TL;DR: In the Texas workers’ compensation system, going back to work is governed by two documents. Your treating doctor’s DWC Form-073 Work Status Report defines what you can safely do, and your employer’s bona fide offer of employment — which has to be in writing and has to be built on that form — determines what happens to your temporary income benefits. If a bona fide offer is made and you do not take it, the insurance carrier may treat the offered wages as though you were earning them, on the earlier of the date you reject it or the seventh day after you receive it. Understanding that sequence before it happens is what keeps a return to work from turning into a loss of benefits.
This is general information about the Texas system, not legal advice. Citations are to the Texas Labor Code and Division of Workers’ Compensation rules and were verified in August 2026. Innovare Tx treats federal employees under OWCP; we do not accept Texas state workers’ compensation claims. This article is written for injured Texans trying to understand a process that is poorly explained to them.
First, the Two Deadlines Behind Everything
Return-to-work questions only arise if the claim itself is intact, and Texas has two separate clocks that people routinely conflate:
- Tell your employer within 30 days. DWC states you must report the injury to your employer within 30 days from the date you were hurt, or from the date you knew the injury or illness was related to your job — the second half of that sentence being what covers conditions that develop over time.
- File DWC Form-041 within one year. The Employee’s Claim for Compensation for a Work-Related Injury or Occupational Disease must reach DWC within one year of the date you were hurt to protect your rights. It can be completed online or mailed to the Division.
Telling your supervisor is not filing a claim, and an employer filing a first report of injury is not the same as your DWC Form-041. People lose otherwise valid claims on that distinction alone.
The Work Status Report Is the Document That Matters
DWC Form-073, the Work Status Report, is the form your treating doctor completes to tell your employer what parts of your job you can safely do — lifting, standing, driving and the rest. Your doctor is required to send a copy to your employer after your first visit, and periodically after that.
Everything downstream runs off this form. The employer uses it to work out whether modified duty exists. The carrier uses it to decide what your benefits should be. If it is vague, everyone downstream guesses.
Which makes a few things worth doing:
- Describe your actual job, not your job title. “Warehouse associate” means nothing to a doctor filling out restrictions. “I lift 40-pound cases from floor level roughly 200 times a shift and drive a forklift” produces a form that means something.
- Read it before you leave. If the restrictions do not match what you told the doctor, that is far easier to correct in the room than by phone a week later.
- Keep every copy. The sequence of work status reports over time is the record of your recovery.
The Bona Fide Offer of Employment
This is the mechanism most injured workers have never heard of until it lands, and it is the one with real financial consequences. It is governed by DWC Rule 28 TAC § 129.6.
A bona fide offer is your employer’s written offer of modified or alternate work within your medical restrictions. For an offer to qualify, DWC requires that it be made in writing in the form and manner prescribed, and that it include:
- A copy of the Work Status Report (DWC Form-073) the offer is based on. An offer that is not built on a current work status report is not built on anything.
- The location, schedule and pay for the job being offered.
- The physical and time requirements of the position.
- A statement that the employer will only assign tasks consistent with your physical abilities, knowledge and skills, and will provide training if needed.
The job must also be geographically accessible. The rule requires the carrier to weigh the effect your physical limitations have on your ability to travel, the distance involved, the availability of transportation, and whether the schedule is consistent with your pre-injury work pattern. A desk role two hours away, offered to someone who cannot drive because of the injury, is not automatically bona fide simply because it is light duty.
What Happens If You Turn It Down
Here is the part to understand before the letter arrives. Under Rule 129.6, the carrier may deem the wages offered through a bona fide offer to be your post-injury earnings on the earlier of:
- the date you reject the offer, or
- the seventh day after you receive it,
unless your treating doctor notifies the carrier that the offer is not consistent with your work restrictions.
Because temporary income benefits are calculated on the difference between your average weekly wage and what you are able to earn after the injury, deeming those offered wages as post-injury earnings reduces or eliminates the payment — even though no money has actually reached you.
Two practical consequences follow. Seven days is the window, and it runs from receipt, not from when you get around to reading it. And your treating doctor is the one person who can stop the clock, by telling the carrier the offer conflicts with the restrictions. That is not something the doctor will automatically know to do — it requires you to take the offer letter to your appointment and show it to them.
If you believe an offer is outside your restrictions, do not simply refuse and hope. Get it in front of your treating doctor inside that week.
