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Washington D.C. — In the wake of record gas prices that show signs of even further increases, the leader of the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees today called on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to make a mid-year upward adjustment in the mileage reimbursement rate for business travel.

High gas prices are placing “an especially high burden on those who must drive to perform their work, including many employees of the IRS and other agencies of the federal government,” President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said in a letter to the acting IRS commissioner.

President Kelley acknowledged that while it is the IRS’s typical practice to set the mileage reimbursement rate at the beginning of the year for the entire year, she noted that the IRS did make a mid-year adjustment in 2005 in the face of then-skyrocketing fuel costs. A letter from Kelley at that time helped encourage an increase of eight cents a mile in the rate.

The reimbursement rate for federal workers is established by the General Services Administration (GSA), but it cannot exceed the maximum rate allowed by the IRS as a business expense deduction. The current rate for business travel is 48.5 cents a mile, the same as it was in late 2005, Kelley pointed out.

“Both the federal Energy Information Administration and the American Automobile Association are showing record gas prices of over $3 a gallon, with expectations of continued increases,” the NTEU leader wrote. “This is above the gasoline price during late 2005, when the IRS made its previous mid-year adjustment.”

Many NTEU-represented employees use their private vehicles in the performance of their duties, including IRS revenue officers and revenue agents, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation bank examiners and many others, Kelley said.

“I hope you will do whatever you can to see that all Americans who must depend on their cars to perform their jobs get some relief, including those who work for the federal government,” she wrote.

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents more than 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.