 Internal Revenue Service IRS Tax News September is National Preparedness Month, IRS urges everyone to update and secure their records to prepare now for natural disasters. Why? Because if you're hit with a horrifying natural disaster like a hurricane earthquake or visit from the in-laws, the most devastating loss says the IRS would be a loss in tax revenue. So we need to do everything possible to make sure you can still pay those taxes even under the worst of conditions. Which would obviously be that visit from the in-laws. Because I mean, come on man, the big guy needs a new pair of shoes. But first an attempt at a joke. President Biden unilaterally canceled student loan debt to buy votes. Boy that's low. I mean, to help people. You think of the children. Are these morons getting on there just louder? But wait a second. I didn't think presidents have the authority to do that. That's not how it works. People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That would have to be an act of Congress. Yeah, they don't. But he did it anyway. We will forgive $10,000 in outstanding federal student loans. Not for personal benefit, mind you. He did it to save the children. Oh, stop. Think of the children. Although some say it will cause more long-term harm than benefit. The cure sounds worse than the disease. Incentivizing bad behavior causing college prices to rise even more. But you know how the old saying goes. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Is that the road that's paved with bulls? So at least we can be sure we're not going to hell. Because at this point we know there's no way this move was done because of good intentions. Greed, selfishness and clinging to power. That's what we have here plain and simple. Three of the basic human emotions are greed, fear and greed. But I'm sure Biden will not rest until justice is done for the American people. I swear I will never rest until I destroy you. Or if not justice, at least social justice. That's not a word. You have no idea what this means, do you? No. Whatever that is. Then why did you print it? I like the kitty. You know what? You people should be ashamed of yourselves. You know, you doodle a couple of bears at a cocktail party talking about the stock market. You think you're doing comedy? Actually, that's not bad. Wilma, I promise you, whatever scum did this, not one man on this force will rest for one minute until he's behind bars. Now let's grab a bite to eat. Yeah, come on Wilma. IR 2022-156, August 29, 2022, Washington, September is National Preparedness Month with the height of hurricane season fast approaching and the ongoing threat of wildfires in many places. The IRS urges everyone to develop an emergency preparedness plan or if they already have one updated for 2022. So we want to make sure we got the plan in place before the problem happens. So everyone from individuals to organizations and businesses can start now by securing and duplicating essential tax and financial documents. So clearly, we want to make sure that any important documentation is secure and or that we have duplicates of it, possibly saving a copy of it, possibly to like a hard drive or something like that or maybe online. But if you're using those types of resources, you want to make sure that you have secure storing for any sensitive information. Creating lists of properties. So if there's a hurricane and we're going to have to recover insurance, for example, it'd be nice. We want to have a list of the property that we have, possibly pictures of it, evidence of it and so on and so forth so we can deal with that. Knowing where to find information once a disaster occurs. So once the disaster happens, we don't want to be scrambling for information. We want to know where to go at that point and there might be some resources here with some links that we can check out. So in the aftermath of a disaster, having the updated documents, other information ready available can help victims apply for the relief available from the IRS and other agencies. Disasters, assistance and emergency relief, there's a link to that help here. May help taxpayers and businesses recover financially from the impact of a disaster, especially when the federal government declares their location to be a major disaster area. So obviously as we've seen in prior disasters, if you've been following along here, they might declare it as a disaster area and that would put the IRS and other agencies kind of in action. So you want to, if there's a disaster that happens, see if it's within a disaster area, for example, and possibly be taking different actions for that. Obviously if you had like a hurricane or something, it was a big hurricane, it might be declared a national disaster. If it was a visit from the end laws, it's as devastating to you as a disaster, but probably not going to be declared one by the government. So start secure. Taxpayers should keep critical or original documents inside waterproof containers in a secure place. So if you've got floods, hurricanes and whatnot or a problem, then waterproofness of documents, if you need those paper documents and the originals would be good. These include tax returns, birth certificates, deeds, titles, insurance policies and other similarly important items. In addition, consider having a relative friend or other trusted person retain duplicate copies of these documents at a location outside the potentially impacted disaster area. Make copies. If original documents aren't available, only on paper, try scanning them into a digital file format. There's a lot of scanning devices including little apps for the phone these days so you can get a virtual copy of it PDF pretty quickly, one better than usually just a picture. A picture is not quite as good typically as a PDF document, but you can get it on the computer. But then you want to make sure that you save it securely and you want to make sure that you save it somewhere, possibly on an external hard drive that you can put somewhere outside of your area in case the flood happens there and possibly online, if it's saved online, you want to make sure you have a secure location online. So saving them in a secure digital location like a cloud based stored application can provide added security and portability, document valuables. So maintain a detailed inventory of your property and business contents. Taxpayers can take photos or videos to record their possessions but should also write down descriptions including year, make, and model numbers where appropriate. So we want to make sure we've got a list of all the stuff. I don't have a whole lot of stuff to write down here so my list isn't that long but some people might have quite the list. So if your stuff burns up or floods out or thiefs in or something then you're going to need the list for the insurance companies possibly, and you want to have pictures as well to have the evidence of what you had. So after disaster hits, this kind of documentation can help support claims for insurance or tax benefits. The IRS disaster law, what loss workbooks can help individuals and businesses. There's links to that here. Complete lists of belongings or business equipment. We got the employer fiduciary bonds. Employers using payroll services providers should check if their provider has a fiduciary bond in place to protect the employer against a possible provider default. So