TDY Per Diem Calculator for Ramstein & the KMC

Two separate figures, and only one of them is yours to keep. Lodging is reimbursed against your receipts up to $229.00 a night (DTMO OCONUS per diem, Change 727); there is no percentage on TDY, neither a family scale nor a cut for travelling alone, and whatever ceiling you do not spend is forfeited. M&IE is $133.00 a day, paid without a receipt, so what you do not spend on food is yours. Your first travel day counts at 75 percent of the M&IE rate, every full day in between counts in full. Put your own nights into the calculator above for your figure.

No. TLA is a station allowance and requires a permanent change of station, so a TDY traveller cannot start a TLA claim at all. The one exception runs the other way: someone already drawing TLA here who is then sent on TDY keeps drawing it (DoD FMR Volume 7A, Chapter 68, 5.2). If your orders say TDY, your entitlement is per diem under the JTR - and the rules below are the ones that apply to you.

No. Per diem is paid per traveller, not per household, and each traveller files a separate voucher. Someone who is not on TDY orders themselves has no per diem entitlement at all, however many of you travel - there is no family percentage on TDY and no shared household claim. With us that costs you nothing: your spouse, your children and your pets are included in the apartment, because we charge for the apartment and not for the people in it.

It keeps the cap off your lodging. Under JTR Table 2-14 a Service member sent on TDY to a U.S. installation with adequate and available Government quarters is required to use them, and one who chooses commercial lodging instead is limited to the reimbursement cost of those quarters - at Ramstein $174.00 a night for visiting quarters. A certificate of non-availability number, issued initially for that installation, means you are not required to seek or check for Government quarters at all (rule 2). Ramstein Lodging, 86 FSS issues it for the Air Force; for the Army it is the USAG Rheinland-Pfalz lodging office. Note the name: on TDY it is a certificate of non-availability, not the Non-Availability letter of a TLA claim.

Only where all three conditions line up: your Travel Authorization expressly directed it, the same installation has Government quarters, and that installation serves three meals a day in a Government dining facility (JTR Table 2-17). Where it applies, the meal portion of your M&IE drops to the Government Meal Rate of $18.00 a day (the rate for 2026 - the Comptroller sets it once a year, so check it again in January); the incidental portion of the locality rate, $27.00, stays on top, so the day is worth $45.00 instead of $133.00. JTR Table 2-14 also runs the other way: a member directed to procure commercial lodging off the installation is authorised the locality M&IE rate instead of the Government or proportional meal rate. Check your orders for it rather than assume it.

One NF-1 form covers up to 2,499.99 EUR net per transaction, so a longer TDY needs several of them, issued in blocks. The deadline for the first one follows your orders, not the 7-day rule that applies to a PCS arrival - send it as soon as you have it. Every further invoice needs its own form before the invoice is written; a VAT form handed over afterwards cannot be applied to an invoice that already exists. The form fee itself is a reimbursable lodging expense. The calculator works out how many forms your stay needs.

Your per diem stops when your TDY ends, and so does your bill: no minimum stay, no penalty, you check out the day your orders end. The day you travel back to your permanent duty station is also a 75 percent day under the JTR, but it falls outside your stay here - claim it on your voucher, not against our invoice. That is why the calculator above counts one travel day and not two.