The IRS has announced Tax Relief for Victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, similar to the announcements previously made for Texas and Florida hurricane disasters.

From this week’s National Association of Tax Professionals e-newsletter:

The IRS is offering a recap of key tax relief provisions affecting taxpayers who suffered losses resulting from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

In general, the IRS is now providing relief to individuals and businesses anywhere in Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, as well as parts of Texas. Because this relief postpones various tax deadlines, individuals and businesses will have until January 31, 2018, to file any returns and pay any taxes due. Those eligible for the extra time include:

• Individual filers whose tax-filing extension runs out on October 16, 2017. Because tax payments related to these 2016 returns were originally due on April 18, 2017, those payments are not eligible for this relief.
• Business filers, such as calendar-year partnerships, whose extensions ran out on September 15, 2017.
• Quarterly estimated tax payments due on September 15, 2017, and Jan. 16, 2018.
• Quarterly payroll and excise tax returns due on October 31, 2017.
• Calendar-year tax-exempt organizations whose 2016 extensions run out on November 15, 2017.

A variety of other returns, payments and tax-related actions also qualify for additional time. See the disaster relief page on IRS.gov for details on these and other relief provisions the IRS has offered since these hurricanes began hitting in August.

In the wake of recent hurricanes, the IRS has issued a new Fact Sheet — FS-2017-11. It walks through the process of how to calculate Casualty and Disaster Tax Losses, as well as how to reconstruct records after a natural disaster, such as:

• Tax records
• Homes and other real estate
• Vehicles
• Personal property
• Business records

AccountingWeb wrote up a nice summary of the fact sheet, but for the details, see the original at the IRS website: Reconstructing Records After a Natural Disaster or Casualty Loss; IRS Provides Tips to Help Taxpayers | Internal Revenue Service.

This. Is. Amazing. In a Herculean effort to drag itself into the 21st Century, the IRS has finally implemented a “secure messaging” service. This means that instead of calling to discuss matters and playing phone tag — or snail mailing and faxing files to them — we can finally send messages and files via a new secure IRS e-mail system!

Now, lest you get too excited — from what I can tell so far, there are some serious limitations:

• You must be INVITED to participate. Your IRS representative must invite you (the client) and you must register. As long as the accountant has a Power of Attorney on-file for that client, he/she (me!) may use it as well. Under “Tax Preparer Options” there is a “Request Access” button.
• It will be down for maintenance every Friday from 8-11 pm EST.
• It does not seem to be an actual portal or shared “space”, so we still have what is my biggest issue: I like to submit audit files in an organized format, whereby there is a folder that corresponds to each of the listed requests on the IRS letter — with documents in each folder that provide the various types of support being requested. (For example, a folder for “Revenue” that has copies of sales receipts, POS end-of-day scans, invoices, etc.; and a folder for “Fixed Assets” that has copies of packing slips, vendor invoices, depreciation schedules, etc.) It doesn’t look like this system will allow you to upload an entire folder structure, the way a portal or document-sharing system does. But I haven’t confirmed this yet.

Check it out for yourselves! This is real!
Welcome to Secure Messaging | Internal Revenue Service

From today’s National Association of Tax Professionals TaxPro e-newsletter, and Accounting Today‘s Tax Practice e-newsletter, some important announcements from the IRS:

NATP – Tax Relief for Victims of Hurricane Irma
Extended filing and payment deadlines

Hurricane Irma victims in parts of Florida have until January 31, 2018, to file certain individual and business tax returns and make certain tax payments, the IRS announced in IR-2017-150.

This includes an additional filing extension for taxpayers with valid extensions to October 16, and businesses with extensions to September 15. This includes the September 15, 2017, and January 16, 2018, deadlines for making quarterly estimated tax payments. The IRS noted, however, that because individual tax payments related to 2016 returns were originally due on April 18, 2017, those payments are not eligible for this relief.

A variety of business tax deadlines are also affected including the October 31deadline for quarterly payroll and excise tax returns. Businesses with extensions also have the additional time including, among others, calendar-year partnerships whose 2016 extensions run out on September 15, 2017 and calendar-year tax-exempt organizations whose 2016 extensions run out on November 15, 2017. The disaster relief page has details on other returns, payments and tax-related actions qualifying for the additional time.

The IRS automatically provides filing and penalty relief to any taxpayer with an IRS address of record located in the disaster area. Thus, taxpayers need not contact the IRS to get this relief. However, if an affected taxpayer receives a late filing or late payment penalty notice from the IRS that has an original or extended filing, payment or deposit due date falling within the postponement period, the taxpayer should call the number on the notice to have the penalty abated.

In addition, the IRS will work with any taxpayer who lives outside the disaster area but whose records necessary to meet a deadline occurring during the postponement period are located in the affected area. Taxpayers qualifying for relief who live outside the disaster area need to contact the IRS at 866.562.5227. This also includes workers assisting the relief activities who are affiliated with a recognized government or philanthropic organization.

Individuals and businesses who suffered uninsured or unreimbursed disaster-related losses can choose to claim them on either the return for the year the loss occurred (in this instance, the 2017 return normally filed next year), or the return for the prior year (2016). See Publication 547 for details.