most employers already use the electronic federal tax payment system otherwise known as the EFTPS. There's a link to that here to make their federal tax deposits and business tax payments because these payments can easily be made either by phone or online. EFTPS offers an especially convenient option when a disaster may displace many businesses and their employees. It's also easy to track payments and receive email alerts through EFTPS. Any business that doesn't know one can create an ETPS account. There's a link to that here if you want to take a look at it more. So know where to go. Where do I go? That's what I need to know. Like when there's an earthquake here I've run out in the middle of the, there's a field right out here. So hopefully something doesn't fall on me or something. Any case you got to know where you're going to gather together in case something happens. Reconstructing records often a disaster may be required for tax purposes. Okay, we're talking where to go for tax documents. I was a little bit earlier like when the shaking actually happens. But now it's over. The earthquake's over. Calm down. Calm down. Now we've got to gather. Where do we go to gather the tax records? So you can getting federal assistance or insurance reimbursement. So most financial institutions can provide statements and documents electronically. So obviously you might have online banking now and so on and so forth. So a lot of that stuff can be received electronically. A lot of the tax documents can be received electronically these days because your employer might be giving you your W-2, W-3 electronically. So a lot of that documentation for your finances and stuff are more available than they were a long time ago. And if you can't get to them electronically, tax document like 1099, like W-2s and so on, 1098s for the mortgage statement, what not. Those are, you could, if you can't get them any other way, the first place to go would be the distributor of them. And then if you can't get them, you could go to the IRS because all that stuff got sent to the IRS too. So you can then as a last resort go to the IRS and try to get the information from their end, which isn't ideal because you might not always get like from the transcripts or the documents, the state stuff and you might not get it in the actual. But in any case, that's an option too. So an option that can aid the reconstruction process for tips on reconstructing records, you can visit reconstructing records. There's a link to that here. So they'll give you more detail on that process. IRS is ready to help. Not like an actual, like person-wise, generally they don't like you to call them really, but they got this website. They've got this website. It's up 24-7. You can check it out all the time. You can try to call them if you want, but you might be on hold for any case. Following a federal disaster declaration, the IRS may postpone various tax filing and tax payment deadlines or provide other relief for a list of localities, qualifying for relief and details on relief available, visit the IRS Tax Relief in Disaster Situations webpage. There's a link to that here or around the nation on irs.gov. There's a link to that here. The IRS identifies taxpayers located in the covered disaster area and automatically applies filing and payment relief. So if you're in the disaster area and they've declared it a disaster area, then they're going to postpone at least filing deadlines. Typically, if you have a mailing address usually within that area without you having to do anything. So at least that's one less thing you have to worry about. Probably wasn't the most pressing thing on your mind when your house just sunk into the crevice of the earthquake that the earthquake caused. But, yeah, at least you got that. So this means taxpayers to IRS address of record is located in the disaster area did not need to contact the IRS to get disaster tax relief. In addition, many taxpayers living outside of the disaster area may also qualify for relief. This includes those assisting with disaster relief and taxpayers whose records necessary to meet a filing or payment deadline postponed during the relief period are located in the disaster area. So if you don't have your billing address or your tax address in essence in the disaster area that the IRS declared but you are somehow linked to the disaster area because you got documentation that are in the disaster area even though your tax IRS address is outside of it. Well, then you still might qualify for relief but the IRS can't do it automatically because they don't know that your stuff is in the disaster area. So that's when you have to take action most likely. Eligible individuals and businesses located outside the disaster area can request relief by calling the IRS disaster hotline 8665-625-227. I won't say that five times because there'll be a link to this in the description. You can check it out on yourself. Check it out yourself. So in addition, a special rule allows both individuals and businesses to choose to deduct uninsured or unreimbursed disaster losses on either tax return for the year that the disaster occurred or the return for the previous year. So that's important to note that you have that option because if you take it in the year that it occurred like it occurred in 2022 and you had a disaster loss you wouldn't really get a tax benefit for it until you file which would be by April 15th of 2023 you would think and your revenue might be a lot lower in 2022 if your house sunk into a crevice caused by the big earthquake the Santa Andreas swallowed my home and it affected my tax revenue so if your tax revenue was low then you're probably not going to owe as much taxes so it might be more beneficial to claim it on another year the prior year possibly possibly getting a better tax benefit because you'll be in a higher tax bracket possibly and possibly getting access to the money sooner in that way but you might have already filed the 2021 tax return so you got to deal with whether or not you need to amend it and so on and so forth and the drama and saga continues so in addition a special rule I already read that for more information you can see publication 547 Casualty Disaster Thieves there's a link to that here for more information about national preparedness national preparedness that is month you could visit national preparedness so we got all these publications you can read up on down below so you got Publication 3067 IRS Disaster Assistance Federally Declared Disaster Area Publication 584 Casualty Disaster Thief Loss Workbook Personal Use Property you got Publication 584B Business Casually Disaster Thief Loss Workbook you got Publication 5307 Tax Reform Basics for Individuals and Families Publication 583 Starting a Business and Keeping Records Publication 547 Casualty Disasters and Thieves Reconstructing Records after a Natural Disaster or Casualty Loss you got the Tax Relief in Disaster situations we've got the Federal Emergency Management Agency we've got the Small Business Administration also the Disaster Assistance.gov and Ready.gov all that reading material you can be reading for years entertaining yourself like for free all this stuff all this reading material you don't have to go to like Audible or Amazon Books or anything you got reading material for ages eons even anyways there'll be a link to this in the description