IRS Provides Help to Hurricane Harvey Victims

The IRS is providing a variety of tax relief to those who were victims of Hurricane Harvey.  If you would like to see the latest updates regarding Hurricane Harvey, please click the link below.

To summarize, the IRS is providing relief in the following ways: 

• Retirement plans can make loans or hardship distributions to Victims of Hurricane Harvey and members of their families.
  • This is significant because if an account holder makes an early withdrawal from their retirement account, with no known exceptions to the early withdrawal, the withdrawal would be subject to a 10% early withdrawal penalty. 
• Victims of Hurricane Harvey, which are located in certain parts of Texas, have been granted extensions to file certain individual and business tax returns. The extension of time is until January 31st, 2018. 
  • If the IRS did not grant the extension for Hurricane Harvey Victims, the deadline to file business returns would be on September 15th and October 16th. 
• Finally, the IRS reminds taxpayers to be vigilant against fake charity scams relating to Hurricane Harvey. 
  • In order for a charitable contribution to be tax deductible, the charity must be registered with the IRS. The IRS has an exempt organizations search tool, (See below), that you can search to make sure the charity is in fact a legitimate charity. 

Hurricane Harvey IRS webpage

Exempt Organization Search Tool