Carroll County lost power lines and roads to straight-line winds. Parts of Marion County flooded. By the time the storms that started on August 11 finished moving through Indiana, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had a disaster number attached to the damage, and the IRS had a new deadline for the people living with the cleanup.
Who Gets the Extra Time
The Internal Revenue Service announced on September 2 that individuals and businesses in 21 Indiana counties now have until February 1, 2027, to file many federal returns and make tax payments that would otherwise have come due between August 11, 2026, and that date. The relief follows FEMA’s disaster declaration (number 4933-DR) covering severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding.
The 21 counties are Carroll, Dearborn, Decatur, Delaware, Fayette, Franklin, Hamilton, Hancock, Henry, Lake, LaPorte, Madison, Marion, Morgan, Porter, Pulaski, Randolph, Rush, Tipton, Union and Wayne. That list runs from Lake and Porter in the northwest corner near Gary, down through Marion County and Indianapolis, and out to Dearborn and Union on the Ohio border — a wide diagonal stretch of the state rather than one isolated region. If your address is inside one of them, the IRS applies the relief automatically based on your address of record — there’s no form to file and no phone call needed to claim it.
Taxpayers outside those 21 counties can still qualify in a narrower case: if the records you need to meet a tax deadline are held by an accountant, payroll company or bank located inside the disaster area. Those taxpayers won’t get the postponement automatically — the IRS says they need to call its Special Services line directly and explain the situation so the relief can be applied to their account by hand.
What The Feb. 1 Date Actually Covers
The postponement is broad. It reaches many individual and business income tax returns, partnership and S-corporation returns, estate and trust returns, and certain employment and excise tax filings that would have been due in that window. It also covers quarterly estimated income-tax payments due on or after August 11 — so if you’re self-employed or a small-business owner in one of these counties and had a payment due September 15, that payment now rides along with everything else to February 1…