OSHA Recordkeeping Penalties: What Bad Logs Can Cost Employers
OSHA's 2026 maximums are $16,550 per serious or other-than-serious violation and $165,514 per willful or repeated one, recordkeeping included.
4 min readUpdated
Topic · 1 guide
OSHA Recordkeeping Penalty Guides
Recordkeeping violations are cited like other OSHA violations, and the maximum penalties are adjusted for inflation each year. For 2026 the maximums are $16,550 per serious or other-than-serious violation, which includes posting violations, $16,550 per day for failure to abate, and $165,514 per willful or repeated violation. There was no increase for 2026, so the 2025 amounts carried forward; the next adjustment is expected in January 2027.
~4 min average readUpdated
Typical recordkeeping citations involve failing to record a recordable case, recording it late or in the wrong column, failing to post a certified 300A from February 1 to April 30, failing to submit required data to the Injury Tracking Application, not producing records for an inspector within four business hours, and not reporting a fatality or severe injury within 8 or 24 hours.
The penalty is the visible cost. The larger one is usually the time it takes to reconstruct a year of records during an inspection, when every decision has to be explained after the fact. The guide in this topic explains how recordkeeping penalties are assessed and how records kept with a clear decision trail reduce the exposure.
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Penalties
Every guide in this topic
1 guide
Recordability22
Electronic submission18
Forms 300, 300A & 30112
Work-relatedness12
Covered employees9
DART & day counts9
Deadlines9
Severe injury reporting8
Employee access7
Retention & updates7
Scope & exemptions6
Audits & quality5
Incidence rates5
Multiple establishments5
Privacy cases5
Software5
300A certification4
AI & terminology3
Filing FAQs1
From guide to log
Keep the log, the 301s and the 300A in one place
300log turns each case into its OSHA 300 Log entry and 301 report, keeps privacy cases off the shared log, totals the 300A and files it with OSHA's ITA for you as soon as you authorize it.