DriveHubCountry guide · Estonia
Being paid for your own car in Estonia — the 64 € a month that no longer exists
The rule people are still working from was repealed
Until 2014, Estonia allowed a flat 64 € per month for use of a personal car with no records kept. It was repealed on 1 September 2014 (RT I, 26.08.2014, 8), yet a great deal of advice still assumes it.
What replaced it has no soft edge at all.
The rule is absolute, not proportionate
Most countries reduce your deduction when the records are thin. Estonia does not. The Maksu- ja Tolliamet states it in one sentence:
"Kui isikliku sõiduauto kasutamise hüvitist makstakse ilma arvestust pidamata, on väljamakse näol tegemist palgatuluga."
Paid without records, the payment is salary — the whole of it, with the tax that follows, not a smaller tax-free amount.
That changes the calculation about effort. In a country with a proportionate rule, a partial record still earns part of the claim. Here only a complete record keeps the payment tax-free.
What the logbook has to contain
Under Vabariigi Valitsuse määrus nr 164 § 4:
Once, for the record as a whole:
- The name of the person using the car
- The registration number
And for each business trip:
- The odometer reading at the start and at the end
- The date
- The purpose of the trip
§ 4 says iga sõidu korral — for each trip — only for the last two points. The driver and the plate belong to the record, not to every row.
And a written decision by the employer
Separate from the logbook and easy to overlook: the payment needs a written decision by the employer (§ 3) naming you, the amount, and the date or period of the trips it pays for. It pays for trips already made — the tax board's handbook says a tax-free payment cannot be made for future trips — and one decision may cover more than a calendar month. The logbook cannot stand in for it: it is the employer's document, not the driver's.
If you are the employer as well as the driver — a common shape for a one-person OÜ — this still applies to you. Write the decision. How that works when you are both owner and board member is in autokompensatsioon in your own OÜ.
One more trap in the paperwork
Since the RT I, 02.07.2025 amendment, the regulation no longer contains the rate. § 5 now cross-refers to TuMS § 13 lg 3 p 2. So a page quoting määrus 164 for the euro figure is quoting a text that no longer states one — the logbook requirements are still there, the number is not.
For 2026 the figure is 0.50 € per kilometre.
Why an app rather than a notebook
Nothing above requires software; a notebook with those fields is compliant. What software changes is the failure mode — and where the rule is all-or-nothing, the failure mode is the only thing that matters. What goes missing is the date as it actually was, the purpose of a trip in February, the start of the drive. Whether a log kept by an app or a GPS tracker counts is answered in is a GPS or app sõidupäevik accepted in Estonia?
DriveHub files most trips as Business or Personal by your places, past routes and working hours, and asks you about the rest. The report prints the date, the purpose in your own words and the odometer at the start and end of each trip (a carried-forward figure is marked ≈). On a report for one car, the driver and the registration number appear once in the header, which is where § 4 puts them.
The one thing it cannot produce is the employer's written decision. Only the employer can write it, naming you, the amount and the period of the trips it pays for.
This page states what the regulation and the tax board's own handbook say, and names them so you can check. It is not tax advice. It can't account for your circumstances. Where money is involved, ask your raamatupidaja — and bring the logbook.
Do it in DriveHub
Employment dates, different rates and trips for more than one job.
The full rule for Estonia, with the instruments it comes from: mileage log requirements in Estonia.