The NIH salary cap is updated every year and is part of the Cayuse Proposals system. For 2017, the salary cap is $187,000 per year.
When you enter budget information for Key People on an NIH proposal, the system verifies that you have not exceeded the monthly cap allowed by NIH. If you have, you will receive the following Info Message in Cayuse Proposals.
The way the system calculates the monthly cap is to divide the annual cap by 12 months.
$189,000 / 12 months = $15,750 monthly cap is the salary cap for 2017 taking the person's Calendar or Academic/Summer cap(s) and dividing that number by 12 months.
Then to calculate the amount of NIH allowed salary, the system takes the amount of effort and multiplies it by the monthly cap. So a key person with a 6 months of effort would be allowed the following:
$15,750 * 6 months = $94,500
If the key person's requested salary is more than that amount, the salary is above the NIH monthly salary cap.
If no salary is provided in the budget, Cayuse can still make the determination as long as the amount of effort and the requested salary is provided, such as below:
NIH takes the NIH monthly salary cap ($15,750) and multiplies it by the amount of effort (.6 000) on the proposal to determine the allowed salary.
In the example above, $15,750 * 0.6000 = $9,450. The salary request is for $9,600 so the amount exceeds the NIH salary cap.
You can locate the current NIH Salary Cap here: NIH Salary Cap Summary