A safe harbor is a legal provision to sidestep or eliminate legal or regulatory liability in certain situations, provided that certain conditions are met.

The phrase safe harbor also has uses in the finance, real estate, and legal industries. The term safe harbor may also be used to refer to a "shark repellent" tactic used by companies who want to avert a hostile takeover; the company may purposefully acquire a heavily-regulated company to make themselves look less attractive to the entity that is considering taking them over.

Safe harbors are also accounting methods that avoid legal or tax regulations, or one that allows for a simpler method of determining a tax consequence than the methods described by the precise language of the tax code.