The Office of Personnel Management has unveiled a new tool to help agencies better navigate back pay interest for employees.
Acting OPM Director Beth Cobert said in a Sept. 23 statement that the agency was releasing a new back pay interest calculator to help other agencies who may need to calculate back pay amounts for employees who’ve had their pay affected for various reasons.
Federal regulations outline back pay rules — as well as interest and attorney’s fees rules — for federal employees who may have been affected by an unjustified or warranted personnel action.
“The payment of back pay, interest and reasonable attorney fees are awarded for the purpose of making an employee financially whole when the employee is found by an appropriate authority to have been affected by an unjustified or unwarranted personnel action that resulted in the withdrawal, reduction, or denial of all or part of the pay, allowances, and differentials otherwise due to the employee,” Cobert said in a statement.
The new calculator features automatically updated quarterly interest rate information from the IRS, will offset back pay against any outside earnings during the period in question and saves a case report to local computers utilizing the calculator.
OPM also released new guidance on back pay eligibility as well as interest rate information.
The back pay calculator can be found on
the OPM website.
