If you live or run a business in one of six Washington counties, the IRS just gave you until February 1, 2027 to file returns and pay taxes that would otherwise have been due this fall. That part follows a well-worn disaster-relief script. The overlooked part is a separate, newer rule that changes how much of an old refund you’re allowed to keep if you end up filing late.
Six Counties, Two Reservations And One New Deadline
The Internal Revenue Service announced the relief on August 31, 2026, in release WA-2026-03, covering wildfires that began July 31, 2026. The counties named are Chelan, Ferry, Okanogan, Spokane, Stevens and Yakima. The same relief extends to the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the Spokane Tribe of Indians, since federally declared disaster relief follows tribal land the same way it follows county lines.
The postponement isn’t limited to your regular Form 1040. It covers individual and business returns, quarterly estimated payments, and payroll and certain excise tax deposits that would normally have been due July 31, 2026 or November 2, 2026. All of it now lands on February 1, 2027 instead, with no penalty or interest accruing in between for anyone whose address of record sits inside the disaster area.
The Refund Rule That Used To Punish Disaster Filers
Here’s the part most disaster announcements never mention. If you overpaid taxes through withholding or estimated payments, the IRS treats that money as “paid” on your original filing deadline, not on the day you finally file. Separately, the tax code only lets you claim a refund within three years of filing, and it caps the refund at whatever you paid within a lookback window measured back from that claim. Historically, an ordinary extension you requested yourself counted toward stretching that lookback window. A disaster postponement handed to you by the IRS did not.
That mismatch meant someone who filed late purely because a wildfire, flood or hurricane pushed back their deadline could still lose part or all of an old refund to the three-year clock, even though the IRS itself was the one that told them they had more time. The postponement bought filing time but quietly failed to buy refund-eligibility time. In practice, that gap mattered most for people who don’t owe anything and have no other reason to rush a return once a disaster hits — they had the least incentive to file early and the most exposure to the old rule.
What Public Law 119-64 Actually Changes
Congress closed that gap with the Disaster Related Extension of Deadlines Act, enacted as Public Law 119-64 on December 26, 2025. The law amends Internal Revenue Code Section 7508A so that a disaster-related postponement period is now treated the same way a self-requested filing extension already was: as time that counts toward, and extends, the refund lookback period. The IRS’s own WA-2026-03 release flags this directly, noting the change applies to the relief it just granted these six counties…