Civil Monetary Penalties: Federal Agencies' Compliance with the 2025 Annual Inflation Adjustment Requirements
Fast Facts
When enforcing regulations, federal agencies use fines to hold violators accountable and to deter future violations. But if agencies don't regularly adjust these fines for inflation, they may become less effective.
Congress enacted the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990 partly to address this issue. In 2015, Congress amended the act to require GAO to annually review agencies' compliance with certain provisions.
For 2025, we found that the majority of the 49 agencies that could be subject to the act adjusted their fines to account for inflation and published them in the Federal Register and Agency Financial Reports.
A courtroom gavel placed on several twenty-dollar bills.
Highlights
What GAO Found
In this 10th annual review, GAO found that most federal agencies that could be subject to the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 1990, as amended (IAA), have published civil monetary penalty inflation adjustments for 2025 in the Federal Register and reported related information in their 2025 or 2024 agency financial reports (AFR) or equivalent. All 49 agencies GAO reviewed for 2025 correctly calculated the 2025 civil monetary penalty annual inflation adjustment amounts. However, one agency did not publish its inflation adjustment in the Federal Register as of December 31, 2025, and did not report the required information in its 2025 AFR for its civil monetary penalties.
Why GAO Did This Study
The IAA includes a provision, added in 2015, for GAO to annually submit to Congress a report assessing agencies' compliance with the annual inflation adjustments the act requires.
For more information, please contact Paula M. Rascona at rasconap@gao.gov.