45 C.F.R. § 2105.39 – What search fees will you have to pay?

(a) The Agency will charge search fees for all requests, subject to the restrictions of §§ 2105.35(f), 2105.37, and 2105.38(a). The Agency may charge you for time spent searching even if it does not locate any responsive records or if it determines that the records are entirely exempt from disclosure.
(b) For each quarter hour spent by personnel searching for requested records, including electronic searches that do not require new programming, the fees will be the average hourly General Schedule (GS) base salary, plus the District of Columbia locality payment, plus 16 percent for benefits, of employees in the following three categories, as applicable:
1. (1) Clerical—Based on GS-6, Step 5, pay (all employees at GS-7 and below are classified as clerical for this purpose);
2. (2) Professional—Based on GS-11, Step 7, pay (all employees at GS-8 through GS-12 are classified as professional for this purpose); and
3. (3) Managerial—Based on GS-14, Step 2, pay (all employees at GS-13 and above are classified as managerial for this purpose).
(c) You can review the current fee schedule for the categories discussed in paragraph (b) of this section at https://www.cfa.gov/foia.
(d) Some requests may require retrieval of records stored at a Federal records center operated by the National Archives and Records Administration. For these requests, the Agency will charge additional costs in accordance with the Transactional Billing Rate Schedule established by the National Archives and Records Administration.