Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2023 - Signed by the POTUS
Pardon Granted for Wildfire Victims
12 December 2024 the President of the United States signed into law H.R. 5863 giving the residents on the ridge and those affected by other wildfires tax relief.
What is Next?
Wait for IRS Instructions - Taxability of Interest - Definition of Wages (as the DN does not cite Wages)
Prepare Amended Returns
Wait for the IRS to Open Back Up for Filing (Mid-Late January)
Advise Clients Amended Returns are ready for signature (either actual return 2021 or 8879s)
Couple of Side Notes as reference:
If you had increased Medicare premiums we suggest you take your amended returns to your local Social Security office and work with them to get those premiums changed for the current year and possible refunds for previous years.
if had ObamaCare Premium Penalties on your returns those will roll off and be part of your refund from the IRS.
We strongly suggest to wait until the IRS issues some guidance about wording, taxability and more before sending in returns.
DO NOT SEND IN THE SAME AMENDED RETURN MORE THAN ONCE - BE PATIENT if filing your own returns.
To be orderly about this Lorrie and John will be working through the alphabet in order and you should expect calls from us as soon as we get your returns ready.
Our office alone will be recovering over 26 Million dollars of taxes paid on over 105US$ Million Fire Victims Trust monies taxed on their previous returns coming back to victims from Sharrett Bookkeeping filings alone)
If we have NOT called you by the 20th of January to come in and sign and such, please give us a call. Until then we are heads down on preparing the returns. More in our letter coming out this next week too.
Please be PATIENT and KIND as we go through this process. We have staff that are survivors and they are just as excited as you are. We are thankful to be able to serve you in the Ridge community (near and far)
There is a cost per year (175US$ for Personal and 250US$ for Business) to do amendments as we advised the time of original filings but it will be well worth it.
If you are a new client needing us to amended a return previously filed we will be happy to help you as well. We would have to see your original return to be able to determine costs for doing the amendments.
Remember a few things when filing an amended return. (1) It takes the IRS 16-18 weeks to process; (2) Amended returns usually result in paper checks being sent out to you; (3) Make sure the address on your amended return is your current address; (4) For 2020 and 2021 returns you have only one year from today to amend those and (5) For years '22 and '23 remember you have 3 years from the original time of filing to amend your return. Don't rush and do it wrong.
We are honored to have worked with Doug LaMalfa's office directly and support the team from his office and Mike Thompson's whilst they worked on this great legislation. It took a lot of time but it finally got done.
