You and your finance team have new per-diem rates to contend with, beginning in just a couple of weeks.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has released the new numbers for fiscal year 2020, which are effective Oct. 1.
The new federal per-diem rate for the continental United States (CONUS) will increase to $151 (up from $149). That breaks down as:
- $96/day for lodging (up from $94), and
- $55/day for meals and incidental expenses (same as this year).
This new rate applies to approximately 2,600 counties in the U.S.
Additional changes
Beyond this overarching change, there are some location-specific ones as well that apply to the CONUS rate, primarily in the western part of the country:
- Boise, ID (Ada County) is a new non-standard area (NSA) location this year
- Park County, MT has been added to the Big Sky, MT NSA area, and
- Missoula and Flathead Counties in Montana were separated into their own NSAs instead of a combined NSA.
Your finance team will also be able to include some new biz travel destinations in the standard rate for your road warriors.
The following locations that were NSAs — or part of an established NSA – this past year will move into the standard CONUS rate category:
- Dover, DE (Kent County)
- South Bend, IN (St. Joseph County)
- Benton Harbor/St. Joseph/Stevensville, MI (Berrien County)
- Lake County, MT
- Medina County, OH
- Aiken County, SC, and
- Sheboygan County, WI.
If your company relies on per-diems to help streamline T&E administration, the time to get these new numbers into employees and managers hands is now.
And remind them that the feds have a mobile app folks can download onto their phones to help them look up per-diem numbers in a snap. That can provide a compliance boost and make things easier on your own staffers.