Federal Travel Regulation (FTR); Relocation Allowances-Miscellaneous Expenses Allowance

<RULE> GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION <CFR>41 CFR Part 302-16</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FTR Case 2022-04 Docket No. GSA-FTR-2023-0017, Sequence No. 2]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3090-AK65</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Travel Regulation (FTR); Relocation Allowances—Miscellaneous Expenses Allowance</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) to remove the relocation miscellaneous expenses allowance (MEA) lump sum amounts from the FTR. These lump sum amounts will be published in FTR Bulletins on an intermittent basis, much like what is done for per diem and mileage rates. The relocation MEA actual expense (as opposed to lump sum) amounts are unchanged and will remain in the FTR. This final rule also updates the types of expenses that may or may not be reimbursed by relocation MEA when employees itemize under actual expense. Additionally, this final rule updates and clarifies other relocation MEA regulatory sections and rearranges them into a more sequential order. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective January 15, 2025. </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 (OGP), 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 2022-04. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> GSA published a proposed rule at 89 FR 4268 on January 23, 2024, which proposed FTR changes to relocation MEA. 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 OGP continually reviews and adjusts policies and regulations under its purview to address Government relocation needs and to 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. Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 5724a(f) and 5737(a)(6), an employee transferred in the interest of the Government from one official station to another, assigned to a TCS location, or who has completed a TCS assignment and returned to their previous official station is authorized a relocation MEA. The purpose of the relocation MEA is to defray some of the costs incurred due to relocating. The allowance is related to expenses that are common to living quarters, such as fees for disconnecting and connecting appliances; cutting and fitting rugs, draperies, and curtains moved from one residence to another; utility fees or deposits that are not offset by eventual refunds; forfeiture of medical, dental, and other non-transferrable contracts; and the cost of changing automobile registration(s) and driver's licenses. The FTR provides that a relocation MEA may be paid using one of two methods: lump sum or actual expense. Under the lump sum method, the agency pays a lump sum amount without requiring employee documentation of expenses. Under the current regulatory language, the lump sum amounts are “either $650 or the equivalent of one week's basic gross pay, whichever is the lesser amount” for an employee without immediate family members relocating with them, and “$1300 or the equivalent of two weeks' basic gross pay, whichever is the lesser amount” for an employee with immediate family members relocating with them. Under the actual expense method, the agency may authorize the employee to claim actual costs depending on the type of expenses incurred, in an amount in excess of the prescribed lump sum amount. The employee justifies any actual expenses by itemizing with supporting documentation. Reimbursement is limited to one or two weeks' basic gross pay depending on whether or not the employee has immediate family relocating with them, not to exceed the maximum rate payable for a position at GS-13, Step 10, of the General Schedule (base) (see 5 U.S.C. 5332). This final rule amends the FTR by removing the relocation MEA lump sum amounts from the FTR and directing readers to an FTR bulletin with the relocation MEA lump sum amounts. GSA will publish the initial FTR bulletin with the relocation MEA lump sum amounts concurrent with the final rule's effective date. Agencies are advised that the relocation MEA lump sum amounts are expected to increase since they were last updated in 2011. Moving forward, GSA will publish FTR bulletins to update the relocation MEA lump sum amounts, as needed, based on changes to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The final rule also clarifies in the regulatory text that “basic gross pay”, as referenced in FTR part 302-16, does not include “locality pay.” See 5 U.S.C. 5302 and 5304. This final rule also updates and clarifies the relocation MEA sections in the FTR and rearranges them into a more sequential order, to include replacing the table at FTR § 302-16.2 with an updated list of examples for which the relocation MEA may be authorized, and updating the list of examples for which the relocation MEA may not be authorized. It also removes the relocation MEA employee eligibility table at FTR § 302-16.3 and reformats it as an employee eligibility listing. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion of the Final Rule</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Summary of Significant Changes</HD> GSA has not made any significant changes to the regulatory language from the proposed to final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Analysis of Public Comments</HD> GSA received one comment to the proposed rule suggesting that the relocation MEA lump sum match the amounts listed in the Department of State Standardized Regulations (DSSR) and urged that the relocation MEA lump sum amounts remain in the FTR instead of being published in a bulletin due to intra-agency distribution concerns. In response, GSA notes that it will determine the lump sum amounts based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI). While GSA expects its relocation MEA lump sum amounts to be similar to the DSSR's, the CPI fluctuates. Accordingly, the amounts to be determined by GSA in the present day may not exactly match the DSSR amounts since those were last updated in 2019. In response to the commenter's distribution concerns, publication of the relocation MEA lump sum in an FTR Bulletin affords GSA the flexibility to update the relocation MEA lump sum as needed to more fairly compensate travelers in line with the CPI. If GSA were to continue publishing the amounts in the FTR, such numbers can only be updated via a regulatory amendment, by which time, it may not accurately reflect the current CPI. Also, a bulletin takes less time and administrative effort to publish than a rule. Finally, note 1 to § 302-16.6 includes a direct link to GSA's FTR Bulletins for ease of distribution, in addition to the fact that notices of FTR Bulletins are published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and include a link to the Bulletin. GSA's OGP also emails all Federal agencies' travel and relocation operations and policy program managers to inform them of all FTR rules and bulletins when they are published, and recommends that such information be shared with relevant offices within their agency. GSA's OGP also briefs FTR changes to agency Senior Travel Official Council (STOC) members at regular intervals. Therefore, GSA will not change the final rule based on this comment. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Expected Cost Impact to the Public</HD> This rule does not result in cost impacts to the public. However, the changes may result in a slight increase in cost to the Federal Government as the relocation MEA lump sum amounts are expected to increase. Specifically, GSA will publish an FTR bulletin containing the relocation MEA lump sum amounts for an employee relocating without immediate family members and for an employee relocating with immediate family members. As detailed in the proposed rule, GSA expects the average relocation MEA lump sum amount across Federal agencies to increase to $1,125, for an estimated total increase of $312,973 per year agencywide (for those agencies subject to the FTR). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  GSA used data from the GSA's Business Travel and Relocation Dashboard for each agency to determine what was the average cost per MEA from FY18-FY22, and what the additional cost would be given the MEA increase of $650 to $750 for single employees and $1,300 to $1,500 for employees with families. GSA calculated the difference between the average MEA cost against $1,125 IF the average MEA cost was less than $1,125. This is because if the MEA cost is greater than the new MEA amount, then the employee would be more likely to do actual expense and there wouldn't be an additional cost to the MEA increase because the employee would be more likely to do actual expense rather than the old MEA amount as well. As a result, only 4 agencies had an average MEA cost lower than the average of the new MEAs. GSA multiplied the difference for those 4 agencies against the number of MEAs for those 4 agencies and summed it up to $312K. </FTNT> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━