Households and small businesses across 21 Indiana counties, including Marion County, home to Indianapolis, now have until February 1, 2027, to file a range of federal tax returns after storms that began August 11 triggered a federal disaster declaration. The relief, issued by the IRS as Notice IN-2026-01, follows a FEMA declaration covering severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding. It buys affected taxpayers roughly five extra months on most filings, but the fine print excludes one thing many people will assume it covers.
The Storms Behind Notice IN-2026-01
The relief follows a stretch of severe weather that hit the state in the middle of August, combining straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding in a single declared disaster rather than one isolated storm. A federal disaster declaration is what unlocks this kind of nationwide tax relief, and it is the trigger the IRS points to every time a state or tribal area qualifies.
The IRS notice, dated September 2, 2026, ties the relief to a disaster that began August 11, 2026, under FEMA declaration number 4933-DR. The declaration is what legally permits the IRS to postpone tax-filing and tax-payment deadlines for anyone who lives or runs a business in the affected counties, and the IRS says it automatically applies the relief to taxpayers it can identify inside the disaster area without any application required.
Free retirement updates: Want plain-English help keeping more of your money in retirement? The free Retirement Shield newsletter covers the benefits, deadlines, and money mistakes that cost retirees, a couple times a week. Subscribe free.
The 21 Counties Now Covered
The relief applies to Carroll, Dearborn, Decatur, Delaware, Fayette, Franklin, Hamilton, Hancock, Henry, Lake, LaPorte, Madison, Marion, Morgan, Porter, Pulaski, Randolph, Rush, Tipton, Union and Wayne counties. That list stretches from Lake and Porter counties in the state’s northwest corner, through the Indianapolis metro counties of Marion, Hamilton, Hancock and Morgan, down to Dearborn and Franklin counties on the Ohio border, meaning the relief covers a wide, non-contiguous swath of the state rather than a single storm track. The IRS’s disaster relief hub tracks every currently covered county nationwide, and taxpayers whose records are held by an accountant located inside one of these counties can qualify for the same relief even if they personally live elsewhere.
What The February 1 Deadline Actually Covers
The postponement applies to individual, business, estate, trust and tax-exempt organization returns, along with related payments, that had an original or extended due date falling on or after August 11, 2026, and before February 1, 2027. That sweep includes taxpayers who had already filed for a valid extension on their 2025 individual return, and it also covers quarterly payroll and certain excise tax returns normally due November 2, 2026. It also reaches a date many households would not think to check: the third-quarter 2026 estimated tax payment normally due September 15 falls squarely inside the postponement window, so anyone who pays estimated taxes quarterly — including retirees drawing on a pension, rental income or investment income with no withholding attached — can wait until February 1 without a penalty. Penalties on payroll and excise tax deposits due between August 11 and August 26, 2026, will be waived as long as the deposits are made by August 26. For taxpayers still working through a payment plan with the IRS from an earlier tax year, the notice also confirms that a missed installment during the postponement period will not cause the agreement to default, though interest and the usual late-payment penalty continue to accrue on any unpaid balance in the meantime.
Separate from the filing postponement, the disaster declaration unlocks two other pieces of household-level relief. Affected taxpayers with money in a retirement plan or an IRA may qualify for a special disaster distribution that skips the usual 10 percent early-withdrawal penalty and lets the taxpayer spread the resulting income across three tax years instead of reporting it all at once, softening the tax hit of tapping retirement savings to cover storm damage. Separately, qualified disaster relief payments — money received from a government agency to cover reasonable living, medical or funeral costs, or to repair or replace a home and its contents — are generally excluded from taxable income altogether, so a homeowner who receives FEMA or state disaster assistance for repairs does not have to report that money as income on the return this relief postpones.
The Catch: 2025 Tax Payments Already Due Don’t Qualify
The notice is explicit on one point that trips people up every disaster season: “Because tax payments related to these 2025 returns were due on April 15, 2026, those payments are not eligible for this relief.” In plain terms, the February 1 extension only reaches deadlines that fall on or after August 11, 2026 — it does not reach back to forgive a 2025 tax bill that was already due back in April, even for someone who had a valid filing extension running through mid-October. Anyone counting on this notice to cover an unpaid April balance should assume interest and penalties on that amount kept accruing on schedule.
Casualty Losses And Other Relief Available
Affected taxpayers also get a separate benefit unrelated to the filing deadline: the option to claim disaster-related casualty losses on either their 2025 or 2026 federal return, whichever produces a better outcome, using IRS Publication 547 as the guide for documenting the loss. The election window runs up to six months past the normal filing deadline for the disaster year. Separately, under the recently enacted Disaster Related Extension of Deadlines Act, the postponement period also extends the statute of limitations for claiming an old refund, and the IRS is waiving its usual fee for copies of past tax returns for anyone in the covered counties. Households working through property damage more broadly can find federal recovery resources, including FEMA assistance programs, at disasterassistance.gov. None of this relief requires a special application to the IRS itself — it rides automatically on the address already on file with the agency, which is exactly why the payment-due caveat above is worth double-checking against an actual notice rather than assumed.
What A Household Never Gets Told
A disaster notice postpones when a tax return is due, but it never mentions the ordinary household programs sitting untouched in the background with their own separate limits and their own separate paperwork. Nothing about a FEMA declaration changes what a household already qualifies for the rest of the year.
A separate download lists current limits for Medicare Savings Programs, LIHEAP heating and cooling help, and circuit-breaker property tax credits alongside the rest of the programs on the list.
Read the current limits for every program on the list in The Benefits Checklist.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
