Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

IRS Says That the Earthquake in Haiti Is Officially a Disaster

Late on Friday, the IRS declared the earthquake in Haiti to be qualified disaster for federal tax purposes. Call us impatient but did it really need to take that long? It doesn’t seem like it was that tough of a call:

Qualified disasters include presidentially declared disasters and any other event that the Treasury Secretary determines to be catastrophic. The IRS has determined that the earthquake in Haiti that occurred this month is an event of catastrophic nature for purposes of the federal tax law.

We appreciate the complexities of the tax law and we’re certainly aware that tax season is under way but couldn’t someone at the IRS put out a one sentence statement saying, “Yeah, definitely a disaster,” say, the following day? That Friday even? Were there other, more pressing matters on the to-do list? The disaster qualifications must be more subjective than we imagine.

Late on Friday, the IRS declared the earthquake in Haiti to be qualified disaster for federal tax purposes. Call us impatient but did it really need to take that long? It doesn’t seem like it was that tough of a call:

Qualified disasters include presidentially declared disasters and any other event that the Treasury Secretary determines to be catastrophic. The IRS has determined that the earthquake in Haiti that occurred this month is an event of catastrophic nature for purposes of the federal tax law.

We appreciate the complexities of the tax law and we’re certainly aware that tax season is under way but couldn’t someone at the IRS put out a one sentence statement saying, “Yeah, definitely a disaster,” say, the following day? That Friday even? Were there other, more pressing matters on the to-do list? The disaster qualifications must be more subjective than we imagine.

Latest Accounting Jobs--Apply Now:

Have something to add to this story? Give us a shout by email, Twitter, or text/call the tipline at 202-505-8885. As always, all tips are anonymous.

Related articles

illustration of an empty desk

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Celebrates Defunding the Agents the IRS Wasn’t Gonna Be Able to Hire Anyway

Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act allotted a whole bucket of cash to the IRS ($80 billion) to modernize its ancient systems and bring on new employees, a lot of employees. At the time, we wondered where the IRS was going to find tens of thousands of people with a bachelor’s degree and 30 units of accounting […]

screenshot of a ChatGPT response that looks like a scam email

AI Poised to Put Fake IRS Agents Out of a Job

Of all the occupations most at risk of being replaced by synths AI in the near future — bookkeepers, programmers, and washed-up accounting blog writers, to name a few — no one really talks about how ChatGPT, Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing AI (if you’re counting that one) will impact scammers. You know, those people who […]