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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 8 / Wednesday, January 13, 2021 / Proposed Rules United States to warrant assistance by the Federal Government under the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. The Stafford Act does not use the term Federally declared disaster. It uses the defined terms emergency and major disaster and also uses the generic term disaster to refer to both emergencies and major disasters. See Stafford Act 101, 42 U.S.C. 5121 using the term disaster; Stafford Act 102, 42 U.S.C. 5122 defining the terms emergency and major disaster;
H.R. Rep. 931037, p. 26 May 13, 1974
120 Cong. Rec. 14156 clarifying that the term disaster as used in the Stafford Act includes an emergency or a major disaster. As described above, the declaration of either an emergency or a major disaster requires a determination by the President that Federal assistance is warranted under the Stafford Act.
Accordingly, the IRS has previously acknowledged that a Federally declared disaster under section 165i5 includes either an emergency or a major disaster declared under the Stafford Act. See Rev. Rul. 200329, 200311 I.R.B. 587
Mar. 17, 2003; Rev. Rul. 200211, 200210 I.R.B. 608 Mar. 11, 2002; Rev.
Rul. 200115, 200113 I.R.B. 922 Mar.
26, 2001; and Rev. Rul. 200015, 2000
12 I.R.B. 774 Mar. 20, 2000.
Section 7508Aa of the Code neither mentions FEMA, nor the concept of the incident period as determined by FEMA. As noted above, section 7508Aa leaves it to the Secretarys discretion to identify the period of postponement, that is, the start and end dates of the incident, and the type of relief to provide, from a tax administration perspective. The Secretary has historically looked to FEMA declarations to identify which counties are sufficiently affected by a major disaster for the Secretary to exercise the discretion under section 7508Aa to postpone periods of time for the taxpayers in these disaster-affected counties to perform certain specified time-sensitive tax actions.
Section 7508Aa is not self-executing;
it does not operate, on its own, to postpone any time-sensitive act in the event of a Federally declared disaster.
Instead, the statute authorizes the Secretary to determine who is affected by a Federally declared disaster for purposes of section 7508A, what timesensitive acts performed by these taxpayers or performed by the government with respect to these taxpayersshould be postponed, and for what period of time the postponement period should run.
Section 7508a1 enumerates timesensitive acts that are postponed with
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respect to a taxpayer serving in a combat zone and which the Secretary may postpone with respect to taxpayers affected by a Federally declared disaster, via section 7508Aa1. These acts include filing any income, estate, gift, employment, or excise tax return;
making any income, estate, gift, employment, or excise tax payment or any installment thereof; filing a petition with the Tax Court for redetermination of a deficiency, or for review of a Tax Court decision; allowing a credit or refund of any tax; filing a claim for credit or refund of any tax; bringing suit upon a claim for credit or refund;
making an assessment of any tax; giving or making any notice or demand for the payment of any tax, or with respect to any liability to the United States in respect of any tax; collecting, by levy or otherwise, the amount of any liability in respect of any tax; bringing suit by the United States, or any officer on its behalf, in respect of any liability in respect of any tax; and any other act required or permitted under the internal revenue laws specified by the Secretary.
Additional acts that may be postponed in the event of a Federally declared disaster are listed in Rev. Proc. 201858, 201850 I.R.B. 990, which is the current version of a revenue procedure that is updated periodically to reflect additional acts or other changes. The revenue procedure provides that in order for taxpayers to be entitled to a postponement of the time-sensitive acts listed in the revenue procedure, the IRS
needs to issue guidance providing such relief with respect to a Federally declared disaster, typically by crossreferencing the revenue procedure in an IRS news release. This is the case not just for acts listed in the revenue procedure, but for all acts listed in section 7508a1. As a result, in the event of a Federally declared disaster, the IRS generally issues a news release or other guidance identifying the affected taxpayers for purposes of section 7508A typically by reference to counties or states, the time-sensitive acts postponed, and the period of time for the postponement.
B. Historical Application The historical practice before the enactment of section 7508Ad was generally to postpone time-sensitive tax acts under section 7508Aa without regard to the latest incident date for a disaster as described by FEMA. The postponement period set by the Secretary generally began on the earliest incident date specified in a FEMA
disaster declaration and ended 120 days later, although a longer period for relief could be selected if the disaster
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coincided with any major filing deadlines. See IRM 25.16.1.5.22 rev.
06262018 The severity of the disaster and proximity of tax deadlines are primary factors in determining the level of tax relief that is provided..
These postponement periods typically extended more than 60 days after the latest incident date specified in a FEMA
disaster declaration. For example, an end date for the major disaster incident was indicated in FEMAs initial disaster declarations for 48 of FEMAs 53 major disaster declarations issued for disasters occurring in 2019 and declared before December 19, 2019. For these 48 FEMA
major disaster declarations in 2019 with initial ending incident dates assigned to them by FEMA, the incident period ranged from one day to 130 days, with a median incident period of nine days.
For the five 2019-year major disasters where FEMAs initial declarations did not specify an end date for the disaster, FEMA later amended the declarations to provide an end date to the incident period for the disaster. FEMA major disaster declarations and any amendments thereto are posted on the FEMA website 4 and published in the Federal Register.
III. Section 7508Ad On December 20, 2019, section 7508Ad was added to the Code by section 205 of the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2019, enacted as Division Q of the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, Public Law 11694, 133 Stat. 2534, 3226
FCAA. Section 7508Ad provides qualified taxpayers a mandatory 60-day period that is to be disregarded in the same manner as a period specified under section 7508Aa mandatory 60-day postponement period. Section 7508Ad1. Section 7508Ad does not identify the acts for which a period is disregarded under section 7508Aa.
Section 7508Ad4 provides that a rule similar to section 7508Ad1 applies with respect to any person described in section 7508Ab for certain pensionrelated acts. In contrast to the rest of section 7508Ad, section 7508Ad4
identifies specific pension-related acts to which the mandatory 60-day postponement period provided in section 7508Ad1 applies. In addition, section 7508Ad5 coordinates the mandatory 60-day postponement period with a period specified by the Secretary by providing that the mandatory 60-day postponement period with respect to a person including by reason of the application of section 7508Ad4 is in 4 https www.fema.gov/disasters/disasterdeclarations.

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