The 2026 Federal Penalty Freeze Isn't Relief: OSHA and EPA Amounts In Effect for 2026
OSHA and EPA civil penalty amounts in effect for 2026 are unchanged from 2025. Full tables, real assessed averages, and the notices that adjust nothing.
Two Federal Register notices published in July 2026 carry titles that say “2026 adjustments.” Neither one adjusts anything. Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue filed at 91 FR 46158 under the caption “2026 Civil Monetary Penalty Inflation Adjustments.” The Department of Justice filed at 91 FR 43405 under “Civil Monetary Penalties Inflation Adjustments for 2026.” Both bodies say the amounts are not increasing. Retrieve either document by title, or ask a summarizer to read the title and stop, and you get the exact opposite of what the document says.
That is the shape of the problem for anyone building a 2026 penalty exposure figure. For most of the last decade, OSHA and EPA raised their civil monetary penalty maximums annually. In 2026 they did not. Most content describing a “2026 penalty schedule” quotes an increase that never happened, and nothing in the copy separates the right number from the invented one.
This post gives you both halves of the federal picture: the OSHA amounts in effect for 2026 with the averages OSHA actually assesses, and the EPA amounts under 40 CFR 19.4 that no 2026 notice ever touched. It ends where the real money is, which is not the ceiling.
Did OSHA and EPA Civil Penalties Go Up in 2026?
No. There was no 2026 inflation adjustment for any executive-branch agency. OMB Memorandum M-26-11, issued April 17, 2026, cancelled it government-wide and directed agencies to continue using 2025 levels. DOL confirmed this for OSHA in a final rule at 91 FR 31358, effective May 27, 2026. The 2025 amounts are the amounts in effect for 2026.
The correct phrasing in any internal document is “amounts in effect for 2026 (unchanged from 2025).” A document can carry the right figures under the wrong basis statement, and the basis statement is what fails when a corporate parent, an underwriter, or opposing counsel asks where the number came from.
OMB Memorandum M-26-11 is explicit: “there will be no updated cost-of-living adjustment multiplier for 2026 and agencies will continue using the 2025 civil monetary penalty levels as applicable.” The DOL implementation is a final rule whose action line reads “Notification of no inflation adjustment” (FR Doc. 2026-10456).
Why Was the 2026 Civil Penalty Inflation Adjustment Cancelled?
The 2015 Improvements Act ties the annual adjustment to one input: the October Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers from the prior year. The appropriations lapse that ran October 1 through November 12, 2025 stopped the Bureau of Labor Statistics from producing October 2025 CPI-U. The statute permits no alternative calculation, so OMB cancelled the adjustment rather than invent a multiplier.
This matters for how you read 2027. The cancellation was not a deregulatory policy choice and signals nothing about enforcement posture. It was a missing statutory input with no fallback written into Pub. L. 114-74, sec. 701. The Federal Register notice says as much and commits DOL to a “thorough review of civil penalties administered by its various components” during 2027.
Why Do Some 2026 Federal Register Notices Say “2026 Adjustment” If Nothing Was Adjusted?
Because agencies titled their cancellation notices by cycle, not by outcome. Interior’s ONRR notice at 91 FR 46158 is captioned “2026 Civil Monetary Penalty Inflation Adjustments” and announces no adjustment. DOJ’s at 91 FR 43405 is captioned “Civil Monetary Penalties Inflation Adjustments for 2026” and states amounts will not increase. Title-level retrieval produces exactly the wrong answer.
This is the most reliable way to end up with a fabricated 2026 figure in a board risk register. A search returns a 2026-dated document with an adjustment title, the reader assumes an increase, then estimates what it must have been. Nobody lied and the number is still wrong. Read the body, not the caption.
What Are the OSHA Penalty Maximums in Effect for 2026?
Under 29 CFR 1903.15(d), unchanged since penalties proposed after January 15, 2025: willful, $11,823 minimum to $165,514 maximum per violation; repeated, up to $165,514; serious, up to $16,550; other-than-serious and posting, up to $16,550; failure to abate, $16,550 per day unabated, generally capped at 30 days.
| Violation Type | Minimum | Maximum in Effect for 2026 (Unchanged from 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| Willful | $11,823 | $165,514 per violation |
| Repeated | $4,256 (policy minimum) | $165,514 per violation |
| Serious | $1,085 (policy minimum) | $16,550 per violation |
| Other-than-serious and posting | $0 | $16,550 per violation |
| Failure to abate | n/a | $16,550 per day unabated, generally capped at 30 days |
Read that table next to this one. The federal OSHA average assessed for a serious violation in FY2025 was $4,678, which is 28.3 percent of the $16,550 ceiling. The State Plan average was $2,720, or 16.4 percent of the ceiling (AFL-CIO, Death on the Job 2026, using FY2025 enforcement data). A ceiling published without its assessed average is not a risk figure. It is a headline.
