While I am familiar with gratuities as expressed at FAR 3.202 and 52.203-3, I was curious about the following: How does one describe "intended to gain favorable treatment or contract" and, according to some website scanning of several agencies, I see a lot of reference to "with certain exceptions". For some reason I can't seem to find those "exceptions". My specific issue is that we are modifying an aircraft under a federal program. We would like to provide a small model (like a revell (sic)kit)to the government program office. Probably about $100.00. Any thoughts or potential court cases. Thanks

By Anonymous on Monday, February 11, 2002 - 01:36 pm:

Call it a Toilet seat, and charge them $900, I'm sure the auditors would never find it. =8o)

By Anonymous on Monday, February 11, 2002 - 02:55 pm:

Each agency has an instruction covering ethics....I suggest reviewing the one covering the agency in question. If you cannot get one you might just go ahead but be sure you give it to the agency,,not some individual. Worse that can happen is that they return it.

By John Ford on Monday, February 11, 2002 - 03:23 pm:

Look in 5 Code of Federal Regulations for the Governmentwide Ethics Regulation and its discussion of gratuities. If your agency is DoD, DoD has a supplement to the GWER known as the Joint Ethics Regulation. It can be found in 32 CFR.

By Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13, 2002 - 03:58 pm:

Generally, anything less than $5 done once a year passes the most angry and zealous auditors (I used to be one, and there are some real jerks there!). The $5 is seen as a de minimus amount, good for a card, coffee, etc. Some agencies have a $25 rule and I have never seen anything over that amount pass without comment.

By Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13, 2002 - 05:55 pm:

The ethics rules prohibiting gifts are aimed at gifts to individual employees. It sounds from your message that this mock up is something you intend to give to the office or agency, rather than to any individual employee. I don't see anything wrong with you providing the customer agency with a model or mock-up of what they are buying, especially if it accompanied the next progress report or briefing. In theory, they could have included such a model as a contract deliverable, if they thought it would be really useful. There isn't anything that says the contractor can't give us more than we have contracted for, as long as he doesn't try to charge us for it. (There's actually a clause that addresses this - 52.232-11 Extras.)

If this model is for the agency (rather than a gift to an employee) then the only objection I can see would be to billing the cost back to the Govt. (Since it isn't required by the terms of this contract, it may be regarded as an unnecessary and unallowable cost.) If this is a fixed price contract or if you are willing to absorb this expense out of your profit margin, then I can't see any basis to object.

By anon1 on Wednesday, February 13, 2002 - 07:29 pm:

To Anonymous 5:55: Thank you and to all that commented. I did make the suggestion to my program manager that I thought this would be the way to go in reference to the subject FAR clause. It of course would be an unallowable but a great training tool. Thanks again Great forum here, Bob.