Systems and methods for determining delay budget allocations for circuit elements. One embodiment comprises a method including defining timing edges and corresponding timing paths in an integrated circuit design, and determining delay budget allocations for each of the edges based on required arrival time and design slack (S,T) pairs associated with the different timing paths. The required arrival time is a maximum time when associated with forward paths, and a minimum time when associated with backward paths. (S,T) pairs associated with some timing paths are discarded (i.e., the corresponding timing paths are trimmed) to reduce the complexity of the delay budget allocation computations. Remaining (S,T) pairs are used to determine scaling factors for significant timing paths through the edges. The smallest of the scaling factors for each edge can be multiplied by an initial delay associated with the edge to produce a delay budget allocation associated with the edge.