The US first report of injury form, and what late filing costs

Workers’ compensation in the United States is state law, not federal law. There is no single national first report of injury form, no single deadline and no single penalty. This page describes what these forms have in common, how the deadlines differ across several states, what late filing costs, and where to find the rule for a given jurisdiction. It describes published requirements. It is not legal advice and does not state what any employer should do.

What is a first report of injury form?

It is the opening document of a workers’ compensation claim: the employer’s account of an injury, sent to whoever administers the claim, on a form that the state has prescribed.

The names vary and the function does not. California calls it the Employer’s Report of Occupational Injury or Illness, Form 5020. New York calls it the Employer’s First Report of Work-Related Injury/Illness, Form C-2F. Texas calls it the Employer’s First Report of Injury or Illness, DWC Form-001. Illinois calls it Form 45, the Employer’s First Report of Injury. In electronic data interchange the category is abbreviated to FROI, First Report of Injury.

The form is not an admission. The New York Workers’ Compensation Board states the point directly in its guidance on Form C-2F: filing it is not necessarily an admission that the employer agrees with the facts of the reported accident, it is a statement that an employee reported a work-related injury or illness to the employer.

What is usually on the form?

The common core is narrow and consistent across jurisdictions, because claim administration needs the same handful of facts everywhere.

Florida’s statute is unusually explicit about the minimum. Section 440.185(2), Florida Statutes requires the report to contain the name, address and business of the employer, the name, social security number, address, telephone number and occupation of the employee, the year, month, day and hour when the injury or death occurred, the particular locality where it occurred, and such other information as the department may require.

Most state forms then add the same practical fields: wage and employment details, the date the employer first knew of the injury, the body part affected, the nature of the injury, the object or exposure that caused it, whether the employee lost time, where treatment was given, and a short narrative.

Every first report of injury form asks when the employer first knew about the injury, because that date is what starts the filing clock in most states.

Who files it, and who receives it?

In most states the employer files, and the insurance carrier receives. The state agency then receives the data either from the carrier or directly.

Florida sets out this two step chain plainly: under section 440.185(2) the employer reports the injury or death to its carrier within seven days of actual knowledge and gives a copy of the report to the employee, and the carrier files the required information with the department within fourteen days after the employer’s receipt of the form. California splits by insurance arrangement instead. Title 8 California Code of Regulations section 14001 requires an insured employer to file Form 5020 with the insurer, while a self-insured employer files directly with the Division.

New York allows the duty to be discharged by someone else entirely. The Workers’ Compensation Board states that an employer is not required to submit Form C-2F to the Board if the employer’s insurer will be submitting the accident information electronically on the employer’s behalf, although the employer must still notify the insurer.

Separately from the employer’s report, several states require a claim form to reach the injured worker very quickly. California Labor Code section 5401(a) requires the employer to provide a claim form and a notice of potential eligibility for benefits, personally or by first-class mail, within one working day of notice or knowledge of an injury causing lost time beyond the employee’s shift or medical treatment beyond first aid. Texas requires a copy of the completed DWC Form-001, with the Employee’s Rights and Responsibilities, to go to the employee when the form is filed.

How long does an employer have to file it?

Deadlines run from a few days to a calendar month, and the trigger differs as much as the number does. The examples below are the published rules in five states, quoted from those states’ own agencies. They are illustrations of the range, not a substitute for the rule in any particular jurisdiction.

California. Five days. 8 CCR 14001 requires the Form 5020 to be filed “within five days after such insured employer obtains knowledge of the injury, illness or death”, with the same five day period applying to a self-insured employer filing directly with the Division.

Florida. Seven days. Section 440.185(2) requires the employer to report to its carrier “within 7 days after actual knowledge of injury or death”.

Texas. Eight days. The Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers’ Compensation states that the employer files DWC Form-001 with the insurance carrier within eight days from when the employee cannot work for more than one day because of the injury, and immediately in the case of a work-related disease or death.

New York. A compound deadline. Under Workers’ Compensation Law section 110 and 12 NYCRR section 310.1, as summarised by the Workers’ Compensation Board, injuries other than minor injuries are reported “on or before the 18th day after the workplace injury or illness occurred, or within 10 days after the employer learns of the event, whichever period is greater”.

Pennsylvania. A window rather than a deadline. The Department of Labor and Industry states that reports are due within 48 hours for every injury resulting in death, and “not before 7 days but no later than 10 days after the date of injury” for other injuries covered by the Workers’ Compensation Act, except cases resulting in no disability.

Illinois. Monthly for most cases. The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission states that section 6(b) of the Workers’ Compensation Act requires reports on all accidents involving more than three lost work days, that first reports on fatal accidents are due within two work days after the death, and that nonfatal cases are reported within the month.

A deadline measured from the employer’s knowledge and a deadline measured from the date of injury are not the same deadline, and states use both.

How does this differ from the OSHA 300 and 301?

They are different systems serving different purposes, and neither one satisfies the other.

