The Internal Revenue Service today offered a rundown of key tax relief that
has been made available to victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.
In general, the IRS is now providing relief to individuals and businesses
anywhere in Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, as well as
parts of Texas. Because this relief postpones various tax deadlines,
individuals and businesses will have until Jan. 31, 2018 to file any returns
and pay any taxes due. Those eligible for the extra time include:
- Individual filers whose tax-filing extension runs out
on Oct. 16, 2017. Because tax payments related to these 2016 returns were
originally due on April 18, 2017, those payments are not eligible for this
relief.
- Business filers, such as calendar-year partnerships,
whose extensions ran out on Sept. 15, 2017.
- Quarterly estimated tax payments due on Sept. 15, 2017
and Jan. 16, 2018.
- Quarterly payroll and excise tax returns due on Oct.
31, 2017.
- Calendar-year tax-exempt organizations
whose 2016 extensions run out on Nov. 15, 2017.
A variety of other returns, payments and tax-related actions also qualify
for additional time. See the disaster
relief page on IRS.gov for details on these and offer relief the IRS has
offered since these hurricanes began hitting in August. The IRS also continues
to closely monitor the aftermath of these storms, and additional updates for
taxpayers and tax professionals will be posted to IRS.gov
Besides extra time to file and pay, the IRS offers other special assistance
to disaster-area taxpayers. This includes the following:
- Special relief helps employer-sponsored leave-based
donation programs aid hurricane victims. Under these programs, employees
may forgo their vacation, sick or personal leave in exchange for cash
payments the employer makes, before Jan. 1, 2019, to charities providing
relief. Donated leave is not included in the employee’s income, and
employers may deduct these cash payments to charity as a business expense.
- 401(k)s and similar employer-sponsored retirement plans
can make loans and hardship distributions to hurricane victims and members
of their families. Under this broad-based relief, a retirement plan can
allow a hurricane victim to take a hardship distribution or borrow up to
the specified statutory limits from the victim’s retirement plan. It also
means that a person who lives outside the disaster area can take out a
retirement plan loan or hardship distribution and use it to assist a son,
daughter, parent, grandparent or dependent who lived or worked in the
disaster area. Hardship withdrawals must be made by Jan. 31, 2018.
- The IRS is waiving late-deposit penalties for federal
payroll and excise tax deposits normally due during the first 15 days of
the disaster period. Check out the disaster relief page for the time
periods that apply to each jurisdiction.
- Individuals and businesses who suffered uninsured or
unreimbursed disaster-related losses can choose to claim them on either
the return for the year the loss occurred (in this instance, the 2017
return normally filed next year), or the return for the prior year (2016).
See Publication
547 for details.
- The IRS is waiving the usual fees and expediting
requests for copies of previously filed tax returns for disaster area
taxpayers. This relief can be especially helpful to anyone whose copies of
these documents were lost or destroyed by the hurricane.
- If disaster-area taxpayers are contacted by the IRS on
a collection or examination matter, they should be sure to explain how the
disaster impacts them so that the IRS can provide appropriate
consideration to their case.
Further details on these and other relief
provisions can be found on the agency’s disaster relief page, as well as on the
special pages for Hurricane
Harvey and Hurricane
Irma . For information on disaster recovery, visit disasterassistance.gov.
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