The Department of Homeland Security published a proposed rule in the Federal Register on August 25, 2026, titled “Fee for Certain H-1B Petitions,” that would impose an additional fee of $103,265 on every initial cap-subject H-1B petition. The fee would be paid by the employer at the time of filing, and it would sit on top of all other existing filing fees rather than replacing any of them.
The proposed fee reaches all initial cap-subject petitions, including those filed under the advanced degree (master’s cap) exemption. It would not apply to cap-exempt petitions — those filed by institutions of higher education, affiliated nonprofit entities, and nonprofit or governmental research organizations — or to petitions for workers who have already been counted against the cap, such as extensions and most transfers.
The public comment period is open and closes on September 24, 2026. Comments are submitted through the Federal Register docket, and agencies are legally required to consider substantive comments before issuing a final rule. Comments that describe concrete, specific effects — on a research program, a startup’s ability to hire, a hospital system’s staffing, a named field of work — carry more weight in the administrative record than volume alone.
This proposed fee is legally separate from the earlier $100,000 H-1B fee established by presidential proclamation, which applied to certain petitions filed on or after September 21, 2025. A federal court in Massachusetts struck that fee down as an unlawful tax and vacated its implementing guidance on June 8, 2026, and the underlying proclamation is set to expire on September 21, 2026 unless it is extended. The new proposal is an attempt to reach a similar result through notice-and-comment rulemaking, which is considerably harder to challenge on the procedural grounds that defeated the proclamation.
If finalized at this level, a six-figure per-petition cost would fall hardest on small employers, startups, and early-career candidates, and would push more workers toward cap-exempt employers or toward self-petitioning routes such as the EB-2 National Interest Waiver, which does not require an employer sponsor at all.
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Source: Reddit r/h1b