October 15 is the day a six-month filing extension runs out, and for taxpayers inside eighteen IRS disaster declarations it is not the day that applies. The IRS list shows thirteen declarations that push deadlines to February 1, 2027 and five that push them to November 2, 2026, and every one of those dates falls after October 15. The areas stretch from the Northern Mariana Islands to West Virginia and cover wildfires, floods, tornadoes, an earthquake and three typhoon or tropical storm events.
How the IRS list adds up to eighteen
The count comes from the IRS page Tax relief in disaster situations, which was last reviewed on September 16, 2026 and lists each announcement by a state code and number. Reading the 2026 entries one by one, thirteen carry a postponed date of February 1, 2027 and five carry November 2, 2026. Thirteen plus five is eighteen declarations, and the count is of IRS announcements, not of taxpayers or counties.
Two kinds of entries are left out on purpose. Announcement CA-2025-01, the California wildfire relief, was postponed to October 15 itself, so it does not move the date past October 15. Three tribal-area postponements, MT-2026-03 for the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, MT-2026-04 for the Crow Tribe of Montana and AZ-2026-01 for the San Carlos Apache Tribe, ran to September 28, 2026 and have already expired.
The thirteen declarations that run to February 1, 2027
Every member of the February group, by jurisdiction and IRS code:
- Hawaii: the earthquake in Hawaii County (HI-2026-03).
- South Dakota: severe storms, straight-line winds and flooding in the Oglala Sioux Tribe (SD-2026-05).
- Indiana: severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding (IN-2026-01).
- Washington, two declarations: wildfires in Washington (WA-2026-03) and wildfires in Douglas County (WA-2026-02).
- Nebraska, five declarations: March wildfires (NE-2026-03), April wildfires in central Nebraska (NE-2026-04), severe storms (NE-2026-05), May wildfires (NE-2026-06) and June wildfires (NE-2026-07).
- Northern Mariana Islands: Super Typhoon Bavi (NMI-2026-02).
- West Virginia: severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes, flooding, landslides and mudslides (WV-2026-01).
- Mississippi: Tropical Storm Arthur (MS-2026-03), covering Covington, George, Greene, Hancock, Harrison, Pearl River, Stone and Wayne counties.
The Mississippi announcement, issued August 7, 2026, names those eight counties. An August 21 update to it narrows one piece: the February 1, 2027 date for quarterly payroll deadlines applies only to the ones originally due July 31 and November 2, 2026.
The five that stop at November 2, 2026
The November group is shorter and ends sooner, but November 2 still sits more than two weeks after October 15:
- Mississippi: severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding across the state (MS-2026-02).
- Wisconsin: severe storms, tornadoes and flooding (WI-2026-02).
- Michigan: severe storms, tornadoes and flooding (MI-2026-02).
- Northern Mariana Islands: Super Typhoon Sinlaku (NMI-2026-01).
- Louisiana: Tropical Storm Arthur (LA-2026-02), covering Avoyelles, East Feliciana, Lafourche, Pointe Coupee, St. Charles, St. Landry, St. Tammany, Terrebonne and Winn parishes.
Mississippi and the Northern Mariana Islands each appear in both groups, because each has one declaration on each date. The Louisiana announcement, issued July 13, 2026, spells out why October 15 gets overtaken: it postpones deadlines “falling on or after June 17, 2026, and before Nov. 2, 2026,” a span that includes an extended return due October 15.
What a postponement covers and what it leaves on the original date
The same Louisiana announcement lists what moves. Most federal returns are covered, including individual, corporate, estate and trust, partnership and S corporation returns, along with estimated income tax payments and employment and certain excise tax returns. Information returns such as the W-2 and the 1099 series stay on their original deadlines.
Payroll and excise tax deposits get a narrower break. In the Louisiana announcement, deposits due on or after June 17 and before July 2, 2026 are waived from penalties if they were made by July 2, and late filing or late payment penalties tied to an original due date inside the postponement period can be abated on request. Penalty rules for a missed deadline are a separate subject from the postponement dates themselves, and this count stays on the dates.
Deadlines outside the count of eighteen
A taxpayer outside all eighteen areas keeps October 15. A taxpayer inside one of them keeps whatever the declaration says, and the IRS notes on its disaster page that localities and other details for each disaster sit on its Around the nation pages, which is where the county and parish lists live.
One more relief announcement sits beside the list without being part of it. On September 30, the IRS newsroom posted IR-2026-116, announcing that due dates for eligible returns and payments for taxpayers affected by ongoing events in Israel may be postponed to September 30, 2027. That announcement is not one of the eighteen state, tribal and territorial entries counted here, and no other relief release dated after the page’s September 16 update appears in the newsroom’s October list.
The page’s September 16 date matters for one reason: any declaration issued after it would be missing from the count. The IRS page, with its code-by-code list of postponed dates, is the document this count rests on, and the thirteen and five above are exactly the entries it showed on October 3, 2026.
A postponed return still ends in a refund that has to be followed
The February 1 and November 2 dates move the filing deadline for the declarations listed above, and a return filed under one of them still has to be tracked to the point where a refund lands or a notice arrives. That follow-up runs on its own clock, after the postponed date has passed.
The IRS Refund Recovery Kit includes a refund status tracker spreadsheet and the refund-trace steps for Form 3911, along with a notice decoder and the 3-year refund deadline, so a return filed under a postponed date can be followed from filing to payment.
Open The IRS Refund Recovery Kit’s tracker for a return filed under a postponed date →
This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the declaration counts and dates were checked against the IRS disaster-relief page and the individual IRS announcements for Louisiana and Mississippi.
