The salary basis test covered in Chapter 2 rests on one core rule: an exempt employee’s predetermined salary cannot be reduced because of variations in the quality or quantity of the work performed. Taken alone, that rule would make almost any docked pay look like a problem. What keeps it workable is that the regulation does not leave an employer guessing — it lists the specific circumstances where a deduction is permitted without disturbing salary basis, and for private employers that list is closed: if a planned deduction does not fit one of these categories, the general no-reduction rule controls. Public agency employers have one further avenue outside this list: § 541.710 lets a public agency reduce an employee’s pay for absences of less than a full day under a qualifying public-accountability leave system without loss of exempt status. It separately shields deductions for a budget-required furlough from disqualifying salary basis generally — except in the workweek in which the furlough actually occurs and the employee’s pay is reduced, where exempt status is not preserved on account of that deduction. This pathway sits outside the § 541.602(b) list below and does not extend to other employers.

Four categories account for most of the deductions an employer actually considers. An employee absent for one or more full personal days can be docked for those full days — but only the full days; an employee out for a day and a half loses pay for one day, not one and a half. An employee absent a full day or more for sickness or disability can be docked if the employer runs a bona fide plan, policy, or practice — “bona fide” meaning genuine and actually established, not merely nominal — that provides compensation for the lost salary; the exception covers full-day absences before the employee has qualified for benefits under the plan, during the period the plan is actually paying benefits, and after the plan’s leave allowance has been exhausted. An employer may also deduct, in any amount, as a good-faith penalty (meaning genuinely imposed for the stated violation, not as a pretext) for violating a safety rule of major significance — the kind aimed at preventing serious danger, not a routine housekeeping rule. And an employer may suspend an exempt employee without pay for one or more full days as discipline for violating a written workplace conduct policy that applies to all employees, whether the infraction draws a short suspension or a long one.

A few narrower rules round out the list. An employer cannot deduct for time an exempt employee misses for jury duty, serving as a witness, or temporary military leave, but it may offset any jury fees, witness fees, or military pay the employee receives that week against the salary owed for that week. Salary need not be paid in full for an employee’s first or last week of work, or for a week in which an exempt employee takes unpaid Family and Medical Leave Act leave — in both cases the employer may pay only the proportionate amount for time actually worked. Outside of this list, the rule from Chapter 2 still holds: a deduction made for a reason this section does not cover is a deduction against salary basis itself.