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B-220942 1 (1986-01-07)

handle is hein.gao/gaobadmdb0001 and id is 1 raw text is: ORCISION 00' OP THU UNITBO STATES S7, WASHINGTON. 0. C. 20548 FILE: B-220942 DATE: January 7, 1986 MATTER OF: Department of State - Disposition of Nominal Overpayments DIGEST: It is General Accounting Office policy that refunds of overpayments of $5.00 or less should not be made unless specifically claimed; therefore, the Department of State is entitled and encouraged to amend the applicable section of the Code of Federal Regulations to expressly state a similar refund policy. The Department of State has requested our decision regarding the propriety of issuing a regulation that advises the public that refunds of fee overpayments for various authentication services will not be processed for amounts under $2 unless the overpayment is the result of misinformation or mistake on the part of the State Department. For the reasons stated below, we find no legal impediment to the issuance of such a regulation. In 1979, the Department of the Interior requested our decision concerning the treatment of under- and overpayments of $1 or less of reclamation fees. In the resulting decision, 58 Comp. Gen. 372 (1979), we concluded that overpayments of $1 or less need not be refunded unless a specific claim has been made. We noted that the practice of making refunds in the absence of a specific claim was based on public policy rather than on any law requiring an agency to return such overpayments on its own volition. 58 Comp. Gen. at 375. Additionally, we reaffirmed an earlier observation that this Office has long advocated that credit balances of less than $1 not be refunded unless a claim is made by the remitter, since the cost of processing the refunds is not commensurate with the amounts involved. Id.; A-12900, February 11, 1942. When we issued our 1979 decision to the Interior Department, we limited our discussion to overpayments of $1 or less, since that was the question we had been asked to address. It had, however, been the policy of the General Accounting Office since 1974 that refunds need not be made for

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