Federal Travel Regulation (FTR); Relocation Allowance-Temporary Quarters Subsistence Expenses (TQSE)

<RULE> GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION <CFR>41 CFR Parts 300-3, 302-6, and 302-17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FTR Case 2022-02; Docket No. GSA-FTR-2022-0012, Sequence No. 2]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3090-AK63</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Travel Regulation (FTR); Relocation Allowance—Temporary Quarters Subsistence Expenses (TQSE)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Government-wide Policy (OGP), General Services Administration (GSA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The United States (U.S.) General Services Administration (GSA) is issuing a final rule amending the Federal Travel Regulation (FTR) with respect to temporary quarters subsistence expenses (TQSE) allowances. Changes include implementing a third TQSE methodology, redefining the current TQSE methods, lowering the percentage multipliers for calculating TQSE maximum daily amounts, and prohibiting adjustments to TQSE percentage multipliers for househunting days. The final rule also exempts temporary quarters (TQ) located in Presidentially-Declared Disaster areas from the “reasonable proximity” requirement and allows agencies to authorize TQSE at the applicable locality per diem allowance or authorize actual expenses on an individual basis. This rule establishes an exception to authorizing actual expenses on an individual basis by which agencies can issue a blanket actual expense authorization for employees authorized to occupy TQ in Presidentially-Declared Disaster areas. The final rule will also update and clarify some TQSE sections and rearrange them into a more sequential order. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective June 6, 2024. <E T="03">Applicability Date:</E> This rule is applicable for relocations authorized after June 30, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For clarification of content, contact Mr. Rodney (Rick) Miller, Program Analyst, Office of Government-wide Policy, at 202-501-3822 or <E T="03">travelpolicy@gsa.gov.</E> For information pertaining to status or publication schedules, contact the Regulatory Secretariat Division at 202-501-4755 or <E T="03">GSARegSec@gsa.gov.</E> Please cite FTR Case 2022-02. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> GSA published a proposed rule at 88 FR 33067 on May 23, 2023, which proposed changes to the FTR with respect to TQSE allowances. This rule finalizes those proposed changes as summarized above, and as set forth in greater detail below. Pursuant to 5 United States Code (U.S.C.) 5738, the Administrator of General Services is authorized to prescribe regulations necessary to implement laws regarding Federal employees when assigned a temporary change of station (TCS) or when otherwise transferred in the interest of the Government. The overall implementing authority is the FTR, codified in title 41 of the Code of Federal Regulations, chapters 300 through 304. GSA's Office of Government-wide Policy (OGP) continually reviews and adjusts policies and regulations under its purview to address current Government relocation needs and incorporate best practices, where appropriate, as a part of its ongoing mission to provide policies for travel by Federal civilian employees and others authorized to travel at Government expense. Each year, the Federal Government spends more than $1.2 billion on relocation allowances to reimburse an average of 28,800 employees for their related expenses. Federal agencies can offer relocation allowances as an incentive to assist with defraying some of the costs for relocating individuals. The FTR provides regulatory procedures for certain mandatory and discretionary relocation allowances depending on the individual's type of movement. Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 5724a(c) and 5737(a)(5), an employee transferred in the interest of the Government may be authorized a TQSE allowance to reimburse the employee and the employee's immediate family members for subsistence expenses incurred when it is necessary to occupy TQ. TQSE may be authorized for the following transfers: between official duty stations within the U.S.; from a foreign area to an official duty station in the U.S.; or assignment to a temporary official station and/or permanently assigned to a temporary official station within the U.S. Agencies may offer two existing methods of TQSE: TQSE-actual expense (TQSE-AE) or TQSE-lump sum (TQSE-LS). From fiscal years 2018 to 2022, Federal agencies have approved about 12,000 TQSE claims annually for employees who relocated, with agencies identifying TQSE-AE as the more utilized reimbursement method. Under the TQSE-AE method, the employee is reimbursed the cost of their actual subsistence expenses not to exceed the authorized maximum allowable amount. The TQSE-AE method uses the standard continental United States (CONUS) per diem rate or the outside the continental United States (OCONUS) non-foreign area per diem rate as the applicable per diem rate based on the TQ location. The employee and each of the employee's immediate family members receives a percentage of that rate. The rate is applied to the first 30-day increment of occupying TQ and a reduced rate is applied after 30 days. Occupancy of TQ may extend up to the statutory maximum of 120 consecutive days. The employee documents their incurred daily allowable expenses, which may include: TQ lodging, including taxes; meals and/or groceries; fees and tips incident to meals and TQ lodging; and laundry/dry cleaning of clothes. The employee provides TQ lodging receipt(s) and a receipt for every expense over $75, for each 30-day period of TQ occupancy. In 2005, the Governmentwide Relocation Advisory Board (GRAB), which included representatives from Government agencies, private-sector corporate relocation departments, relocation industry associations, and/or relocation industry service providers, mentioned in its “Findings and Recommendations” that the TQSE-AE method is administratively burdensome and time-consuming for employees, travel examiners, and certifying officials. Since 1966, Title 5 of the U.S. Code has provided authority for agencies to reimburse TQSE in connection with an employee transferred in the interest of the Government. At that time, only one per diem rate was used within CONUS—the standard CONUS rate. Since that time, however, GSA began establishing CONUS non-standard area (NSA) per diem rates for areas where the standard CONUS rate was insufficient. Currently, Federal agencies have employees assigned to offices and military bases in CONUS NSAs where the standard CONUS rate is insufficient for obtaining TQ lodging and meals under the TQSE-AE method. This is particularly true for single employees. Accordingly, for TQSE-AE and all TQSE methods, the final rule will allow for CONUS NSA per diem rates to be used as an applicable per diem rate to calculate TQSE, depending upon where TQ will be occupied. This final rule will also clarify that there is no requirement to separate maximum amounts for TQ lodging and M&IE in calculating TQSE-AE reimbursement. Accordingly, the separate allowances for TQ lodging and M&IE may be combined to produce a single maximum daily amount (which will allow some of the M&IE rate to offset the TQ lodging cost). Agencies can still ensure that an employee is not overcompensated by using the single maximum daily amount while also accounting for the rate change after 30 days in TQ. Under the TQSE-LS method, agencies may offer a lump sum amount based on the standard CONUS, CONUS NSA, or OCONUS non-foreign area per diem rates, as appropriate, depending on the locality of the old and/or new official stations and wherever TQ will be occupied. Under this reimbursement method, a percentage of the maximum applicable per diem rate is paid to the employee and the employee's immediate family members for a maximum of 30 days of TQSE. Under TQSE-LS, there is no requirement to document and itemize expenses; however, the employee must certify that they occupied TQ. To improve employees' relocation experience and assist agencies in processing relocation expenses reimbursement, GSA is implementing a third method of TQSE titled “temporary quarters subsistence expenses-lodgings plus” (TQSE-LP). This third method will be the preferred TQSE reimbursement method for agencies to offer to employees; however, agencies may continue to offer TQSE-AE and/or TQSE-LS as an alternative. In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 5724a(h), TQSE-LP must follow the limitations prescribed for payments of subsistence expenses under 5 U.S.C. 5702. TQSE-LP is in line with 5 U.S.C. 5702 which entitles an employee who performs official business away from their official station, a per diem allowance, reimbursement for actual and necessary expenses, or a combination of both. The FTR implements the “combination of both” statutory language by utilizing the temporary duty (TDY) “lodgings-plus per diem” methodology, which entitles an employee to reimbursement of actual lodging expenses up to a maximum amount by locality area, as supported by receipts, and a meals and incidental expense (M&IE) allowance, which may be reimbursed without itemization or receipts. Accordingly, the new TQSE-LP method will follow similar principles as the TDY travel “lodgings-plus” method of per diem for reimbursement of TQSE under Chapter 302. A difference between TDY lodgings-plus and TQSE-LP is that the TDY per diem allowance excludes lodging taxes and laundry/dry cleaning expenses from the per diem rates in CONUS and allows the traveler to claim them as a separate TDY miscellaneous expense under part 301-12. However, part 302-6 does not contain or adopt by reference the provisions of Chapter 301 permitting recovery of these types of miscellaneous expenses, nor are lodging taxes and laundry/dry cleaning expenses included in part 302-16. Th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 65k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━