The maximums come from 29 CFR 1903.15(d). The policy minimums and the gravity-based scale come from OSHA’s implementing memorandum of May 21, 2026, a primary source most coverage of this topic never cites. That memo publishes the gravity-based scale a compliance officer works from on a serious citation: high gravity $16,550, moderate gravity $9,457 to $14,187, low gravity $7,093. The proposed penalty on your citation starts at one of those three numbers, not at the statutory maximum.
What Is the Average OSHA Penalty Actually Assessed for a Serious Violation?
$4,678 under federal OSHA in FY2025, which is 28.3 percent of the $16,550 maximum, and $2,720 under State Plans, which is 16.4 percent. Both figures come from the AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job 2026 report using FY2025 enforcement data. The ceiling and the assessed number are an order of magnitude apart on a willful, and roughly four to one on a serious.
Neither OSHA nor EPA publishes a statistic on how often the statutory maximum is actually assessed. Any content that gives you a percentage there is inventing it. What is published is the average, and the average is what belongs in an incident-cost model next to the ceiling.
How Does OSHA Reduce a Proposed Penalty at Settlement, and in What Order?
Reductions apply serially, not additively. Each discount shrinks the base the next one applies to. Under Field Operations Manual Chapter 6 as revised July 14, 2025: size up to 70 percent for 1 to 25 employees (80 percent for serious willful at 20 or fewer), good faith up to 25 percent, history up to 20 percent, plus a 15 percent Quick-Fix credit. Adding the percentages overstates the reduction.
Most coverage of the July 2025 FOM Chapter 6 revisions gets this wrong. Stacking 70 plus 20 plus 15 produces 105 percent, which should be the tell.
The correct worked example, for a 25-employee plant with a clean five-year history that abates within five days of a $16,550 serious citation:
$16,550 x 0.30 (size) x 0.80 (history) x 0.85 (Quick-Fix) = about $3,376.
That is a combined reduction of roughly 79.6 percent, not “80 percent or more” and certainly not 105 percent. It also cannot fall below OSHA’s published minimum serious penalty of $1,085, which is the floor the ladder produces off a $7,093 low-gravity gravity-based penalty.
For a facility outside the small-employer band, run the same serial math with the size factor removed. A 200-employee plant with a clean history and a five-day abatement keeps only the history and Quick-Fix credits: $16,550 x 0.80 x 0.85 = $11,254, a 32 percent reduction, not the 35 percent that adding the two percentages suggests. Still meaningful money on a multi-citation inspection, and still smaller than the additive version most people are budgeting.
Two operational points. The reductions are case-by-case applications by the area office, not automatic: someone has to document eligibility and request each credit at the settlement conference. And the July 2025 revisions moved OSHA settlement exposure softer, not harder. The maximum size band widened from 1 to 10 employees out to 1 to 25, the serious-willful 80 percent band widened from 10 to 20 employees, and the history reduction rose from 10 percent to 20 percent.
Does the Federal Penalty Freeze Apply in OSHA State Plan States?
Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Texas are federal-OSHA states for private-sector employers, so the federal schedule applies directly. The 29 State Plan jurisdictions must maintain schedules “at least as effective as” federal under 29 CFR Part 1902. That is a floor, not a ceiling, so a State Plan could diverge upward in 2026 without a federal notice.
There are 29 OSHA-approved State Plans, not 28: 22 cover private sector plus state and local government employees, and 7 cover state and local government employees only (OSHA State Plans). For a multi-site operator, only the facilities sitting in those 29 jurisdictions encounter a State Plan schedule at all. Everything in iSi’s core region runs on the federal table.
Because “at least as effective as” under 29 CFR Part 1902 is a minimum, a State Plan could raise its own ceiling in 2026, and that decision lands in a state register rather than the Federal Register. Pull the current penalty schedule for each State Plan jurisdiction in your footprint and confirm alignment before the next audit cycle, not after a citation.
What Are the EPA Civil Penalty Amounts in Effect for 2026?
