Policy Library

Argonne Salary Cap Policy

Revision Date: March 31, 2015
Responsible Office: URA
PDF Version

This document establishes the ability of funding agencies to apply salary caps to the University of Chicago.

Background

Argonne employees may have effort charged to University funds through the Effort Distribution Salary Reimbursement (EDSR) process. Funding agencies may apply a salary cap to funds issued to The University of Chicago, limiting the direct salary that an individual may receive under a grant or contract. The policy described below is applicable when the institutional base of an Argonne employee exceeds the salary cap set by a funding agency. The policy is intended to assign responsibility for above‐the‐cap costs and provide a mechanism for accounting for such costs. These cases are most likely to occur with NIH sponsored grants or contracts, though they may extend to other funding agencies. A summary of NIH salary caps may be found here: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/salcap_summary.htm

Funding of Argonne Employee's Effort Over the Federal Salary Cap

  1. If the department is already supporting the Argonne employee from an unrestricted source, those funds should be used to cover the over‐the‐cap portion of the salary ‐‐the portion of the salary not allowable on the NIH award.
  2. For other existing Argonne Employees over the cap, if the department is not supporting the Argonne employee from an unrestricted source, the Vice President for Research (VPR) Office will cover the over‐the‐cap portion of the salary.
  3. For new Argonne employees, the department and division where the grant resides is responsible for over the cap amounts commensurate with the percent effort funded by the grant.

Accounting Protocol

The account administrator should set up an associate cost share account to record the over the cap portion of the salary. The linked fund account will be either a) an unrestricted department account, or b) the VPR office unrestricted account (TBD).

Review

This policy will be reviewed annually by Office for the Vice‐President for Research and for National Laboratories.