The OSHA forms exist for occupational safety and health regulation under 29 CFR Part 1904, and we set out what each of them holds in OSHA 300, 300A and 301. The OSHA 300 Log and the OSHA 301 Injury and Illness Incident Report are kept by the employer and entered within seven calendar days of receiving information that a recordable case has occurred. Nothing is sent to a carrier. The first report of injury exists to start benefit payments under state workers’ compensation law, and it is sent onwards at once.

The thresholds differ too. A case that is recordable under 29 CFR 1904.7 may involve no lost time at all, while several state first report duties bite only once the employee has lost time beyond the day of injury. California’s Form 5020 duty under 8 CCR 14001 covers injuries and illnesses causing lost time beyond the date of injury or requiring medical treatment beyond first aid.

The two systems do touch at one point. Section 1904.29(b)(4) allows an equivalent form to stand in for the OSHA 301 and notes that many employers use an insurance form in place of it, or supplement an insurance form with the additional information OSHA requires. An insurance first report of injury can therefore do double duty, but only if it carries every field the OSHA 301 carries.

Britain has no filing of this shape at all. The nearest document is the accident book, which stays on the premises and is read only when somebody asks for it, and the pressure on a British employer arrives later, from the pre-action protocol timetable in England and Wales, which starts when a claim is intimated rather than when an injury is reported.

What does late filing cost?

Penalties are set by each state, and the published figures are modest next to the indirect costs.

New York publishes both a criminal and an administrative consequence. Its guidance for employers states that failure to file on time is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine, and that the Board may impose a penalty of up to $2,500. Florida attaches a fine not to exceed $500 for each failure or refusal to send the required report, and section 440.185 specifies that an employer who fails to notify the carrier within the seven days required is liable for the fine, which is paid by the employer and not the carrier.

The larger cost is usually not the fine. Late notice delays the first benefit payment, which is what turns a routine claim into a disputed one. The New York Workers’ Compensation Board lists the effects of timely reporting in its own guidance: it allows the injured worker to receive treatment and benefits promptly, it has been shown to reduce the costs of a claim, it helps the insurer monitor and administer the claim, and it leads to the injured worker returning to work faster.

A late first report of injury rarely produces a large fine and routinely produces a more expensive claim.

Why the deadline is harder to hit than it looks

Because the clock usually starts when any manager learns of the injury, not when the paperwork reaches the person who fills in forms.

Where a state measures its deadline from the employer’s knowledge, as California and Florida both do, the trigger is the moment a supervisor is told, including verbally at the end of a shift on a site with no office. Where the deadline runs from the date of injury, as Pennsylvania’s does, an injury the employee reports late has already eaten part of the window.

The fields themselves are also unforgiving. A first report of injury needs a precise date, hour and location, a description of what the employee was doing, and details of the object or exposure involved. Those facts are most accurate on the day. Carriers return incomplete forms for missing wage data or a vague location, and a returned form does not stop the original clock.

Which agency sets the rule in your jurisdiction?

The state workers’ compensation agency, or in a few states an industrial commission or board with a different name.

Each agency publishes its own forms, deadlines, penalties and electronic filing route, and those pages are the authority for any specific obligation. The agencies and statutes cited on this page are listed in full under Sources below.

Most states now take the form electronically rather than on paper. The International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions, the IAIABC, maintains the electronic data interchange standards that jurisdictions use for this, with the First Report of Injury known as the FROI and the later Subsequent Report of Injury as the SROI. Illinois, for example, moved to the IAIABC 3.1 XML standard for accident reports from 9 September 2024. An employer filing in several states may therefore be filing the same facts into several different electronic formats.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• California Code of Regulations, Title 8, section 14001, Employer’s report, Form 5020: https://www.dir.ca.gov/t8/14001.html
• California Division of Workers’ Compensation, DWC forms: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/forms.html
• California Labor Code section 5401, claim form to the employee: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB&sectionNum=5401
• New York State Workers’ Compensation Board, when an injury happens: https://www.wcb.ny.gov/content/main/Employers/when-injury-happens.jsp
• New York State Workers’ Compensation Board, Reporting Injury and Illness, employer responsibilities: https://www.wcb.ny.gov/content/main/TheBoard/EMP-TimelyReporting.pdf
• Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers’ Compensation, employer FAQ: https://www.tdi.texas.gov/wc/employer/employerfaq.html
• Section 440.185, Florida Statutes, notice of injury or death: https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/440.185
• Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, report an employee injured on the job: https://www.pa.gov/services/dli/report-an-employee-injured-on-the-job
• Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, accident reporting and EDI: https://iwcc.illinois.gov/ediimplimentation.html
• 29 CFR Part 1904, for the separate OSHA recordkeeping duty: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/part-1904

Last reviewed: 16 September 2026

About Logincident. Logincident is a data and software company whose configurable platform captures structured evidence at source through a mobile app, forms, photographs, GPS and offline capture, and presents it in dashboards and reports. We are not a law firm or a claims handler, and nothing on this page is legal advice.