Fringe Benefits Rates

Federal Rate Agreements

Please see Harvard's current federal rate agreements.

Fringe benefits (FB) are employee associated costs such as health plan expenses, pension plan expenses and workman's compensation expenses, among others. These costs are expressed as a rate by employee class. The rate is the pooled costs of these benefits divided by the total salaries in each employee class. These rates are then applied to the applicable employee salary to represent the associated benefits for that type of employee.

Our sponsors will reimburse us for fringe benefit costs, expressed as a percentage of total salaries. As salaries and FB can represent the largest component of cost on a given project, the University negotiates its FB rates with the federal government on an annual basis.