If you apply for a job that pays $75,000 or more a year, the FCRA $75,000 salary exception lets a background check reach past the usual seven-year cutoff for negative information. Older bankruptcies, civil lawsuits, arrests that never led to conviction, paid tax liens, and collection accounts that would normally have dropped off your consumer report can be reported to the employer. The exception is written into the Fair Credit Reporting Act itself, and it has been sitting at the same dollar figure since 1996.
How the Exception Works
The Fair Credit Reporting Act sets default time limits on how long negative information can appear in a consumer report. Most adverse items drop off after seven years, and bankruptcies drop off after ten. The statute then lists three situations where those limits vanish entirely: credit transactions of $150,000 or more, life insurance underwriting of $150,000 or more, and employment at a salary reasonably expected to equal or exceed $75,000.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports For job applicants, only the last one matters.
The phrase “reasonably expected” is doing real work. The position doesn’t have to guarantee a $75,000 base salary. If total expected compensation crosses the line once you factor in bonuses, commissions, or other predictable pay, the exception can apply. The reporting agency and the employer need a reasonable basis for believing the role meets the threshold, not a signed offer at that exact number.
Congress set the figure in the Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act of 1996 and never indexed it to inflation. When the law passed, $75,000 was executive territory. Today it captures mid-career professionals across many industries. The U.S. Census Bureau reported median household income of $83,730 for 2024, so a large share of workers now sit above the threshold on a per-person basis.2U.S. Census Bureau. Income in the United States: 2024
What Extra Records Become Visible
Five categories of negative information normally expire on a schedule. When the exception applies, they lose their expiration dates.
- Bankruptcies, normally reportable for ten years after the order for relief or adjudication, can appear from fifteen or twenty years back.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
- Civil suits and civil judgments, normally reportable for seven years from entry or until the statute of limitations expires (whichever is longer), remain visible past that window.
- Arrest records, normally capped at seven years, can appear from any point in your past even if the arrest never led to charges or a conviction.
- Paid tax liens, normally reportable for seven years from the date of payment, can still show up.
- Collection accounts and other adverse items, normally capped at seven years from charge-off or placement for collection, remain fair game.
The practical result is that an employer screening for a $75,000-plus role sees a substantially longer financial and legal history than one screening for a lower-paying position. A candidate might have a clean-looking seven-year window and still carry older records that only surface under this exception.
Criminal Convictions Are a Separate Rule
Here is where people get tripped up. Criminal convictions are not subject to any federal time limit at any salary level. The statute’s list of items capped at seven years explicitly excludes “records of convictions of crimes.”1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports A felony conviction from twenty years ago can appear on a background check for a $40,000 job as easily as for a $200,000 one. The salary exception does not drive that outcome, because convictions were never capped to begin with.
Non-conviction records work differently. An arrest that ended in dismissal, acquittal, or dropped charges falls under the seven-year limit in standard screening. The $75,000 exception lifts that limit and lets the reporting agency include the old arrest.3Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Fair Credit Reporting; Background Screening So the distinction cuts two ways. If you were arrested but never convicted, the seven-year rule shields you in standard screening but not in high-salary screening. If you were convicted, no time limit shields you at any salary level.
How Agencies Verify the Position Qualifies
A reporting agency cannot decide on its own that a job pays enough to justify digging deeper. The law requires every agency to maintain reasonable procedures designed to prevent violations of the reporting time limits.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681e – Compliance Procedures Before an agency includes records older than seven years, it needs some basis for concluding the exception applies.
The employer’s side has its own step. Before any employment report can be furnished, the employer must certify that it has disclosed the background check to the applicant, will comply with adverse action rules if it takes negative action, and will not use the information in violation of equal employment opportunity laws.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681b – Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports The salary question typically gets addressed during that certification. Reporting agencies may ask for documentation of expected compensation, such as an internal job posting, an offer letter, or a written statement from the employer confirming the pay range.
State Laws May Be Stricter
Federal law sets the floor. Some states go further. California, for example, generally prohibits reporting criminal history resolved more than seven years before the report date, and its salary threshold for the exception sits at $125,000 rather than the federal $75,000. Other states impose lookback limits on how far back employers can consider criminal records for licensing and hiring decisions, with windows ranging from three to ten years depending on the offense and the state.
The relationship between state and federal law here is unsettled. In October 2025, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued an interpretive rule asserting that the FCRA broadly preempts state laws covering the same subject matter as the federal reporting limits, including laws that ban whole categories of information from consumer reports. The Bureau’s position is that Congress intended uniform national standards. The Bureau also acknowledged that the interpretive rule “does not have the force or effect of law” and invited parties to litigate the preemption question in court.6Federal Register. Fair Credit Reporting Act; Preemption of State Laws
If you live in a state with stricter reporting limits, those protections may still apply depending on how courts in your jurisdiction interpret the preemption question. Reporting agencies operating nationally often follow the more restrictive rule to reduce litigation risk, so you may benefit from your state’s protections while the legal question remains open.
Your Rights When Older Records Surface
The exception lets more information into your report, but it does not remove your procedural protections. The employer must follow a specific sequence before it can reject you based on what the report reveals.
Before the Hiring Decision
The employer has to tell you, in writing, that a background check will be conducted, and get your authorization before ordering the report. If the employer sees something in the report that might lead to a rejection, it must send a pre-adverse action notice before making a final decision. That notice has to include a copy of the report itself and a written summary of your rights under the FCRA.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681b – Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports The point is to give you time to review the records and flag anything inaccurate before the employer acts. The statute does not specify a hard day count, though five business days is the widely followed standard.
After the Hiring Decision
If the employer ultimately decides not to hire you based in whole or in part on the report, it must send a final adverse action notice. That notice must identify the reporting agency that produced the report, state that the agency did not make the hiring decision, and inform you of your right to request a free copy of the report within 60 days and to dispute any inaccurate information.7Federal Trade Commission. Using Consumer Reports: What Employers Need to Know
Disputing Inaccurate Information
The dispute process matters more when older records are in play, because older records are more likely to contain errors or reflect events that have since been resolved. When you notify a reporting agency that information in your file is inaccurate, the agency must conduct a free investigation and either correct or delete the disputed item within 30 days. If you provide additional relevant information during that window, the agency can take up to 15 extra days, but only if the item has not already been found inaccurate or unverifiable.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681i – Procedure in Case of Disputed Accuracy If the agency cannot verify the information, it must delete it.
Data sources for old civil judgments, tax liens, and arrest records are more likely to be incomplete or miscoded. Don’t assume old information is accurate just because it appears on a report generated by a major agency.
Remedies If an Agency Breaks the Rules
If a reporting agency includes information beyond the seven-year limits for a position that does not actually meet the $75,000 threshold, or fails to investigate a legitimate dispute, you have grounds to sue under the FCRA. The remedies depend on whether the violation was willful or negligent.
For a willful violation, you can recover statutory damages between $100 and $1,000 per violation even without proof of specific financial harm. The court can also award punitive damages and must award reasonable attorney fees if you win.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681n – Civil Liability for Willful Noncompliance For a negligent violation, you can recover whatever actual damages you sustained, plus attorney fees. The fees provision is what makes these cases viable in practice. Even when individual damages are modest, the prospect of paying the applicant’s lawyer gives agencies a strong incentive to settle or comply. Many FCRA attorneys take these cases on contingency.