You missed the March 1 Tier II deadline. Now what?

This page explains what the rules and common practice call for. Every site is different, and what a survey or a filing needs at your facility is something we work out with you after we see it.

The short version: file now, and talk to your attorney about disclosing to EPA. A late Tier II report accrues penalties every day it stays unfiled, and the same provision that penalizes a late Form R applies here.

Tier II is the annual chemical inventory report required by sections 311 and 312 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). It covers the previous calendar year and is due March 1.

The penalty

EPCRA's penalty provision treats a Tier II violation under section 312 the same way it treats a Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) violation under section 313. Both fall under the same paragraph, which sets a maximum of $25,000 per violation. EPA's inflation rule adjusts that figure, and the current adjusted maximum is $71,545 per violation, as of the January 2025 adjustment.

The provision then adds that each day a violation continues is a separate violation. The penalty is per violation and per day. A late Tier II report starts accruing on March 2, and each unreported chemical can be counted separately.

EPA adjusts these figures every year, so check the current figure before you rely on it.

One figure to watch for. The section 311 penalty, for failing to send a safety data sheet or list, is lower, currently $28,619 per violation per day. That figure is often quoted as the Tier II penalty, and it is not. The annual inventory is a section 312 requirement, and it carries the higher figure.

In practice, EPA settles most late Tier II cases for far less than the statutory maximum, and it weighs the amount and hazard of the chemicals, the facility's history and how quickly the report was fixed. The maximum is still the number the math starts from.

EPA's Audit Policy

EPA has a self-disclosure policy, known as the Audit Policy, that can waive the punitive part of a penalty when a facility finds a violation on its own, discloses it promptly and fixes it. If you meet all nine of the policy's conditions, 100% of the gravity-based penalty is waived. If you meet all but the first, systematic discovery, the reduction is 75%.

Two of the conditions are clocks, and both run from the day you discovered the violation. You must disclose to EPA in writing within 21 calendar days of discovery, and you must correct the violation within 60 calendar days of discovery. Disclosing on day 21 does not restart the 60 days.

Disclosures go through EPA's online eDisclosure portal. EPCRA violations that meet all the conditions, and that carry no significant economic benefit, fall into the category that receives an automatic notice resolving the matter with no civil penalty. A missed Tier II report is a good fit for that category, because the money saved by not filing is small. The full mechanics of the policy are described on our Form R deadline page, and they work the same way here.

Whether to disclose is a legal decision, and it belongs with your attorney. What follows is the technical side.

What to do first

1. Write down the discovery date today. Every clock in the Audit Policy runs from it, and it is the one fact you cannot reconstruct later.
2. Find the full extent of the gap. Check whether it is one year or several, and one facility or more. Disclosing one year and then finding three more is worse than disclosing all four at once.
3. Build the inventory properly. Rushing a late report is how the second violation happens. Use the applicability test, and check the batteries.
4. File in the state portal. In Arizona that is myDEQ, and the portal accepts a late filing. Pay the fee. → Filing in Arizona
5. Send the copies. The local emergency planning committee and the fire department are owed the report too, unless they have signed the electronic acceptance agreement. A late report that reaches the state but not the fire department is still incomplete.
6. Check section 302. If an extremely hazardous substance is on site at or above its threshold planning quantity, you also owe a one-time emergency planning notification, and a facility that missed Tier II has often missed that too.
7. Decide about disclosure with your attorney, inside the 21-day window.

Filing for prior years

Missed years do not expire. The obligation for each past year remains, and the way to close it is to file the report for that year. Past inventories are built from the same records: purchasing, delivery tickets, tank capacities and the safety data sheets in force at the time. Where records are thin, we use the capacity of the vessels and say so in the file.

What we do

We determine the extent of the gap, build the inventory for each missed year, file in Arizona's portal, send the copies, and assemble the records that support a disclosure if you choose to make one. Work after the deadline is urgent, so we run it on a short schedule and keep the discovery date and the 60-day window in view.

One thing we will not do is advise you on whether to disclose. Our part is the technical work that makes a disclosure accurate and a correction complete.

→ Do you have to file? · Tier II and Form R compared · Our Tier II reporting service