Press Release
Posted:
Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, Ranking Member of the Ways & Means Subcommittee on Tax Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-04) and Rep. Greg Steube’s (FL-17) bill providing tax relief to future disaster victims passed through the Ways and Means Committee with a unanimous vote.
The Doug LaMalfa Federal Disaster Tax Relief Certainty Act would exempt future survivors of federally declared disasters, including wildfires, from having to pay federal income tax on their settlement money. This bill would build on Thompson, Steube, and the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s (CA-01) 2024 bill enacted into law applying this same relief retroactively to survivors of the 2017, 2018, and 2019 wildfires caused by PG&E.
“Fire survivors have been through enough in the wake of losing their homes and livelihoods to wildfires. It’s wrong to tax them on the settlement money meant to help them rebuild their lives,” said Thompson. “This bill ensures that future disaster survivors don’t have to come to Congress asking for relief after every fire, flood, hurricane, or other disaster.
“I am thankful to my colleagues who voted to move this important bill forward in the legislative process. Now, I’ll keep working to get Speaker Johnson to bring this to the floor for a full vote,” he continued.
The bill excludes from taxpayer gross income, for income tax purposes, any amount received by an individual taxpayer as compensation for expenses or losses incurred due to a qualified wildfire disaster (a disaster declared after 2014 as a result of a forest or range fire). It would also codify and extend the special rules for certain disaster related personal casualty losses.