The Internal Revenue Service says affected taxpayers in the San Carlos Apache Tribe disaster area have until September 28, 2026, to file certain federal returns and make certain federal tax payments. The postponement follows severe storms and flooding that occurred from October 10 through October 13, 2025. It is targeted disaster relief, not a nationwide extension and not a new payment program.
Who the IRS says is covered by the postponement
According to the IRS relief announcement, individuals and households that reside in the covered San Carlos Apache Tribe locality, along with businesses whose principal place of business is there, can qualify for the relief. The IRS issued the postponement after a Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster declaration.
The agency automatically identifies many taxpayers located in the covered area. It says that an affected taxpayer who lives or has a business outside the covered area, but whose needed records are in the covered area, can contact IRS Special Services to request relief. Tax practitioners located in the area who maintain records necessary for outside clients may also be eligible for the special process described by the agency.
Eligibility is tied to the disaster-area rules, not simply to having experienced a difficult financial year. A taxpayer should not assume the extension applies based only on tribal membership, an Arizona address or a connection to a prior storm. The IRS notice identifies the locality and the dates that control the relief.
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Which filings and payments move to September 28
The IRS says the September 28 date applies to individual, corporate, estate and trust income-tax returns; partnership and S corporation returns; certain gift and generation-skipping transfer-tax returns; annual information returns for tax-exempt organizations; and employment and certain excise-tax returns that otherwise had an original or extended due date in the covered period.
It also applies to affected quarterly payroll and certain excise-tax returns that were normally due October 31, 2025, January 31, 2026, April 30, 2026 and July 31, 2026. Estimated income-tax payments originally due on or after October 10, 2025 are postponed through September 28, provided they are paid on or before that date, the IRS says.
The relief has limits. The announcement says the postponement generally does not apply to information returns in the W-2, 1094, 1095, 1097, 1098 and 1099 series, or to certain other listed forms and employment or excise-tax deposits. It separately says penalties on deposits due during a short October 2025 period may be abated if those deposits were made by October 27, 2025. That older deposit condition should not be confused with the current September 28 filing and payment date.
Why the date still matters this week
The publication date for this article is September 16, leaving a limited but still open period before September 28. The IRS has stated that returns and payments that fall within the postponement period can be made by that date. A missed deadline can create a different set of issues than a return that remains within the disaster extension, so waiting to determine coverage after September 28 may be costly.
The deadline does not require a taxpayer to file without records. The IRS recognizes that people outside the locality whose required records are in the area may need assistance, and it provides an official telephone path for that situation. Affected people should retain relevant disaster and filing records in case the automatic coding on an account does not match their circumstances.
Other relief mentioned in the IRS notice
The IRS says affected taxpayers may be able to choose the disaster year or prior year for claiming qualifying casualty losses, subject to the applicable rules. The notice states that a taxpayer claiming a disaster loss should use the assigned FEMA declaration number, 4911-DR, on the return. It also says the normal fee for copies of prior returns will be waived for affected taxpayers who follow the stated process.
The agency further notes that qualified disaster-relief payments are generally excluded from gross income and that additional retirement-plan relief may be available under particular rules. Those paragraphs describe possible provisions, not a universal tax result. Whether a loss, distribution or payment receives a particular treatment depends on the taxpayer’s facts and the applicable form instructions.
The narrow takeaway
The IRS’s current notice supports a clear conclusion: covered taxpayers affected by the 2025 San Carlos Apache Tribe floods have until September 28, 2026, for certain federal filing and payment obligations. The relief is real but local and specific. The official notice, not a general disaster extension assumption, controls which deadlines are postponed and which filings remain outside the relief.
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