OSHA Form 301 — Injury and Illness Incident Report

What is OSHA Form 301?

Form 301 ("Injury and Illness Incident Report") is one of three OSHA recordkeeping forms required by 29 CFR Part 1904. Unlike Form 300 (the running log) or Form 300A (the annual summary), Form 301 is filed once per incident and captures the detail of what happened: where, when, how, and what injury resulted.

OSHA accepts alternative forms — state workers' compensation reports, equivalent insurance forms — as long as they contain every field Form 301 requires. In practice most employers use the OSHA-provided form because the equivalency check is its own minefield: a single missing field counts as a missing Form 301.

Who has to file Form 301?

Most employers with more than 10 employees at any point in the prior calendar year — unless they fall into a partially exempt industry (NAICS codes covering retail, finance, real estate, education, and most professional services, per Appendix A to Subpart B of 29 CFR Part 1904). Even partially exempt employers must record severe injuries: deaths, hospitalizations, amputations, and loss of an eye.

If you employ workers — including temps and contractors performing your work — and one is injured at your worksite, 301 obligations may apply to you, not their nominal employer. OSHA uses a "supervision and control" test, not whose payroll they're on.

When do you have to file it?

Within 7 calendar days of learning that a recordable injury or illness occurred. The clock starts when anyone in management finds out, not just when the person responsible for recordkeeping does. Friday-afternoon discovery, Monday-morning paperwork is usually fine. Two-week delays are not.

The 7-day window is for recording — not reporting. Reporting deadlines are separate and much shorter:

• Fatality: report to OSHA within 8 hours
• Hospitalization, amputation, loss of an eye: report within 24 hours

You can be late on Form 301 even if you reported the incident on time. They're independent obligations.

What information you'll need

Gather this before you sit down to the form — you'll move three times faster:

About the employee

• Full legal name, address, date of birth, sex
• Date hired
• Job title at the time of injury

About the incident

• Date and time of injury
• Specific location on the premises
• What the employee was doing immediately before
• Narrative description of how the injury occurred
• Objects, substances, or equipment involved

About the injury

• Specific body parts affected
• Description of injury type (laceration, fracture, strain, burn, etc.)

Medical and outcome

• Physician or other health care professional name
• Whether treatment occurred offsite, and where
• Case outcome flags: days away from work, restricted duty, job transfer, death

Five mistakes that trigger penalties

1. Confusing first aid with medical treatment

First aid — bandages, non-prescription pain relievers, ice, wound cleaning — is not recordable. Sutures, prescription meds, physical therapy, and most x-rays are. Recording a non-recordable case clutters your statistics; missing a recordable case is a citable violation. OSHA's official first aid list at 29 CFR 1904.7(b)(5)(ii) is the source of truth.

2. A thin "how it occurred" narrative

The most-cited Form 301 deficiency. "Slipped" isn't enough. "Slipped on water leaking from the break-room refrigerator while carrying coffee with both hands" is what an inspector expects. The narrative is what distinguishes a defensible record from a citation.

3. Filing past the 7-day window

Late = violation. If you have twenty unrecorded injuries on file, you have twenty separate violations, each citable at up to $16,550.

4. Not updating outcomes when cases evolve

A case originally logged as "days away" that later becomes a fatality must be updated within 7 days of learning of the change. Old, frozen 301s get audited.

5. Losing the 5-year retention

Forms 301, 300, and 300A must all be retained for five years following the end of the calendar year they cover. They must be available within 4 business hours of an OSHA request — including weekends, in some jurisdictions.

Your three filing options

1. Download the fillable PDF from OSHA's site, hand-fill or type, save, file. Free. Tedious. Error-prone for the narrative and the first-aid-vs-medical classification.
2. Use your workers' compensation form — if and only if it contains every required Form 301 field. Free if you already file one anyway; risky if a single field is missing.
3. Use IncidentFast to generate everything in 5 minutes. $49 flat per incident. Unlimited edits. Backed by our OSHA-Ready Guarantee.

Frequently asked

Is Form 301 the same as Form 300?

No. Form 301 is a per-incident report. Form 300 is the running log of all recordable cases for the calendar year. Each recordable injury produces one Form 301 and one row on Form 300.

Can I use my workers' comp form instead?

Only if it contains every field Form 301 requires. Many state-specific workers' comp forms are close but miss the narrative or case-outcome fields. When a single required field is missing, OSHA treats it as a missing Form 301 — a separately citable violation.

What's a "privacy concern case"?

Certain sensitive injuries — sexual assault, HIV infection, mental illness, intentional self-harm, and needle-stick incidents — require the employee's name to be redacted on Form 300. The 301 itself still includes the name, but the 300 row uses "Privacy Case" instead of identifying details.

How long do I keep Form 301?

Five years after the end of the calendar year the form covers. Forms 300, 300A, and 301 all share the same 5-year retention.

What happens if I file late or skip a case?

Up to $16,550 per violation for serious recordkeeping violations as of 2025. Willful or repeated violations can reach $165,514 per case. Each unrecorded case is citable separately.

Do I have to send Form 301 to OSHA?

No — Form 301 stays on file at your establishment. You produce it during an OSHA inspection or audit. Only Forms 300 and 300A are subject to electronic submission, and only for qualifying establishments.