Kaiserslautern Military Community is an OCONUS Joint installation in Kaiserslautern, Germany. This guide covers Overseas Housing Allowance (OHA), MIHA, TRICARE region, and PCS resources.
Rates last verified August 2026 against the published source tables.
Kaiserslautern Military Community is a Joint installation in Kaiserslautern, Germany.
Kaiserslautern Military Community is an overseas assignment, so housing is paid through Overseas Housing Allowance rather than BAH. OHA reimburses your actual rent up to a cap set for the location and paygrade, which means what you receive depends on the lease you sign — unused allowance is forfeited rather than kept. A move-in housing allowance covers one-time costs such as deposits and transformers.
Care here falls under the TRICARE Overseas region.
$362 a day. DTMO prices Kaiserslautern Military Community under its Germany locality Kaiserslautern Military Community at $362 per person per day — $229 of lodging and $133 of meals and incidentals.
This is the figure TLA is built from, not a rate of its own. Temporary Lodging Allowance covers the gap between arriving and signing a lease, and it is computed as percentages of the lodging and M&IE figures just quoted rather than as a published dollar amount: lodging at up to 100% of the lodging rate and meals at 65% of M&IE for a member arriving alone, both rising with the number of dependents traveling with you. It is authorized for up to 60 days, extendable.
The reporting day is computed from it, but not at the full rate. Arriving by commercial air, train, ship or government transport — which is how most members reach Kaiserslautern Military Community — the day you report pays 75% of the M&IE figure above, and that night's lodging is reimbursed as TLA rather than as per diem. Where MALT Plus is payable for the reporting day instead, no TLA is payable for that day at all, and OCONUS COLA starts the day after you report rather than on the day itself.
It is a second allowance, not part of the first. OHA covers housing at Kaiserslautern Military Community. OCONUS COLA is the separate, non-taxable allowance that offsets what everything else costs — groceries, fuel, services — and it explicitly excludes housing, so it neither raises nor reduces the housing figures this guide states. It exists because the prices paid around Kaiserslautern Military Community are measured against what the same goods cost in the continental United States, and the gap is what the allowance closes.
What sets the amount. Three tables in sequence: your annual compensation, which follows pay grade and years of service; the spendable-income figure where that compensation meets your number of command-sponsored dependents; and the COLA index published for this duty station. Subtract 100 from the index, treat the remainder as a percentage, and apply it to spendable income — that is the annual allowance, divided by 360 to give the daily rate that reaches your LES.
An index of 100 pays nothing. Because the calculation subtracts 100 before it multiplies, a location priced level with the continental United States produces no allowance at all. Overseas orders are not by themselves a COLA entitlement, and a location that paid it last year can stop.
It moves while you are there. The index is rebuilt from two price surveys, and the allowance is re-adjusted for currency movement as often as twice a month — so this is not a rate you check once before you fly. A dependent who is with you but is not command-sponsored does not move you to the with-dependent rate either, which is the difference most often noticed after the fact.
Your home-of-record state. While stationed overseas, U.S. state tax depends entirely on your state of legal domicile, not your duty station. Many OCONUS members maintain domicile in a no-tax state like TX, FL, or WA.
SCRA. Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act your military pay is taxed by the state you are domiciled in, not by the one your duty station sits in. Being assigned to Kaiserslautern Military Community does not by itself change which state may tax you, and it does not create a filing obligation where you are stationed.
TRICARE Overseas. Care at Kaiserslautern Military Community falls under the TRICARE Overseas region, administered by International SOS Government Services, LLC.. Referrals and claims run through that contractor.
| Pay grades | With dependents | In dollars | Without dependents (90%) | In dollars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O-6 | €2,380 | $2,771 | €2,142 | $2,494 |
| O-5 / W-5 | €2,300 | $2,678 | €2,070 | $2,410 |
| O-4 / W-4 / W-3 / O-3E | €2,150 | $2,503 | €1,935 | $2,253 |
| O-3 / W-2 / O-2E / O-1E | €1,750 | $2,037 | €1,575 | $1,834 |
| O-2 / W-1 | €1,600 | $1,863 | €1,440 | $1,676 |
| O-1 | €1,600 | $1,863 | €1,440 | $1,676 |
| E-9 | €2,150 | $2,503 | €1,935 | $2,253 |
| E-8 | €1,750 | $2,037 | €1,575 | $1,834 |
| E-7 | €1,750 | $2,037 | €1,575 | $1,834 |
| E-6 | €1,750 | $2,037 | €1,575 | $1,834 |
| E-5 | €1,600 | $1,863 | €1,440 | $1,676 |
| E-4 | €1,500 | $1,746 | €1,350 | $1,572 |
| E-3 / E-2 / E-1 | €1,500 | $1,746 | €1,350 | $1,572 |
Kaiserslautern Military Community is overseas, so housing is paid through Overseas Housing Allowance rather than BAH. The difference that matters is that OHA is a reimbursement, not a flat rate: you are paid your actual rent and utilities up to a cap set for the location and your paygrade, and anything you do not spend is forfeited rather than kept. A separate move-in housing allowance covers one-time setup costs such as deposits, agent fees and transformers.
No. OHA, the utility allowance and MIHA are all non-taxable, so none of them appears as taxable wages on your W-2 and no federal or state income tax is withheld from them. What they do not do is behave like BAH: OHA reimburses your actual rent up to the ceiling, so an unspent dollar is forfeited rather than kept, and the untaxed amount is whatever you actually spend.
Kaiserslautern Military Community falls in the TRICARE Overseas region — the contractor there is International SOS Government Services, LLC. Your region decides who pays your claims and where referrals are authorized, so a PCS that crosses regions means transferring your enrollment — Prime enrollment does not follow you automatically, and letting it lapse drops you to TRICARE Select with its cost shares.
Most of it is reimbursed rather than paid. A PCS to Kaiserslautern Military Community normally pays a dislocation allowance, a mileage allowance for driving your own vehicle, per diem for you and each dependent while you travel, and temporary lodging once you arrive. Choosing a personally procured move pays you the government's cost for the same shipment, so the profit — and the tax on it — depends on your weight and the distance. The PCS calculator estimates all of those for this destination.