Moving Contracts, aka Interstate Household Moving Procedures
(applicable to Prospective Faculty and Senior Level Executives)

Moving your household goods and personal effects (including in-transit or foreign-move storage expenses), and Traveling (including lodging but not meals) to your new home.

1. Reasonable expenses.   You may be reimbursed (tax-free), only those expenses that are reasonable for the circumstances of your move. For example, the cost of traveling from your former home to your new one should be by the shortest, most direct route available by conventional transportation. If during your trip to your new home, you stop over, or make side trips for sightseeing, the additional expenses for your stopover or side trips are not reimbursable as moving expenses.
2. Travel by car.   If you use your car to take yourself, members of your household, or your personal effects to your new home, you can figure your reimbursement based upon either:
1. Your actual expenses, such the amount you pay for gas and oil for your car, if you keep an accurate record of each expense, or
2. The Standard Mileage Rate.
3. Whether you use actual expenses or the standard mileage rate to figure your expenses, you are entitled to reimbursement for the parking fees and tolls you pay to move. You are not, however, entitled to be reimbursed for any part of general repairs, general maintenance, insurance, or depreciation for your car.
4. Member of your household.   You may be reimbursed for moving expenses you pay for yourself and members of your household. A member of your household is anyone who has both your former and new home as his or her home. It does not include a tenant or employee, unless that person is your dependent.
5. Household goods and personal effects.   You may be reimbursed for the cost of packing, crating, and transporting your household goods and personal effects and those of the members of your household from your former home to your new home. For purposes of moving expenses, the term “personal effects” includes, but is not limited to, movable personal property that the taxpayer owns and frequently uses.
6. You may be reimbursed for any costs of connecting or disconnecting utilities required because you are moving your household goods, appliances, or personal effects.
7. You may be reimbursed for the cost of shipping your car and your household pets to your new home.
8. You may not be reimbursed for the cost of moving furniture you buy on the way to your new home.
9. Storage expenses.   You can include the cost of storing and insuring household goods and personal effects within any period of 30 consecutive days after the day your things are moved from your former home and before they are delivered to your new home.
10. Travel expenses.   You may be reimbursed for the cost of transportation and lodging for yourself and members of your household while traveling from your former home to your new home. This includes expenses for the day you arrive.
11. You can include any lodging expenses you had in the area of your former home within one day after you could no longer live in your former home because your furniture had been moved.
12. You may be reimbursed for expenses for only one trip to your new home for yourself and members of your household. However, all of you do not have to travel together or at the same time. If you use your own car, see Travel by car, earlier.

Go to http://purchasing.cornell.edu/moving.cfm to locate information regarding interstate household moving contracts that afford Cornell departments significant discounts. Individuals requiring a contract for household moving should contact any one of the agents listed below for pricing and moving coordination. The estimate should be faxed to the Administrative Service Center at the Johnson School at (607) 255-2823; only one estimate is required if the move will be done by one of Cornell's preferred suppliers listed on the above mentioned website. All household moves require a purchase order prior to contracting with the moving company. A purchase order will be requested once the Administrative Service Center is made aware as to which moving company will be given the contract. The prospective faculty or staff member should not pay the company anything. Arrangements will be made directly with the University.

If you should have any further questions, please contact Amanda Shaw at (607) 255-7541.

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Last Modified: September 28, 2007