For years, a taxpayer who filed a return late because of a federally declared disaster could still lose part of a refund the IRS owed, even after the agency had granted extra time to file. The problem lived inside a technical provision of the tax code governing how far back the IRS may reach when it calculates a refund, a separate question from the deadline to file the claim itself. A law signed at the end of 2025 rewrites that provision, and the IRS is now citing it by name in disaster notices issued this year.
The Three-Year Lookback That Could Erase a Late Filer’s Refund
Under section 6511(a) of the Internal Revenue Code, a taxpayer generally has three years from the date a return is filed, or two years from the date tax is paid, to claim a refund. A separate rule, section 6511(b)(2)(A), then limits how much of that refund can actually be paid: only tax treated as paid within the three years immediately before the claim is filed, plus the length of any extension of time to file, counts toward the refund. For most filers, withheld wages and estimated payments are deemed paid on April 15 of the following year under section 6513, regardless of when a return is actually filed.
That timing rule created a trap for someone who files late without a formal extension request on file. A retiree who filed a 2023 return on April 15, 2024, would have until April 15, 2027, to claim a refund, and the lookback would reach back to cover withholding deemed paid on that same date. But a retiree in a disaster county whose filing deadline was postponed to, say, August 15, 2024, and who filed on that later date, could still meet the three-year deadline to submit a claim while learning the lookback window had never moved with it. The IRS treated a disaster postponement under section 7508A as something distinct from a formal extension, and only extensions counted toward the refund calculation.
Free refund decision tree: A delayed refund usually means one of a few specific things, and each has a different next step. Find the reason with the free refund tracker.
Section 2 of Public Law 119-64 Rewrites the Calculation
Congress closed that gap with the Disaster Related Extension of Deadlines Act, enacted as Public Law 119-64 on December 26, 2025. Section 2(a) of the act amends section 7508A of the Internal Revenue Code by adding a new subsection (f), which states that “for purposes of section 6511(b)(2)(A), any period disregarded under this section with respect to the time prescribed for filing any return of tax shall be treated as an extension of time for filing such return.” In plain terms, a disaster postponement now counts the same way a formal filing extension always has, for the single, narrow purpose of measuring how far back a refund can reach.
The fix applies to claims filed after December 26, 2025, the date the bill became law, so it governs refund claims going forward rather than reopening cases already closed under the earlier reading. The same act also amended section 6303(b) so that collection notices account for a disaster postponement when calculating the last date prescribed for paying a tax, a companion repair for a related timing mismatch.
Two Contradictory 2020 IRS Memos Made a Statutory Fix Necessary
The mismatch was not something the IRS could simply interpret away on its own, because its own lawyers had already split on the question. Two Chief Counsel Advice memoranda, both issued in the final months of 2020 as the agency worked through COVID-19 postponements, reached opposite conclusions on whether a section 7508A postponement should count toward the section 6511(b)(2)(A) lookback. One memo held that a postponement is not an extension and does not extend the lookback window; the other, leaning on an example in the agency’s own regulations, concluded the postponement period should be disregarded when the window is set.
The IRS partially resolved that conflict for pandemic-era filers in Notice 2023-21, crediting the postponement toward the lookback for the 2019 and 2020 tax years only, as detailed in a Tax Adviser analysis of the discrepancy. That left every other federally declared disaster, before and after those two tax years, still subject to the older reading, until Congress wrote the fix directly into the statute.
The IRS Is Already Citing the New Rule in a Live Disaster Notice
The change matters most for the retirees and older taxpayers who are statistically among the slowest to file after a disaster disrupts mail delivery, records or access to a preparer, and who can least afford a refund that simply disappears because a postponement was miscounted as something less than an extension.
The statute is not sitting unused. The IRS invoked it directly in a September 10, 2026, disaster relief announcement covering the earthquake that struck Hawaii County beginning May 22, 2026, which gives affected individuals and businesses until February 1, 2027, to file returns and make payments. In that notice, the agency told taxpayers that “under the recently enacted Public Law 119-64 Disaster Related Extension of Deadlines Act, the postponement of a federal tax return deadline due to a federally declared disaster is treated as an extension for purposes of calculating the limit on a tax refund, giving affected taxpayers additional time to claim a refund or credit.”
Tracking a Refund Once the Lookback Clock Resets
A wider lookback window under Public Law 119-64 only fixes the calculation the IRS uses once a refund claim is filed; it does not fix a refund already stalled in the agency’s processing queue, or explain a notice asking for more documentation before a check goes out. Someone whose refund is delayed for any reason, disaster-related or not, still has to work through the same notice codes, tracing forms and status checks as any other filer.
The IRS Refund Recovery Kit is a 13-page kit built around a notice decoder and the refund-trace steps for Form 3911, paired with a refund status tracker spreadsheet and an explanation of the 3-year refund deadline.
See the notice decoder and refund-trace steps inside The IRS Refund Recovery Kit.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and reviewed by an editor.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
