Voglio sapere a riguardo di…

jbell on DSKJLSW7X2PROD with RULES

31148

Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 111 / Friday, June 11, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
A third commenter agreed with the Secretarys characterizations of the statute and legislative history as ambiguous on the issues of which timesensitive tax acts other than the pension-related tax acts described in section 7508Ad4 are postponed under section 7508Ad and of which declared disasters are subject to the mandatory 60-day postponement period under section 7508Ad. This commenter approved of the solution to these ambiguities that was reflected in the proposed regulations, in terms of which time-sensitive tax acts would be postponed. This commenter said section 7508Ad was a poorly-worded statute, that the legislative history of the provisions contained contradictions, and the result was that section 7508Ad1 leaves no non-pension time-sensitive tax acts for section 7508Ad to operate upon, unless or until the Secretary exercises her powers under section 7508Aa.
The third commenter noted also that for the year 2017, the IRS provided relief under section 7508Aa in response to only 14 of the 59 major disaster declarations announced by FEMA that year. If all major disaster declarations automatically entitled all taxpayers in disaster areas to timing relief under section 7508Ad, the commenter noted that there would be a dramatic increase in the number of disasters leading to postponements of time-sensitive tax acts. On these issues, the third commenter concluded that the proposed regulations properly preserved the discretion of the IRS to determine which declared disasters should result in any type of disaster relief and of which time-sensitive tax acts should be postponed under section 7508A.
The comments from the first two commenters on this issue are not adopted in the final regulations, while the approving comments of the third commenter were already reflected in the proposed regulations. As explained more fully in the Explanation of Provisions section of the preamble to the proposed regulations, Part I. TimeSensitive Tax Acts, and as noted by the third commenter described above, except for the rules regarding pensions described in section 7508Ad4, section 7508Ad, by its terms, does not specify the time-sensitive tax acts to be postponed during the mandatory 60-day postponement period. Instead, section 7508Ad1 provides that the mandatory 60-day postponement period shall be disregarded in the same manner as a period specified under section 7508Aa. Section 7508Aa is not self-executing, but rather, requires a determination by the Secretary to
VerDate Sep<11>2014

17:30 Jun 10, 2021

Jkt 253001

specify the acts to be postponed. As a result, the cross-reference to section 7508Aa in section 7508Ad1
operates to require the same determination by the Secretary as a prerequisite to determining the acts to which the mandatory 60-day postponement period applies. This interpretation gives full effect to the statutory language and does not reduce section 7508Ad to a nullity, because that section still imposes a mandatory period for postponement and establishes a new category of persons eligible for reliefthe qualified taxpayers defined in section 7508Ad2. The final regulations make no changes to 301.7508A1g1 and 2 of the proposed regulations.
Section 301.7508A1g3i Section 301.7508A1g3i of the proposed regulations tracked section 7508Ad1 and d5 in describing how the mandatory 60-day postponement period for federally declared disasters will be calculated and how the calculation of that mandatory postponement period will interact with the Secretarys discretionary postponement period if any under section 7508Aa and b. The Explanation of Provisions section of the preamble to the proposed regulations, Part II. Calculation of the Mandatory 60Day Postponement Period, identified a 120-day postponement period from the beginning incident date of a disaster announced by FEMA as the usual postponement period provided by the IRS for those disasters where the IRS
exercises its discretion under section 7508Aa or b to postpone any timesensitive tax acts.
Consequently, most mandatory 60-day postponement periods under section 7508Ad will be calculated to run concurrently with the 120-day postponement period the IRS generally provides under section 7508Aa or b.
Two commenters noted that section 7508Ad1 and the proposed regulations did not provide a clear rule for calculating the mandatory 60-day postponement period when there was more than one disaster declaration issued for the same disaster in a particular state or when any disaster declaration was amended to provide any new or modified incident dates earliest or latest that were missing or different from when the first disaster declaration for a disaster in a state was announced by FEMA. Two commenters suggested potential alternative methods of making calculations of the mandatory 60-day postponement period more certain when there are multiple disaster declarations or disaster declarations that
PO 00000

Frm 00062

Fmt 4700

Sfmt 4700

are amended by FEMA for the earliest or latest incident dates described in section 7508Ad1A and B.
One commenter claimed that a literal reading of section 7508Ad1 creates challenges for indefinite disasters, such as the COVID19 pandemic, because the statute could be interpreted to postpone a taxpayers deadlines indefinitely until some unknown point in time that is long after the disaster began. To avoid this unworkable application of the statute, this commenter recommended that if the initial disaster declaration does not expressly identify the latest incident date for a disaster, then section 7508Ad should be interpreted as automatically providing a postponement period until the date that is 60 days after the earliest incident date specified in a disaster declaration.
However, the statute mitigates the commenters concern by directing that the postponement period under section 7508Ad shall be disregarded in the same manner as a period specified under subsection a. That provision ensures that the Secretary retains the same discretion as she has under section 7508Aa to determine what timesensitive tax acts, if any, will be postponed.
A second commenter noted what it characterized as a pick-and-choose problem and an amendment problem with the method of calculating the mandatory 60-day postponement period provided for in the proposed regulations and recommended the Secretary adopt one of several alternative bright-line rules it suggested for making the calculation period more predictable.
This second commenter noted there was a potential pick-and-choose problem among multiple potential FEMA-announced disaster declarations, because the Treasury Department and the IRS propose to treat FEMAannounced emergency declarations as well as major disaster declarations under the Stafford Act as federally declared disasters under sections 165
and 7508A of the Code. This commenters recommendation to strike proposed amended regulation 1.165
11b1 is discussed and rejected in the preamble discussion of this issue above.
Alternatively, the second commenter recommended that the final regulations reflect a bright-line rule to address potential multiple declarations, such as a first-out rule the first issued declaration controls, a rule that a later major disaster declaration controls over an earlier emergency declaration, or a rule that the issue date of an emergency declaration is the earliest incident date for section 7508Ad1s mandatory 60day postponement period.

E:FRFM11JNR1.SGM

11JNR1