A salary cap is defined as a maximum annual rate of UMB salary for full-time effort that can be charged to an agency's award.

Employee salaries funded by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies are subject to limitations set by the federal government. The Consolidated Appropriations Act restricts the amount of direct salary to Executive Level II of the Federal Executive Pay scale. The Executive Level II salary was set at $221,900 effective Jan. 1, 2024.

NIH Salary Cap - History of salary cap levels for NIH

The salary cap applies to grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts from these agencies. The applicable cap takes effect on the Project Start Date for new and competing awards and the Budget Start Date for non-competing awards.

Detailed budgets: The Institutional Base Salary is to be used to calculate salary; the agency will adjust the awarded salary subject to the current salary cap at the time of award. The annual inflation increase should be applied to the budget as usual.

Modular budgets: Since the modules should be a reasonable estimate of costs allowable, allocable, and appropriate for the proposed project, use the current salary cap when estimating the number of modules.

A companion project to track salaries that are over the salary cap must be requested during award setup. The chartstring to track over-salary-cap charges will reflect fund 147 — Standard "Over the Cap" Salaries.

Instructions for salary cap calculations and Kuali data entry