Members of three tribal nations across Montana and Arizona have until September 28 to file federal tax returns postponed by separate storms, two and a half weeks ahead of the October 15 deadline everyone else on extension is working toward. The IRS issued the relief in three separate notices covering the Crow Reservation, the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes, and the San Carlos Apache Tribe, each tied to a different storm on a different date. All three landed on the identical September 28 postponement, even though the disasters behind them struck more than two months apart.
Three Notices, Three Storms, One Deadline
Two of the three disasters share a storm system: a severe winter storm and straight-line winds swept across southcentral and northeastern Montana in mid-December 2025, striking two tribal areas roughly a day apart. The third disaster, in Arizona, was an unrelated bout of severe storms and flooding more than two months earlier. Despite the separate causes and separate calendars, the IRS ultimately lined all three up on the same postponed deadline.
Notice MT-2026-04 covers the Crow Reservation in southcentral Montana, tied to the storm between December 17 and 19, 2025, under FEMA declaration 4915-DR. Notice MT-2026-03 covers the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes in northeastern Montana, hit by the same storm system on December 17 and 18, 2025, under FEMA declaration 4914-DR. Notice AZ-2026-01 covers the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, affected by its own storms and flooding between October 10 and 13, 2025, under FEMA declaration 4911-DR. The IRS published all three notices on the same day, June 16, 2026, and despite the San Carlos disaster striking roughly two months before the Montana storms, every notice arrived at the identical September 28, 2026 postponement.
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What The September 28 Deadline Actually Covers
For the two Montana notices, the postponement reaches individual income tax returns and payments normally due on or after December 17, 2025, plus quarterly payroll and certain excise tax returns normally due January 31, April 30 and July 31, 2026. For the San Carlos Apache notice, the postponement reaches returns and payments normally due on or after October 10, 2025, including quarterly returns due October 31, 2025, and January 31, April 30 and July 31, 2026. In both cases, penalties on payroll and excise tax deposits due in the days immediately following each disaster are abated as long as the deposits were made within roughly two weeks of the storm.
The relief reaches further than most people would guess from the headline deadline alone. Because the Montana postponement window opened December 17, 2025, it also covers the individual quarterly estimated income tax payments that would otherwise have been due April 15, June 15 and September 15, 2026 — meaning anyone in the Crow or Fort Peck areas who pays estimated tax on pension, rental or investment income can skip all three of this year’s remaining installments without penalty until September 28. The San Carlos Apache notice, opening October 10, 2025, covers the same three 2026 estimated-payment dates, and goes one step further: it also postpones IRA, HSA and Coverdell education savings account deadlines that fall in the window, so an affected taxpayer who normally has until April 15 to make a prior-year IRA or HSA contribution now has until September 28, 2026, to make that same contribution instead.
Why September 28 Beats The General October 15 Deadline
Every notice explains the standard timeline for claiming a disaster-related casualty loss as six months past the return’s normal due date, which the notices themselves compute out to October 15, 2026 for individual filers. That is the same date most Americans who requested a filing extension back in the spring are already working toward. The three tribal notices land two and a half weeks ahead of that general date, which means their relief actually runs on a shorter clock than it looks at first glance: the Montana storms happened in mid-December and the Arizona storms in early October, so the postponement period had already been running for months before this September 14 checkpoint, even though the deadline reads as an extension. The IRS’s disaster relief hub lists every currently active postponement nationwide, including these three, for anyone checking whether a specific county or reservation still qualifies.
Casualty Losses And Who Actually Qualifies
Taxpayers in all three covered areas can elect to claim disaster-related casualty losses on either their 2025 return or the prior year’s return, whichever produces the better result, and the IRS is waiving its usual fee for copies of previously filed returns for anyone affected. Relief is not limited to people who live inside the boundaries of the three reservations: it also covers taxpayers elsewhere whose tax records are kept by a preparer located in the disaster area, along with relief workers affiliated with a recognized government or charitable organization and any visitor to the area who was injured or killed by the storms. Anyone outside the automatically identified disaster area who believes they qualify can call the IRS Special Services toll-free line at 866-562-5227 (267-941-1000 for international callers) to request the relief directly rather than waiting for it to apply automatically. That line matters most for the exact group these three notices are built around: someone who lives outside the Crow, Fort Peck or San Carlos Apache boundaries but whose accountant, bookkeeper or tax preparer is physically located inside one of them qualifies for the same September 28 postponement, and the IRS will not find that connection on its own — the taxpayer or preparer has to call in and claim it.
The Benefits With A Separate Application
A postponed tax filing date is automatic once a household’s address falls inside a disaster area, but most of the programs that actually stretch a fixed income are the opposite: nobody applies on a household’s behalf, and each one runs on its own separate calendar that a tax notice never mentions.
A separate download lists current limits for SNAP food benefits at 60 and up, circuit-breaker property tax credits, and SSI after 65 alongside the rest of the programs on the list.
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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.
