By Nolan McKendry | The Center Square
(Worthy News) – The U.S. Senate has passed the Filing Relief for Natural Disasters Act, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., that would expand federal tax filing relief to individuals affected by state-declared disasters.
The legislation now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.
Under current law, the IRS can only postpone tax filing deadlines in areas where the president has issued a federal disaster declaration. The new bill would change that, allowing governors to trigger the same federal tax relief measures after issuing a state-level disaster declaration.
“When states like Louisiana are reeling from a hurricane, they can’t always wait around for Washington to act,” Kennedy said. “I’m grateful to my colleagues for voting to pass the Filing Relief for Natural Disasters Act to make sure hard-hit communities can get important tax extensions without unnecessary delays.”
Cortez Masto added that impacted taxpayers shouldn’t have to wait for the White House to act before getting the support they need.
“This bipartisan legislation will ensure that anyone impacted by state-level emergencies can have some peace of mind when filing their taxes,” Masto said.
In addition to empowering governors to request IRS deadline extensions, the bill also lengthens the mandatory extension period from 60 to 120 days.
The changes would apply to natural catastrophes such as hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, floods, and other events deemed severe enough by the governor to warrant tax relief — even if no federal declaration is made.
If signed into law, the reform would amend Section 7508A of the Internal Revenue Code to take immediate effect for future state disaster declarations.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
More Worthy News
Archaeologists in Jerusalem have uncovered an extraordinary 2,700-year-old pottery fragment inscribed with Assyrian cuneiform near the Temple Mount — the first written evidence of direct contact between the Assyrian Empire and the Kingdom of Judah ever discovered in the city. The find, announced by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), offers striking confirmation of the biblical narrative of King Hezekiah’s resistance to Assyrian domination recorded in II Kings 18.
Iranian officials are warning of imminent water rationing—and even the potential evacuation of Tehran—as the nation faces its worst drought in nearly a century.
A Christian widow in Pakistan’s Punjab province is devastated after her married daughter went missing, while elsewhere in the region, a mother of four and a mother of six have also disappeared following alleged abductions by Muslim men, Worthy News learned Saturday.
South Korea, long seen as the democratic opposite of its authoritarian-ruled northern neighbor, faces growing scrutiny for what critics call a widening crackdown on Christian leaders and churches.
Hungary’s prime minister told U.S. President Donald J. Trump on Friday that it would take a miracle for Ukraine to win the war against Russia. Viktor Orbán made the remarks at the White House, where Trump asked him during a joint news conference about the prospects for Kyiv’s victory.
Hungarian prosecutors have requested a two-year suspended prison sentence for Gábor Iványi, a 76-year-old Methodist pastor, once a close confidant of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and several opposition politicians, in a case widely viewed as politically charged.
In a decision that could reshape federal identification standards, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to enforce its policy requiring Americans to list their biological sex–male or female–on passports, rather than self-identified gender.