OPM Releases Back Pay Calculator

OPM has released a back pay calculator to help federal agencies calculate back pay awards and interest payments owed to federal employees who have faced unwarranted personnel actions against them.

The Office of Personnel Management has released a back pay calculator to help federal agencies calculate back pay awards and interest payments owed to federal employees who have faced unwarranted personnel actions against them.

According to OPM:

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.

The online calculator gives users step by step instructions to make the necessary computations. It allows users to do the following:

  • Calculate back pay and interest awards, using automatically updated Internal Revenue Service quarterly interest rates.
  • Offset the back pay award by any outside earnings during the back pay period.
  • Save a back pay case to a local computer and upload and edit an existing case from a local computer.
  • Print a summary report of the completed calculations from a case.

Along with the release of the calculator, OPM has also posted a fact sheet which defines back pay and includes a list of back pay interest rates.

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Ian Smith is one of the co-founders of FedSmith.com. He has over 20 years of combined experience in media and government services, having worked at two government contracting firms and an online news and web development company prior to his current role at FedSmith.