Filing Relief for Natural Disasters Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. KUSTOFF. Mr. Speaker, I thank Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith for his leadership and also his support on this legislation, and I thank our colleague, Judy Chu, for joining me in introducing what I think is an important piece of legislation.

This bill, the Filing Relief for Natural Disasters Act, H.R. 517, is a bipartisan bill and a commonsense bill. It will provide relief to Americans who have been impacted by natural disasters and emergencies.

Just about every Member of this body at some point has seen their State, their district, or their constituents impacted by a natural disaster or an emergency.

Mr. Speaker, just last month, Obion County, which is in my district in Tennessee, was devastated by severe flooding following a levee failure. The disaster displaced hundreds of my constituents and left the town of Rives in Obion County basically underwater.

After the initial flooding, I visited Rives with our Governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, to survey the damage and to meet with local officials and residents. For the Rives community, recovering and rebuilding is not going to be easy and is not going to happen overnight.

I am sure that my colleagues who have toured disaster areas in their own districts know exactly what I mean.

For communities that have been impacted by disasters, it is critical that they have timely access to the support they need to begin the recovery process and get their lives back on track.

This also, Mr. Speaker, includes regulatory relief. Filing season can be long, and it can be burdensome for many taxpayers and for small businesses. This is obviously no secret.

Under current law, the U.S. Department of the Treasury can postpone tax filing deadlines for taxpayers who have been affected by federally declared disasters, but right now, Treasury does not have the authority to provide relief for State-level declarations.

State-level declarations are normally issued immediately or almost immediately after a disaster. Federal declarations, on the other hand, can take weeks or even months before being issued. You have disparate treatment between Federal- and State-level declarations under the current law, and that can delay relief and create significant confusion for impacted taxpayers.

This bill makes two straightforward reforms to the Internal Revenue Code that will address this flaw in the tax code and ensure that disaster victims are able to receive more timely relief.

Number one, it will authorize the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with FEMA, to extend filing relief to taxpayers as soon as the Governor of the State declares a disaster or a state of emergency.

Number two, Mr. Speaker, it will expand the current mandatory filing extension following a Federal declaration from 60 days to 120 days.

Disaster victims should be focused on rebuilding, recovering, and caring for their loved ones. What they should not have to be focused on is complying with bureaucratic red tape at the IRS.

For these reasons, Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support the Filing Relief for Natural Disasters Act, a bipartisan, pro- taxpayer piece of legislation that was passed out of the Ways and Means Committee unanimously by a vote of 42-0.

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