Cost if taxes PCS move for civilians going from CONUS to OCONUS
Haven’t seen many posts in here about costs of PCS moves for civilians OCONUS post tax filing and RITA reimbursement so thought I would give you my breakdown.
In 2025 I moved from the US to Japan, we had a two bedroom townhome and live somewhat minimally (spouse plus myself, no kids). We did long term storage as well as brought items with us to Japan via a regular and express shipments. Some of the larger items we brought were a queen mattress, love seat couch, 40” TV, two bikes. Didn’t bring much furniture as we wanted to redecorate here. Unfortunately I don’t have the total pounds that we packed. I did have three pack outs one for storage, one for express, and one for the regular shipment. All three pack outs occurred on separate days except for express, and the packers arrived around 10am and left around 3pm so not quite a full day.
On my travel W2 in box 1: 8141.64 (total cost to the government)
Box 2: 1793.35 (federal tax withheld)
Box 5: 505.42 (social security withheld)
Box 6: 118.29 (Medicare withheld)
Before the end of 2025 I did receive two bills to “pay travel debt” and I paid approx. $600 and then approx. $1700 which both account for the taxes that were withheld on the W2.
I did file my 2025 tax return and any overpayment on federal taxes *should* be in my return.
I also filed my RITA claim and received ~$700 back.
So in total, my best guess is that I paid about $800 which mostly covers the taxes that I must pay on social security and Medicare (Tax payments to social security and Medicare do not get returned from what I understand).
Hope that helps give people somewhat of a really rough ballpark for the move. I know this is highly individualized because a lot of it depends on your total income for the year and your tax bracket. Bottom line is that you actually don’t get eVeRyThInG back and it kinda sucks that they made PCS moves for civilians taxable because it’s superrrr confusing. However, I went into this process not knowing if it would cost me $0 or $10k so I’m happy it’s sub $1k!