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Is my company legally obligated to pay me full per diem on a government contract?

Ok here's the deal. I work for a company on a government contract that requires me to travel out of the country often. When I travel I'm usually out of the U.S. for 35+ days at a time. Well, my company does not give me the daily per diem rate for meals and incidental travel expenses (M&IE) for the location I am working in. Lodging is taken care of. At the end of each trip I have to fill out an expense report for my company and only get reimburse for what I spend. I was told companies on government contracts have to pay their employees the per diem rate set by the State Dept. for the location that they are working in? Is this true? If so is my company legally obligated to pay me full per diem or not? References would be nice!

Public Comments

1. If your being reimbursed then whats the problem?
2. You have to review your contract. If it states there that the company is obligated to pay your per diem, then they should. If its not stipulated in the contract, I would suggest you have a 3rd party lawyer (not linked to the company) to review your contract and find out what the law says about it "not" being in the contract. Because your company may have listed all other reimbursed expense as "per diem"... good luck.
3. Fist you need to check your contract. But I'll tell you this, your company is chargeing the Gov. Full Per Deim. Im going to guess it DoD. So mabe you could lookon the DoDs' Web site of info on contractors. Good luck. Or you could shop out a new contactor job..
4. The short answer is no. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR 31.205-46) allows companies to invoice the government for lodging, meals, and incidental expenses using costs based on per diem, actual expenses, or a combination thereof, provided the costs do not exceed the published maximum per diem rates. The method a company uses for reimbursing employee expenses should be consistent with the method they use when invoicing the government. If a company chooses to reimburse their employees actual costs and the actual costs exceed the per diem rate, they may reimburse the employee the full amount but they cannot invoice anything in excess of the per diem rate. Although many companies have chosen to use a per-diem based model for sheer simplicity (i.e., reduces or eliminates the costs and effort associate with reviewing and validating receipts), there are also many that use an actual-cost method. If your company doesn’t have published guidelines regarding their policy on reimbursement of travel costs, check with your accounting folks.