Under 40 CFR 19.4 Table 1, third column, unchanged since 90 FR 1377 (January 8, 2025): Clean Air Act 113(b) judicial, $124,426 per day; CAA 113(d)(1) administrative, $59,114 per day with a $472,901 cap; Clean Water Act 309(d), $68,445 per day; RCRA 3008(a)(3), $124,426 per day; EPCRA 325(c)(1), $71,545 per violation.
| Statute and Provision | Amount in Effect for 2026 (Unchanged from 2025) |
|---|---|
| Clean Air Act 113(b), judicial | $124,426 per day per violation |
| Clean Air Act 113(d)(1), administrative | $59,114 per day, $472,901 cap per matter |
| Clean Air Act 113(d)(3), field citation | $11,823 per day per violation |
| Clean Water Act 309(d), judicial | $68,445 per day per violation |
| RCRA 3008(a)(3), compliance order violation | $124,426 per day |
| RCRA 3008(g), judicial | $93,058 per day |
| EPCRA 325(c)(1), Section 312 inventory and Section 313 TRI | $71,545 per violation, each day a separate violation |
| EPCRA 325(c)(2), Section 311 SDS submission | $28,619 per violation |
The column instruction is the part people get wrong. 40 CFR 19.4 Table 1 carries multiple columns of historical amounts. The operative one is headed “violations that occur or occurred after November 2, 2015, where penalties are assessed on or after January 8, 2025.” That is the third column. The fourth column covers penalties assessed on or after December 27, 2023 but before January 8, 2025, and it is no longer operative. If your reference document was built by copying a column position rather than reading a column header, it is probably a cycle behind.
One framing note, because it is the most common abuse of these figures: do not multiply a per-day amount out across a calendar year. The arithmetic works and the result is professionally indefensible. Per-day authority describes the assessment mechanism, not an expected outcome, and EPA does not assess that way.
The EPCRA Section 311 Versus Section 312 Split Is the Correction Most Tier II Programs Need
Section 312 inventory reporting (the Tier II form) and Section 313 TRI reporting carry $71,545 per violation under EPCRA 325(c)(1), with each day treated as a separate violation. The Section 311 safety data sheet submission carries $28,619 per violation under 325(c)(2). These are routinely merged into a single figure in Tier II training decks and internal procedures, and the merged figure is always wrong in one direction or the other.
If your facility runs a multi-state Tier II program, this is worth ten minutes with your reporting procedure. The 311 obligation and the 312 obligation attach to different triggers, run on different clocks, and carry penalty exposure that differs by a factor of 2.5.
Did EPA Publish a 2026 Civil Penalty Inflation Adjustment Rule?
No. Unlike DOL, EPA appears to have published no 2026 adjustment action at all. The amendment history of 40 CFR 19.4 ends at 90 FR 1377 (January 8, 2025), verified against eCFR title 40 as issued August 4, 2026. EPA’s silence means the January 2025 figures remain operative, not that a different rule applies.
DOL published a rule you can cite by Federal Register page. EPA published nothing, and a Federal Register search of EPA documents from June 2025 forward returns no civil penalty inflation adjustment action. Absence of a notice is weaker evidence than a published notice. It points to the same answer here, because M-26-11 applied government-wide and the eCFR amendment history confirms no 2026 amendment landed, but an honest citation says “no 2026 EPA action exists” rather than implying EPA announced a freeze.
Practically: cite eCFR 40 CFR 19.4 directly for any EPA figure, note the issue date of the title you read, and re-check it in January 2027.
Do Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Nebraska State Environmental Penalties Change With the Federal Adjustment?
No. State caps are fixed in state statute and are not inflation-indexed. Missouri’s air penalty ceiling has been $10,000 per violation per day since 1993 under RSMo 643.151.3. Nebraska’s is $10,000 per day, enacted in the 1990s under Neb. Rev. Stat. 81-1508.02(2). Neither moves when the federal multiplier moves, or when it does not.
| State | Cap | Authority | Last set |
|---|---|---|---|
| Missouri (air) | $10,000 per violation per day | RSMo 643.151.3 | 1993 |
| Nebraska (environmental, general) | $10,000 per day | Neb. Rev. Stat. 81-1508.02(2) | 1990s |
The practical read for a Missouri facility: the federal ceiling paused for one cycle, and the state ceiling that same facility also faces has been nominally flat since 1993. In real terms the state exposure has eroded for 33 years while the federal exposure compounded every January until this year. Framing 2026 as an unprecedented freeze is a federal-centric read.
