Country guide · Denmark

Denmark's mileage rules sit in two bekendtgørelser, and they are not the same document

By Andrei Zamiralov · Updated 25 Sep 2026

One order from 2000 says what the voucher behind a tax-free kørselsgodtgørelse must contain. Another, from 2025, sets the rates and bans the allowance for a company car. Quote one for the other's content and the citation is wrong.

The short answer

Denmark's kørselsgodtgørelse rules in 2026: 3,94 kr/km up to 20 000 km per employer, a voucher with seven items that is checked before payment, and nothing tax-free for a company car. Two orders set them:

• BEK nr. 173 af 13/03/2000, Bekendtgørelse om rejse- og befordringsgodtgørelse, says what the voucher must contain. There are seven items in § 2 stk. 2, and the employer has to check the claim before paying it.
• BEK nr. 1333 af 20/11/2025, Bekendtgørelse om Skatterådets satser for 2026…, sets the rates: 3,94 kr/km up to 20 000 km and 2,28 after it, counted per employer. Its § 11 forbids a tax-free allowance for a company car.

Two orders with two numbers, doing two jobs. A common slip is to quote one for the other's content, for example by putting BEK 173's title on BEK 1333's number. The safe habit is to write both numbers every time either is named.

Why do the two orders get confused?

Both are bekendtgørelser, both are about driving, and anybody looking up Danish kørselsgodtgørelse meets both on the same page. They differ in almost every other way.

BEK 173 is from 2000, and it is still the operative rule. Skattestyrelsen's Den juridiske vejledning states it as the operative rule in its 2026-2 edition, so the 2000 text is current law, confirmed as recently as 2026. BEK 1333 carries the year's rates, and its title names the Skatterådet's rates for 2026 and says nothing about vouchers.

A text that names BEK 1333 as the rule on "rejse- og befordringsgodtgørelse" has taken the older order's title and put it on the newer order's number. A text that cites BEK 173 for 3,94 kr has done the opposite. Neither is a small slip. A reader who follows the citation lands on a document that does not say what was claimed.

BEK 173: what the voucher must contain

The document the Danish rule addresses is the bogføringsbilag, the accounting voucher behind the payment, not a logbook the driver keeps. BEK 173 § 2 stk. 2 lists seven items:

• The recipient's name, address and CPR number
• The business purpose of the driving
• The date
• The destination, with any intermediate stops (delmål)
• The number of kilometres driven
• The rates applied
• The calculation of the allowance

And one requirement about timing rather than content: "arbejdsgiverens kontrol er sket inden udbetalingen". The employer's check has to happen before the payment. A check made afterwards does not cure it.

The seven items, the 60-day rule and the five-year retention period are covered in the voucher and the 60-day rule.

BEK 1333: the rates, the threshold and the bar

BEK 1333 is where the numbers are.

• § 4: 3,94 kr/km for the first 20 000 km of the year, and 2,28 kr/km after that, for an employee driving their own car.
• § 10: the threshold "gælder kun for den enkelte arbejdsgiver". It applies per employer, so two jobs mean two thresholds. Skattestyrelsen applies the same split to a sole trader's own deduction. Its English page and form 04.023 both print it, even though the rule that states it is written for employees.
• § 11: "Der kan ikke udbetales skattefri befordringsgodtgørelse, når arbejdsgiveren har stillet firmabil til rådighed for den ansatte, medmindre det dokumenteres, at kørslen er foretaget i den ansattes egen bil."

§ 11 is a prohibition, not a gap. Where the employer provides a firmabil there is no tax-free figure to look up, and typing a custom rate does not create one. The same driver is not asked for a logbook either. "Der kan normalt ikke stilles krav om, at den ansatte fører en egentlig kørebog" (JV C.A.5.14.1.11).

Kørselsgodtgørelse: which order answers which question

The easiest way to keep the two apart is to know which question each one answers.

What neither order answers is how long to keep the voucher. That is bogføringsloven, LOV nr. 700 af 24/05/2022, § 12 stk. 1: five years from the end of the financial year the material relates to. It sits in a bookkeeping act rather than a tax order, which makes three documents in all.

Norway has the same kind of trap in another form: two documents, a travel claim and a kjørebok, that look interchangeable and are not. See reiseregning or elektronisk kjørebok.

What getting it wrong costs

A wrong citation costs nothing by itself. A wrong voucher does. Missing or insufficient documentation under BEK 173 makes the whole allowance ordinary taxable salary. The payment is reclassified, rather than the deduction reduced. Under BEK 1333 § 11, an allowance paid to a firmabil driver was never tax-free to begin with.

Where DriveHub fits the voucher

The seven items fit on a paper form. What software changes is which of them survives a year. Nobody loses the rate. What goes missing is the exact date, the destination of one visit out of two hundred, and the business purpose in your own words, not reconstructed from a calendar.

DriveHub records each drive in the background and asks afterwards which were business. The report carries BEK 173's list: the name, address and CPR number in the identity block, your own wording for the purpose, the date, the destination, the kilometres, the rate and the calculation. It prices the drives at BEK 1333's rates and counts the 20 000 km threshold separately for each employer.

What it does not print is the delmål, an intermediate stop. The report says so on its face instead of carrying a column that would be empty on every row.

This page states what the two bekendtgørelser say, and numbers both so you can check. It is not tax advice. It can't account for your circumstances. Where money is involved, ask your revisor, and bring the bilag.

Longer reads

• Denmark asks an employee for no odometer at all, and a sole trader for four readings per trip
• Set up automatic tracking so nothing goes missing
• How to keep a mileage log: four ways, checked against what tax offices ask for