Home office and commute: two separate worlds
Hybrid working has become everyday life for many — a few days in the office, a few days at home. For tax purposes you have to keep these two situations neatly apart, because different lump sums apply to the commute and to the home office. Whoever combines both cleverly gets the maximum out of their deductible expenses.
You can see directly in the commuter allowance calculator how your in-office days affect your expenses by adjusting the number of working days there.
The commuter allowance only applies to travel days
You can only claim the distance allowance of €0.38 per kilometre (as of 2026) for the days on which you actually travelled to your primary place of work. A home-office day is not a travel day — no commute arises on such a day and therefore no distance allowance.
In practice this means: if you work from home on two of five weekdays, your travel days drop from around 220 to about 132 a year. This is exactly the number you should enter into the calculation.
The home-office lump sum offsets a lot
For the days at home there is the home-office lump sum: €6 per day, for at most 210 days a year, i.e. a maximum of €1,260. It also applies if you do not have a separate study but work, for example, at the kitchen table.
Important: for one and the same calendar day you can claim either the commuter allowance or the home-office lump sum — not both. On a day when you drive to the office in the morning and continue working from home in the evening, the commuter allowance usually counts because the commute is the larger item.
A worked example
Let us assume you live 30 kilometres from work and work three days a week in the office (about 132 travel days) and two days at home (about 88 days).
- Commuter allowance: 30 km × €0.38 × 132 days = €1,504.80
- Home-office lump sum: €6 × 88 days = €528
- Together: €2,032.80 in deductible expenses
This puts you clearly above the employee lump sum of €1,230, so the effort pays off for tax. Try out different combinations of in-office and home-office days in the commuter allowance calculator to find your optimal result.
Common mistakes with hybrid working
The most common mistake is claiming the full commuter allowance for all 220 working days, even though some of them were spent in the home office. The tax office may request proof of your office days if it has queries — for example a confirmation from your employer or a calendar. Stay honest and realistic here.
Conclusion
Home office and the commuter allowance do not exclude each other; they complement each other. Whoever enters the travel days correctly and uses the home-office lump sum for the days at home often ends up with higher deductible expenses than they first thought. Run through your personal combination with the commuter allowance calculator and transfer the result to your tax return.