Kansas and Oklahoma are deliberately absent from that table. Secondary sources circulate per-day figures for both. Neither was confirmed against a primary state source in the research behind this post, so neither is published here. If you need a Kansas or Oklahoma number for a contract or an insurance application, pull it from the state revisor rather than from a compliance blog.
Two Agencies, Opposite Directions, Same Fiscal Year
“Penalties are flat” is not the same statement as “enforcement is flat,” and in FY2025 the two agencies moved in opposite directions.
EPA went up. FY2025 closed with 2,127 civil enforcement cases concluded, the highest count in nine years, and over $650 million in assessed civil penalties (EPA FY2025 Civil Enforcement Results). That total is heavily skewed by a small number of very large matters. Published case highlights include a $42.6 million Clean Air Act mobile-source penalty against Manitowoc Company, $3.1 million against Costco under FIFRA, $440,393 against Clearwater Paper under the CAA Risk Management Program, and $310,000 against CEMEX under the Clean Water Act. Dividing the headline total by the case count produces a mean near $306,000 that no mid-market manufacturer should treat as typical.
OSHA went down. Federal OSHA conducted 30,273 inspections in FY2025 against 34,625 in FY2024, a 12.6 percent decline, per OSHA’s Current Enforcement Summary. One caveat belongs with that comparison: FY2025 replaced the OSHA Weighting System with the Enforcement Impact Index, which changes how inspection effort is credited. Raw year-over-year inspection counts are a noisier comparison than they look.
The temptation is to read a 12.6 percent inspection decline as relief. It is not. Fewer inspections happen, and the ones that do happen carry the same exposure they carried in 2025. Fewer at-bats, same swing.
When Will Federal Penalty Amounts Change Again?
The next scheduled opportunity is January 2027, contingent on BLS publishing October 2026 CPI-U on time. DOL has stated it will undertake a thorough review of civil penalties in 2027. Any 2026 figure carried in a durable document should be flagged for re-verification in January 2027 rather than assumed stable.
Direction of travel is up. The freeze is explicitly a one-cycle event caused by a missing index value, and both the statutory deadline (no later than January 15, 2027) and DOL’s stated 2027 review point the same way.
On the 2027 number: treat any projection as an illustration, not a forecast. As an illustration only, applying two cycles of adjustment at roughly the 2.6 percent factor used in January 2025 would put the willful ceiling somewhere near $174,000. Nothing in M-26-11 or 91 FR 31358 commits to compounding the missed cycle, and no agency has published a 2027 figure. The defensible move is to build a placeholder in the 2027 column of your cost model for a larger-than-normal adjustment and revisit it in November 2026 when October 2026 CPI-U publishes.
What This Means for Your 2026 Incident-Cost Model
Four moves, in order of how quickly they pay off:
1. Fix the basis statement, not just the number. Replace any “2026 adjusted” or “as adjusted for 2026” language in incident-cost models, insurance applications, prequalification questionnaires, board risk registers, and EHS training decks with “amounts in effect for 2026 (unchanged from 2025).” The dollar figures in your documents are probably already right. The sentence explaining where they came from is probably wrong, and that is the sentence a reviewer challenges.
2. Flatten the escalator for one cycle, then rebuild it. A facility carrying three open serious citations at $16,550 each was modeling roughly $51,000 with a 2 to 3 percent annual escalator. The escalator goes to zero for 2026. Pair that with a placeholder for a potentially larger 2027 step, because the freeze is temporary by design.
3. Re-source every penalty figure to a primary document. For OSHA, use eCFR 29 CFR 1903.15(d) and the OSHA memorandum of May 21, 2026. For EPA, use 40 CFR 19.4 Table 1, third column, and confirm you are reading the column header rather than the column position.
4. Pair every maximum you publish with its assessed average. $16,550 next to $4,678. A naked ceiling is a credibility failure in front of a CFO who can look up the average in five minutes, and it is a professional exposure for any PE, CIH, or CSP who signs the document it appears in.
How Much Penalty Exposure Does Self-Disclosure Under the EPA Audit Policy Eliminate?
Up to 100 percent of gravity-based civil penalties, plus a determination not to recommend criminal prosecution, for a disclosure meeting all nine conditions of EPA’s Audit Policy at 65 FR 19618. Entities meeting every condition except systematic discovery still receive a 75 percent gravity reduction. The economic-benefit component of the penalty is not mitigated.
