Texas DWC Form-001: The Employer's First Report of Injury

A Friday Injury at a Texas Warehouse

At 3:15 p.m. on a Friday, a forklift operator at a Texas warehouse strains a shoulder and goes home. The site's HR coordinator logs the event and wonders when the first report is due. Monday comes, and the employee is still out. By Wednesday the absence has run past one day, and the coordinator has two documents open. One is the state rule. The other is the instruction block printed on the form itself. They do not say quite the same thing.

The coordinator also has a question neither text answers plainly: is the eighth day counted in calendar days, working days or business days? A Friday injury shows why that matters.

By the end of this article you will know what each text says, where they differ, what stays open, and what to confirm with the Texas Division of Workers' Compensation (DWC) before you file.

What 28 TAC §120.2 and the Form-001 Instructions Say

Reference material with citations, not legal advice. You decide recordability and compensability, and you file.

Start with the rule. Under 28 TAC §120.2 (checked 2026), a Texas employer must file the first report of injury with its insurance carrier no later than the eighth day after an employee's absence from work for more than one day due to a work-related injury. The same section sets the eighth day after notice or knowledge for an occupational disease or a death. The recipient is the employer's insurance carrier. The unit is "day", and the rule text as quoted does not say which kind.

"not later than the eighth day after the employee's absence from work for more than one day due to a work-related injury" — 28 TAC §120.2 (checked 2026)

Now the form. The instructions on Texas DWC Form-001 (Rev. 10/05, as hosted by the University of Texas System) describe the trigger as follows: "not later than the eighth day after the receipt of notice of occupational disease, or the employee's first day of absence". They also say an employer who fails to file without good cause may face an administrative penalty.

Two texts, one duty

The rule ties the clock to an absence of more than one day. The form instructions tie it to the employee's first day of absence. Those are different triggers. In the Friday example, a rule-based reading depends on when the absence is treated as having passed one day. A form-based reading starts from the first missed day.

We do not resolve that for you. Attribute each text, and confirm the operative reading with Texas DWC before you rely on either. The form copy cited here is also an older revision, so check which revision is current.

The day basis is not stated

Neither passage tells you whether the eighth day is counted in calendar days, working days or business days. We have no sourced answer, so we do not give one. If you count the Friday injury forward in calendar days, weekends are included. If you count in working days, they are not. The two methods can put the deadline on different dates. Treat the day basis as an open question for Texas DWC. The same issue appears across states, as the guide to workplace injury reporting deadlines by state explains.

What You Decide

The rules above fix when a report is due once the trigger occurs. They do not decide whether an event is a compensable work-related injury. That judgment sits with the employer and its carrier, under Texas law and your coverage. Whether an absence counts toward the trigger, and whether a condition is an occupational disease, are also your calls, informed by the cited text and by advice from the carrier or counsel.

A separate duty applies to Texas employers without workers' compensation coverage. Per the TDI employer FAQ (checked 2026), such an employer must report to DWC no later than the seventh day of the month following the month in which a death occurred, an employee was off work for more than one day because of an on-the-job injury, or the employer learned of a work-related illness. The form number and filing channel for that report are not covered here, so confirm them with DWC. The obligations of Texas non-subscriber employers are a separate topic from the carrier-facing Form-001 clock.

Texas is unusual in this respect. TDI's biennial report (2022) says Texas is the only state that allows private-sector employers the option of not purchasing workers' compensation coverage. So your first step is to know which side of that line you are on.

Edge Cases and Where Duties Overlap

A Texas workers' compensation first report is one clock among several. If the injury is a work-related in-patient hospitalization, amputation or eye loss, a federal duty may also apply. Under 29 CFR 1904.39, an employer must report an in-patient hospitalization, amputation or loss of an eye to OSHA within 24 hours, and a fatality within 8 hours (OSHA, checked 2026). Those clocks run independently of the DWC form and go to a different recipient. See the overview of OSHA severe injury reporting requirements for the federal side.

Recording is a third track. Each recordable case must be entered on the OSHA 300 Log and the 301 Incident Report within seven calendar days of receiving information that a recordable case has occurred (29 CFR 1904.29, checked 2026). Recordability is also your decision. A case can be recordable without triggering a Form-001, and the reverse.

If you run sites in more than one state, the state clocks diverge in trigger, unit and recipient. Florida, for instance, runs seven days from actual knowledge to the carrier under Fla. Stat. §440.185 (checked 2026). Our piece on multi-state employer injury reporting covers how to keep those straight.

Keeping the Record Defensible

When two texts disagree and the day basis is silent, the defensible practice is to write down what you relied on. Record the date you learned of the injury, the first day of absence, the rule and form revision you consulted, the day-counting method you used, and the date you filed. If Texas DWC answers your question, save that answer with the file.

The form instructions say a failure to file without good cause may draw an administrative penalty. A recorded, reasoned basis for your count is part of showing good cause. Filing earlier than the earliest plausible deadline avoids most of the question.

Keep the OSHA records on their own schedule too. OSHA 300 Logs, 300A summaries and 301 reports must be kept five years following the end of the calendar year they cover (29 CFR 1904.33, checked 2026). Retention remains the employer's responsibility.

Where Tools Fit

Free channels exist for the filing itself: the form, the carrier's intake and the DWC's own guidance. They are authoritative, and you file through them. Many employers track the dates in a spreadsheet plus email. That works for dates, but it holds the date without the rule that produced it, and it keeps no record of which wording you applied.

The Texas Employer Injury Reporting Workbook computes deadline dates from the knowledge date, covers both covered and non-covered employers, and rolls cases into an OSHA log. It does not decide recordability, does not submit anything and does not give legal advice. You decide and you file. If you run a single Texas site of 20 to 100 employees, the workbook is the route we would point you to first.

ClaimsIntake's reporting app is being built to hold each deadline in a versioned rule table, with a citation and a "last verified" date on every row. It is not live, and no rule row is verified for any jurisdiction today. You can join the waitlist to follow it.

Your Next Step

Pull the Form-001 revision you actually use and compare its instructions with the current text of 28 TAC §120.2. Then ask Texas DWC two questions in writing: which trigger governs, and whether the eighth day is counted in calendar, working or business days. Keep the reply with your file. After that, set a single owner and a backup for the clock, so that one absence does not decide whether a report is filed.

Reference material with citations, not legal advice. You decide recordability and compensability, and you file.