DHHS Salary Cap Announcement

The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014, (H.R. 3547/Public Law 113-76) signed into law on January 17, 2014 includes a provision that states, “None of the funds appropriated in this title shall be used to pay the salary of an individual, through a grant or other extramural mechanism, at a rate in excess of Executive Level II.”  Additionally, the Executive Level II was increased by 1 percent, from $179,700 to $181,500, by Executive Order 13655.

The effective date of the increase in Executive Level II salary limitation pay rate varies among sponsoring agencies. The University of Iowa will use January 17, 2014 for monitoring purposes.

This change in the salary limitation is effective for FY 2014 awards as follows:

  • Awards issued between October 1, 2013 through January 16, 2014 at (Executive Level II) $179,700
  • Awards issued between January 17, 2014 through September 30, 2014 at (Executive Level II) $181,500

For National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards, the implementation of the salary limitation is as follows (For the full notice, see NOT-OD-14-052):

  • No adjustments will be made to modular grant applications/awards or to previously established commitment levels for non-competing grant awards issued with FY 2014 funds.
  • NIH competing grant awards with categorical budgets reflecting salary levels at or above the new cap(s) that are issued after the January 12, 2014 effective date, will reflect adjustments to the current and all future years so that no funds are awarded or committed for salaries over the limitation. 
  • For awards issued in those years that were restricted to Executive Level II, including competing awards already issued in FY2014, if adequate funds are available in active awards, and if the salary cap increase is consistent with the institutional base salary, grantees may rebudget to accommodate the current Executive Level II salary level and contractors may charge at the higher level. However, no additional funds will be provided to these grant awards and the total estimated cost of the contract will not be modified.

An individual could have different salary cap restrictions on multiple awards.  We will track the applicable salary cap requirements by award within Grant Accounting and will utilize this information in our quarterly monitoring.  If you need assistance tracking the restriction or have any questions, please contact Scott Kallaus (scott-kallaus@uiowa.edu) or Audra Haddy (audra-haddy@uiowa.edu).

The NIH Salary Cap Summary is available at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/salcap_summary.htm.

The University of Iowa Salary Cap Guidelines can be found at http://gao.fo.uiowa.edu/dhhs-salary-cap-university-guidelines-and-procedures.

Publish Date: 

Wednesday, February 26, 2014