DriveHub

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The rule people are still working from was repealed

For years, Estonia allowed a flat 64 € per month for use of a personal car with no records kept. A great deal of advice still assumes it, and some of it is recent enough to look current.

It is gone. 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.

This is worth internalising because it changes the calculation about effort. In a country with a proportionate rule, a partial record is worth something. Here it is worth nothing at all until it is complete.

What the logbook has to contain

Under Vabariigi Valitsuse määrus nr 164 § 3, per business trip:

And a decision, before the driving

Separate from the logbook and easy to overlook: there must be a written decision by the employer authorising the payment, and it has to exist beforehand. It is a document about permission rather than about driving, so no amount of careful record-keeping produces it retroactively.

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.

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 five 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.

DriveHub records each trip in the background and asks afterwards which were business. What it does not yet carry: the per-trip odometer, and the registration number on the row rather than in the header.

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 and does not know your situation. Where money is involved, ask your raamatupidaja — and bring the logbook.

The full rule for Estonia, with the instruments it comes from: mileage log requirements in Estonia.