(Last updated by NIH 1/16/09)
"Every year since 1990 Congress has legislatively mandated a provision limiting the direct salary that an individual may receive under an NIH grant. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, Public Law 110-161, restricts the amount of direct salary of an individual under an NIH grant to Executive Level I of the Federal Executive Pay scale. NIH continues to operate on a continuing resolution (CR) through March 6, 2009. The CR applies the terms of the FY 2008 appropriations into the period covered by the CR. The Executive Level I annual salary rate was $191,300 for the period January 1 through December 31, 2008. Effective January 1, 2009, the Executive Level I salary level increased to $196,700. When the final FY 2009 Appropriation is enacted, we will publish our annual NIH Guide Notice on the legislative mandates included therein with additional information on the salary cap."
Guidance on other legislative mandates contained in P.L. 110-161 will be issued in the near future.
For the purposes of the salary limitation, the terms "direct salary," "salary," and "institutional base salary" have the same meaning and are exclusive of fringe benefits and facilities and administrative (F&A) expenses, also referred to as indirect costs. An individual's institutional base salary is the annual compensation that the applicant organization pays for an individual's appointment, whether that individual's time is spent on research, teaching, patient care, or other activities. Base salary excludes any income that an individual may be permitted to earn outside of the duties to the applicant organization.
According to the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2005, "None of the funds appropriated in this Act for the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 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 I of the Federal Executive Pay Scale."
For more information on the NIH Salary Cap, please go to the following website: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-035.html.
