2025 onwards. For older entertainment up to December 31, 2024, the previous version remains authoritative. So if you are currently working on your 2025 annual accounts, the new rules already apply to you in full.

The core has stayed the same: under § 4 (5) sentence 1 no. 2 EStG, you can deduct expenses for entertaining business partners only up to 70 percent as a business expense, to the extent they are reasonable. The remaining 30 percent are not deductible for tax purposes. What is genuinely new concerns above all the form in which the invoice may exist. The principles for providing evidence and for linking the invoice and the self-issued receipt digitally already applied under the 2021 letter – they have now been supplemented by the e-invoice.

Watch out for a common misconception: the 70-percent reduction only concerns income tax and corporate income tax. For VAT purposes, input VAT remains deductible in full under § 15 (1a) UStG, to the extent the expenses are reasonable and substantiated and a proper invoice within the meaning of §§ 14, 14a UStG exists. So you post 100 percent input VAT and only reduce the expense.

The five mandatory entries on your own receipt

Independently of the restaurant's invoice, you have to produce written evidence yourself – the classic entertainment receipt (Bewirtungsbeleg) or self-issued receipt (Eigenbeleg). It must contain:

• Place of the entertainment
• Date of the entertainment
• Participants – every person entertained, by name, including yourself
• Occasion of the entertainment – specific and verifiable
• Amount of the expenses

If the entertainment takes place in a restaurant, this is reduced under § 4 (5) sentence 1 no. 2 sentence 3 EStG and R 4.10 (8) sentence 2 EStR to occasion and participants – place, date, and amount already follow from the invoice you attach.

Two formalities are regularly overlooked in practice: according to settled case law of the Federal Fiscal Court (BFH), the entries must be made promptly (BFH judgment of March 25, 1988, III R 96/85). And the self-issued receipt must be signed by the taxpayer (BFH judgment of January 15, 1998, IV R 81/96). A bulk exercise in February covering the whole previous year satisfies neither requirement.

What "occasion" actually means

Wordings such as "business meal", "working lunch", or "client meeting" are too general for the tax administration. It wants to be able to see which specific business matter lay behind the entertainment. So write "coordination of framework agreement for 2027 deliveries with Müller GmbH" rather than "meeting". The effort for that one extra half-sentence is minimal; the risk without it is the entire deduction.

What has to appear on the entertainment invoice

The BMF lists the mandatory content of the restaurant's invoice in detail:

• Name and address of the entertainment business
• Tax number or VAT identification number – not required for small-amount invoices
• Date of issue
• Sequential invoice number, assigned only once – likewise not required for small-amount invoices. Mandatory entries under § 6 KassenSichV, such as the transaction number, remain unaffected.
• Description of the service with quantity and type of food and drinks. A blanket entry of "food and drinks" plus a total is expressly not sufficient. Designations such as "Menu 1", "Dish of the day 2", or "lunch buffet", as well as self-explanatory abbreviations, are accepted by the BMF.
• Date of supply, i.e. the day of the entertainment. A reference such as "date of supply equals invoice date" is sufficient. Handwritten additions or a date stamp are expressly not enough.
• Invoice amount
• Name of the host – i.e. your name or that of your company. This applies to invoice amounts above 250 euros, not to small-amount invoices.

The 250-euro threshold is therefore the decisive one: up to that amount, a small-amount invoice meeting the requirements of § 33 UStDV is sufficient. Above it, the tax administration requires the full set of entries, including your name on the invoice.

Documenting tips correctly

If the tip is not shown separately on the invoice, the burden of proof lies with you. The BMF names a simple route: have the recipient acknowledge the tip on the invoice. A handwritten note with the amount and the server's signature is enough and takes ten seconds.

Till receipts, TSE, and the new correction route

If the entertainment business uses an electronic recording system with a till function within the meaning of § 146a (1) AO in conjunction with § 1 KassenSichV, the tax administration only recognizes invoices that are machine-generated, electronically recorded, and secured by a certified technical security device (TSE). In that case, a handwritten slip from a receipt pad is worthless. If the business uses no electronic till at all – Germany still has no general obligation to operate a cash register – a handwritten invoice combined with your self-issued receipt remains permissible.

The good news is the protection of legitimate expectations: you may generally rely on the invoice having been properly generated if the receipt carries a transaction number, the serial number of the recording system, or the serial number of the security module. These entries may also appear as a QR code. So you do not have to check whether the restaurant's till is configured correctly.

New and practically relevant: for a total amount above 250 euros, the entertainment business may first issue an "other invoice" in the form of a till receipt and subsequently correct it by an e-invoice. This solves the problem that the restaurant does not yet have all the details for a complete e-invoice at the table.

If the TSE fails, the till may continue to operate provided the failure is clearly marked on the receipt – for example with a note such as "TSE failure" (BMF letter of November 19, 2025; see also the AEAO on § 146a). A merely missing transaction number is not sufficient for this.

Digital entertainment receipts: the real progress

The most important part of the new letter concerns fully digital processing. The tax administration now expressly accepts:

• The invoice as an e-invoice under § 14 (1) sentences 3 and 6 UStG, or as an other invoice under § 14 (1) sentence 4 UStG in a different electronic format.
• Digitization of a paper invoice by you – the classic scan or a photo taken with a receipt app.
• The digitally created or digitized self-issued receipt. Instead of a signature on paper, an electronic signature or an electronic approval of the entries is sufficient. Condition: the entries must not be capable of undocumented subsequent change.