How Temporary Income Benefits Actually Work
Because the offer rules only make sense against the benefit rules:
- When they start. Temporary income benefits (TIBs) begin once your injury causes you to miss eight days of work; income benefits begin to accrue on the eighth day of disability. The first week is not paid unless your injury causes you to lose pay for 14 days or more.
- How much. TIBs are 70% of the difference between your average weekly wage and what you are able to earn after the injury. The figure is 75% if you were injured on or after September 1, 2015 and earned less than $10.00 an hour.
- Average weekly wage. Total your earnings for the 13 weeks before the injury — including overtime and other special pay — and divide by 13. If overtime was a normal part of your income and it has been left out, the resulting AWW is wrong, and every payment computed from it is wrong too. This is worth checking.
- When they end. TIBs end when you reach maximum medical improvement (MMI). You reach MMI when the injury has improved as much as it is expected to improve, or at 104 weeks after you become eligible for TIBs — the statutory MMI date, which arrives whether or not you feel recovered.
Partial return to work is the common case rather than the exception. If you go back at reduced hours or reduced pay, the 70% calculation runs on the difference, so working does not simply cancel your benefits.
Returning to Work While Still in Treatment
A frequent misunderstanding: going back to work does not end your medical care. DWC is explicit that medical benefits continue as long as the treatment is reasonable, necessary and related to the injury — including after you are back on the job.
This matters because the most fragile point in a recovery is often the return itself, when tissue that has been resting for weeks meets a full shift again. Continuing physical therapy through the transition is usually what makes a graduated return hold. Stopping rehabilitation the day you go back is how people end up right back where they started.
A Note on Texas Nonsubscribers
Everything above assumes your employer carries workers’ compensation coverage. Texas is unusual in not requiring most private employers to carry it, and employers who opt out are known as nonsubscribers. If yours is one, none of the DWC framework in this article applies to you — there is no DWC Form-041 to file and no bona fide offer rule. Those situations run under different law entirely and are worth getting advice on early.
Where Innovare Tx Fits
To be direct about it: we do not accept Texas state workers’ compensation claims. Our workers’ compensation practice is federal — we treat federal employees under OWCP, where the rules are different and generally more favourable on choice of provider. If you are a federal employee, our guide to common OWCP filing mistakes is the relevant one, and how state and federal programs differ sets the two side by side.
We also see patients on a self-pay or standard-insurance basis after a workplace injury for physical therapy — including post-surgical and post-collision rehabilitation with Rowena Calleja, PT — at our Addison clinic. If you are unsure which applies to you, call (214) 233-3094 and we will tell you plainly whether we are the right clinic before you make the drive.
How long do I have to report a work injury in Texas?
You must report the injury to your employer within 30 days from the date you were hurt, or from the date you knew the injury or illness was work-related. Separately, you must send a completed DWC Form-041 to the Division of Workers’ Compensation within one year of the date of injury to protect your rights.
What is a bona fide offer of employment?
It is an employer’s written offer of modified or alternate work within your medical restrictions, governed by 28 TAC § 129.6. To qualify it must include a copy of the DWC Form-073 Work Status Report it is based on, the job’s location, schedule and pay, its physical and time requirements, and a statement that only tasks consistent with your abilities will be assigned. The job must also be geographically accessible given your limitations.
What happens to my benefits if I refuse light duty in Texas?
If the offer is bona fide, the insurance carrier may treat the offered wages as your post-injury earnings on the earlier of the date you reject the offer or the seventh day after you receive it — unless your treating doctor notifies the carrier that the offer is inconsistent with your work restrictions. Because temporary income benefits are based on the difference between your average weekly wage and what you can earn, that can reduce or eliminate payments. Take any offer to your treating doctor within that week.
How are Texas temporary income benefits calculated?
TIBs are 70% of the difference between your average weekly wage and what you are able to earn after the injury, or 75% if you were injured on or after September 1, 2015 and earned less than $10.00 an hour. Average weekly wage is your total earnings for the 13 weeks before the injury, including overtime and special pay, divided by 13. Benefits begin accruing on the eighth day of disability, and the first week is paid only if disability lasts 14 days or more.
Can I keep getting treatment after I return to work?
Yes. Medical benefits continue as long as treatment is reasonable, necessary and related to the work injury, including while you are back on the job. Continuing physical therapy through the return is often what makes a graduated return hold, since going back to a full shift is the point at which many injuries flare.
