The IRS says bank and credit card statements, phone photos and videos, and county property records can rebuild the proof that a storm or fire destroyed a home or belongings. Filing deadlines for people in storm-hit parts of Indiana and Texas now run to Feb. 1, 2027. The records guidance is on an IRS page updated July 29, 2026, and the postponements came in releases dated Sept. 2 and Oct. 27.
The two pieces fit together. A person who lost papers in a disaster has more time to file, and the IRS has listed where to find replacements while the extra time runs.
Where the IRS says to look for lost records
The IRS page, Reconstructing records after a natural disaster or casualty loss, sorts the search by what was lost. For a home, it points to photos or videos of the damage, purchase papers from the title or escrow company or the bank, and a property tax statement from the county assessor to separate the land from the building. Insurance policies often list the building’s value, and mortgage companies can supply appraisals.
For belongings, the page tells people to look at phone pictures that show items in the background, at credit card and bank statements, many of them available online, and at store websites for current prices. Anyone without photos can draw sketches of each room. For vehicles, the IRS names Kelley Blue Book, the National Automobile Dealers Association and Edmunds as valuation sources.
The advice for anyone hit by a storm or fire is to take photographs or video “as soon after the disaster as possible,” and to back up every valuation with “photographs, videos, canceled checks, receipts or other evidence.” That list is the evidence the IRS expects behind a claimed loss.
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Old tax returns count too. The IRS says free return transcripts are available through its Get Transcript tool or by phone at 800-908-9946. By mail, a taxpayer can use Form 4506-T for transcripts or Form 4506 for copies of past returns, and writing the disaster designation in red across the top speeds the request and waives the usual fee.
How the loss deduction works
The IRS says taxpayers generally must deduct a casualty loss in the year it happened. For property damaged in a federally declared disaster, they may instead deduct it on the return for the year before the disaster, by amending that return with Form 1040-X. The loss is the smaller of the drop in market value or the adjusted basis, minus insurance or other reimbursement.
Publication 547, in its 2025 edition, sets the limits. Personal-use losses are deductible only when tied to a federally declared disaster, each loss is reduced by $100, and the total is reduced by 10 percent of adjusted gross income. Losses are reported on Form 4684, and anyone who skips an insurance claim generally cannot deduct what the policy would have paid.
The IRS also points to Publication 584, a workbook for listing losses on personal-use property, and Publication 584-B for businesses. Filling in the workbook room by room is how the photos and statements turn into a dollar figure.
Indiana: a federal declaration and a six-month election
The IRS announced relief for Indiana storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding on Sept. 2 and updated the release Oct. 8. Returns with an original or extended due date before Feb. 1, 2027 are covered, along with estimated tax payments due on or after Aug. 11, 2026. Individuals with a valid 2025 extension get until Feb. 1, 2027 to file, but payments for those returns were due April 15, 2026 and get no relief.
The Indiana release ties the storms to disaster declaration 4933-DR and tells people claiming disaster losses to write that number on their returns. It says a loss can be claimed for the year it happened or the year before, and the election can be made up to six months after the due date of the disaster-year return, without regard to extensions.
Texas: relief under a state declaration
The IRS’s Oct. 27 release for Texas covers severe storms that began July 14, 2026. It follows a disaster declaration issued by the State of Texas, and the covered counties include Harris, Travis and Bexar. The same Feb. 1, 2027 date applies to most returns due on or after July 14, and to estimated tax payments.
Missed payments on an installment agreement do not cause a default during the postponement, though interest and late-payment penalties still build. Information returns in the W-2 and 1099 series are not postponed. The Texas release does not mention the prior-year loss election, and Publication 547 limits personal casualty losses to federally declared disasters, so a Texas storm victim with a deduction question can call the IRS Disaster Assistance Hotline at 866-562-5227, open weekdays from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time.
The IRS’s tax relief page shows other 2026 disasters with the same Feb. 1, 2027 date, among them Wisconsin storms and tornadoes and Washington wildfires. The open question for any household is whether its address sits in a covered county and whether the declaration behind the relief is federal.
Are the policies and account records in one place?
After a storm, the hard part is finding the papers that prove what was lost: the insurance policy, the bank and card accounts, the title. Without them, a loss claim and a tax deduction both start from a blank page.
The turn from the IRS’s rebuild list to a plan is having it all in one place before the next storm. The Family Emergency Binder has 14 fill-in sections, one at a time, including one for insurance policies and one for the accounts a family would need. It runs 18 pages, with last four digits only for any account.
Get the 14-section binder to keep storm-loss records in one place →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
