Notes to SEFA
The accompanying schedule of expenditures of federal awards (SEFA) includes the federal award activity of The American Institute in Taiwan AIT). The information in the SEFA is presented in accordance with the requirements of Title 2 U.S. Code of Federal Regulations Part 200, Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards (Uniform Guidance). Because the Schedule presents only a selected portion of the operations of AIT, it is not intended to and does not present the financial position, changes in net assets, or cash flows of AIT.
Expenditures reported on the Schedule are reported on the accrual basis of accounting. Such expenditures are recognized following the cost principles contained in the Uniform Guidance, wherein certain types of expenditures are not allowable or are limited as to reimbursement. Therefore, some amounts presented in the SEFA may differ from amounts presented in the basic financial statements, which have been presented in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (U.S. GAAP).
AIT has elected not to use the 10% De Minimus indirect cost rate as allowed by the Uniform Guidance.
AIT’s contracts and agreements with each of the respective U.S. government agencies allow AIT to fully recover indirect costs based on the relative share attributable to each U.S. government agency. AIT uses U.S. Department of State’s ICASS cost distribution software to budget the shared administrative support cost (aka Indirect Cost) and to invoice to serviced agencies. AIT adjusts the invoice of indirect costs to actual the following year after the audit. Each agency’s consumption of services is measured and tracked by actual workload counts for services in the prior year, or projected workload counts for new agencies. The software divides the total costs for each administrative cost center by the respective total workload count for that service for all agencies to establish a unit cost. The unit cost for each cost center is then multiplied by each agency’s associated workload count to determine each agency’s cost of the services used. Added to this cost are a proportional share of miscellaneous costs (e.g., postage, awards for IDC personnel, training and travel costs, etc.) and a share of IDC Redistribution (the cost of services consumed by IDC personnel); the final total represents each agency’s invoice for services at that post. Agency heads at post sign their invoices when the post IDC Council approves the budget.
AIT’s contracts and funding agreements are not assigned Assistance Listing Numbers (ALN). The ALN for each contract or funding agreement presented in the SEFA follows the format required by Form SF-SAC (the data collection form) which is submitted to the Federal Audit Clearinghouse. Furthermore, AIT has several memoranda of agreement with U.S. Agencies other than the U.S. Department of State, which have no contract numbers. Certain U.S. Agencies may have more than one contract, or funding agreement, with AIT, and, for purposes of the determination of major programs, common purpose programs were aggregated and considered to be one program. Individual contracts not grouped together as one program on the SEFA were treated as separate programs for purposes of the major program determination.