The linking trap

The self-issued receipt and the entertainment invoice must be brought together digitally. A reference from the self-issued receipt to the invoice or till receipt is enough. Any electronic link is permitted – a unique index, a barcode, or a link within a document management system.

And then comes the sentence worth remembering – it already appeared in the 2021 letter and continues to apply unchanged: if no entertainment receipt can be assigned to an entertainment invoice, the required entries have not been provided and the business expense deduction is to be denied. Ensuring the assignment is expressly your responsibility. A restaurant invoice that ends up in your filing without a self-issued receipt is therefore lost for tax purposes – even if the entertainment was clearly business-related.

Mixed filing remains permitted: if you keep the invoice digitally and the self-issued receipt on paper, the same applies – but the unambiguous assignment of the documents from both files must be guaranteed at all times. In practice this is the most error-prone variant. Whoever can should keep both digitally.

Non-cash payment, meal vouchers, and entertainment abroad

The BMF expressly regulates three special cases:

• Later non-cash payment: if the entertainment is invoiced after the day of the entertainment and paid by non-cash means – typical for closed events with a larger group – a till receipt is not mandatory. The payment document must be attached to the invoice, unless the non-cash payment method is already noted on the invoice.
• Meal vouchers: if you issue meal vouchers for guests of your business, against which they are entertained in a restaurant at your expense, the settlement statement for the vouchers is sufficient.
• Entertainment abroad: in principle the same requirements apply. If you credibly show that a detailed, machine-generated invoice was not obtainable, the tax administration accepts the foreign invoice in exceptional cases. For a handwritten foreign invoice, you have to credibly show that the country in question has no obligation to produce machine-generated receipts.

GoBD and process documentation

Under the BMF letter, the evidence requirements are deemed satisfied among other things if you comply with the GoBD (BMF letter of November 28, 2019, last amended on July 14, 2025) and describe the procedures used in a process documentation (Verfahrensdokumentation).

This is not a marginal formality but the bracket around everything above: anyone working digitally needs a short description of how receipts are captured, linked, authorized, and archived in an unalterable way. For a small business that is one or two pages. In a tax audit it is often the difference between a follow-up question and an estimated assessment. How digital archiving works in detail is covered in our article on receipt archiving under the GoBD; the basics on invoice formats are in the article on the e-invoicing obligation 2025/2026.

Your checklist for the next business meal

1. Ask the restaurant for an invoice – machine-generated, with transaction number or QR code, with individual line items instead of "food and drinks".
2. Above a total of 250 euros: have your company name put on the invoice.
3. Have the tip acknowledged on the invoice.
4. Record the occasion and participants on the same day – ideally straight into your receipt app.
5. Approve or sign the self-issued receipt electronically.
6. Link the self-issued receipt and the invoice unambiguously so the assignment stays traceable.
7. In the books: 70 percent of the expense deductible, 30 percent non-deductible, input VAT at 100 percent.

Have your entertainment receipts posted safely

Entertainment expenses are a classic in tax audits – not because entrepreneurs cheat, but because seven formalities hang on a single receipt. At Buchführungsheld, real bookkeepers send you a query before an incomplete entertainment receipt ends up in your books, and make sure the invoice and self-issued receipt are archived and linked in a GoBD-compliant way. You photograph the receipt, we handle the rest at a fixed price. If you want to know what that looks like for your business specifically, book a free initial consultation.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of entertainment expenses is deductible?

For entertainment on a business occasion, 70 percent of the reasonable expenses are deductible as a business expense (§ 4 (5) sentence 1 no. 2 EStG), 30 percent are not. Independently of that, input VAT is fully deductible under § 15 (1a) UStG, provided a proper invoice exists.

Is a till receipt enough as an entertainment receipt?

If the entertainment business uses an electronic recording system within the meaning of § 146a AO, then only if the receipt is machine-generated, electronically recorded, secured by a certified technical security device, and contains the entries required by § 6 KassenSichV. Up to 250 euros it then counts as a proper small-amount invoice under § 33 UStDV. If the business works without an electronic till at all, a handwritten invoice still suffices. On top of that, you always need the self-issued receipt with the occasion and participants.

May I keep the entertainment receipt entirely digitally?

Yes. The invoice and the self-issued receipt may exist digitally; the BMF letter of November 19, 2025 additionally covers e-invoices and other electronic formats expressly. The self-issued receipt has to be signed or approved electronically, subsequent changes must be documented, and both documents must be unambiguously linked to one another.

What happens if the self-issued receipt is missing?

Then the business expense deduction for that entertainment is to be denied. The BMF expressly clarifies that the required entries have not been provided if no entertainment receipt can be assigned to an entertainment invoice. Responsibility for the assignment lies with you.

From what amount does my name have to appear on the invoice?

From an invoice amount above 250 euros. Up to 250 euros, a small-amount invoice under § 33 UStDV is sufficient, for which neither the host's name nor the restaurant's tax number nor a sequential invoice number is required.