Find out about the relocation policy for new appointees and transferring employees, including eligibility and reimubrsable moving expenses.
Relocation expenses include the reasonable costs of moving household goods and personal effects to a new residence. These expenses also include the cost of travel to the new location for the eligible appointee/employee and memebers of the household.
Note:
Expenses for an employee relocation may be eligibile for payment or reimbursement by UC Merced. Please be aware that ALL move/relocation rexpenses and reimbursements are taxable to the new employee, due to IRS regulations and tax law. This applies to out-of-pocket expenses as well as direct payments made by UC Merced to the moving company. Due to Payroll reporting deadlines, claims for employee moves or trips, including taxable payments/reimbursements must be fully approved within the same calendar year in which the employee is taxed.
Did you know that there are multiple policies for Relocation trips? If you are the move coordinator for your department , it is crucial that the new employee is fully aware of what expenses are allowable and this is determined by their job title code.
To determine which policy applies to your employees, you would first have to obtain their 4-digit job title code. Once you have that, you can search for it in the Title Code System Lookup page, and you can search by Academic Titles and /or Non-Academic Titles.
After you've determined what your new employees job title is, these are the different policies:
- For employees tha tfall under the Managers and Senior Professionals (MSP) AND Professional and Support Staff (PSS) title codes, the policy that pplies to them is G-13.
- For Senion Management Group (SMG) employees, thei ralloed expenses are highlighted by Regents Policy 7710.
- For Academic employess (i.e. Professors, Assistant Professors), the Moving Expenses for Academic Appointees policy is where you would check which expenses are allowable.
- Reimbursable expenses for Postdoctoral Scholars are highlighted in APM-560.
To ensure that the review and approval process of the Move/Relocation is a smooth one, please make sure that your new employee is aware of the Move/Relocation policy that applies to them. For an overview of allowable expenses, please review the Reimbursable Relocation Expenses for Employees page. Please make sure you review each section on the page to check eligibility requirements for each job title (SMG, MSP, PSS, Academic, Postdoc).
Claiming expenses that are not reimbursable per their job title will delay the reimbursement process.