This is the number that actually moves money, and it is the reason the ceiling tables above are the least interesting part of this post. The delta between a violation you find and document yourself and the same violation an inspector finds is not a few percentage points of inflation adjustment. Under the EPA Audit Policy, it is the entire gravity-based component of the penalty.
Take the EPCRA split above. A Section 312 inventory reporting failure carries $71,545 per violation with each day counted separately. Found in a self-directed EPA compliance audit, disclosed within the policy’s timeline, corrected, and documented against all nine conditions, the gravity-based portion of that exposure can go to zero. Found by an inspector during an unrelated site visit, it does not.
That is a self-disclosure program, not a penalty-avoidance trick. All nine conditions are auditable, and the first one, systematic discovery through a documented audit or compliance management system, is the reason a facility without a standing audit program cannot claim full mitigation even when it self-reports.
How iSi Approaches This Across Multi-Site Operations
The structural question for a multi-site operator is not whether the federal ceiling moved. It is whether anyone is running the program that produces a documented finding before an inspector produces one: the EPCRA 311 versus 312 split checked against the actual reporting procedure, the FOM Chapter 6 credits requested at the right moment, the State Plan schedules confirmed rather than assumed, and the Audit Policy conditions satisfied in a form that survives review.
iSi’s EHS cooperative retainer, the EHS COOP, runs $15,000 to $90,000 per year depending on tier and footprint, with a national team in 40 states. Price that against the Audit Policy delta rather than against a penalty headline. One Section 312 finding surfaced internally and disclosed under the policy conditions can carry a gravity-based mitigation larger than the annual retainer, and that is a published federal number at 65 FR 19618, not a projection. The retainer exists so that the finding happens on your calendar instead of the inspector’s.
The freeze is not the story. The assessed averages, the serial settlement math, the EPCRA split, and the self-disclosure delta are the story. If your 2026 documentation does not reflect each of them, the numbers in it are defensible and the reasoning behind them is not.
Next step: if you are refreshing a 2026 incident-cost model or a Tier II reporting procedure this quarter, send us the current version and we will tell you which figures and which basis statements need to change.
Sources
- OMB Memorandum M-26-11, “Cancellation of Penalty Inflation Adjustments for 2026” (April 17, 2026): whitehouse.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- Federal Register: DOL Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Annual Adjustments for 2026, 91 FR 31358, FR Doc 2026-10456: federalregister.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- OSHA Memorandum, “2026 Annual Adjustments to OSHA Civil Penalties” (May 21, 2026): osha.gov/memos/2026-05-21 (verified 2026-08-07)
- eCFR: 29 CFR 1903.15, Proposed penalties: ecfr.gov (verified 2026-08-07 against title 29 issue date 2026-08-05)
- eCFR: 40 CFR 19.4, Civil monetary penalty inflation adjustments: ecfr.gov (verified 2026-08-07 against title 40 issue date 2026-08-04)
- eCFR: 29 CFR Part 1902, State Plan approval criteria: ecfr.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- Federal Register: ONRR 2026 Civil Monetary Penalty Inflation Adjustments, 91 FR 46158: federalregister.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- Federal Register: DOJ Civil Monetary Penalties Inflation Adjustments for 2026, 91 FR 43405: federalregister.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- EPA: Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Annual Results for FY 2025, Civil Enforcement: epa.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- EPA: FY2025 Annual Results Report (PDF): epa.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- EPA Audit Policy, “Incentives for Self-Policing,” 65 FR 19618 (April 11, 2000): govinfo.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- OSHA Field Operations Manual, Chapter 6, Penalties and Debt Collection (CPL 02-00-164, rev. July 14, 2025): osha.gov/fom/chapter-6 (verified 2026-08-07)
- OSHA Current Enforcement Summary (FY2025 inspection data): osha.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- OSHA State Plans: osha.gov/stateplans (verified 2026-08-07)
- AFL-CIO, “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect,” 2026 (35th annual edition, FY2025 enforcement data): aflcio.org/dotj-2026 (verified 2026-08-07)
- Missouri Revised Statutes 643.151, air pollution violations and penalties: revisor.mo.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- Nebraska Revised Statute 81-1508.02, unlawful acts and civil penalty: nebraskalegislature.gov (verified 2026-08-07)
- Public Law 114-74, sec. 701, Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015: uscode.house.gov (verified 2026-08-07)