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By: FEDweek StaffGSA has proposed changes to policies when agencies must determine how much to reimburse an employee who uses a privately owned vehicle on temporary duty when the agency has determined that another mode of travel was more advantageous to the government.
In that situation, an agency must perform a cost comparison, GSA noted in a May 27 Federal Register notice. If the mode of transportation the agency has authorized is less than the cost of traveling by POV, the employee only receives that limited amount, regardless of how much it costs to use a POV. If the constructive cost shows that the POV cost is less than the agency-selected mode, then the employee will receive the total POV-related costs.
The notice says, though, that agencies “often mistakenly calculate” those so-called “constructive costs” by only comparing the selected transportation mode with the POV mileage rates without also factoring other related costs.
The proposed rules specify such considerations, adding that while GSA expects only minor cost savings in reimbursements, agencies “will likely spend less administrative time defending cost construction calculations that may have been unclear or confusing to the traveler.”
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