Businesses and households in all nine Bay Area counties are now classified as “storm victims,” so the IRS and California Franchise Tax Board are cutting us an extra month of slack to blow off filing our taxes.

Is this one of those years when Americans get an extra day or two to do their taxes, because of some holiday that is only observed that day in Washington, D.C.? It is; the holiday is Emancipation Day, April 16, which this year falls on a Sunday, so federal employees are off on Monday, meaning Tax Day for most Americans is not until Tuesday, April 18. But because of the pummeling of storms these last two weeks, the whole Bay Area is getting an even longer extension.

The IRS announced this week that Tax Day is extended until May 15 for those who qualify as “California storm victims” because of the county they live in. Then the next day, the IRS expanded that list of counties so that residents and businesses of all nine Bay Area counties are covered by the deadline extension: San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma counties.

And for good measure, Governor Gavin Newsom’s office just announced that the California state tax filing deadline has been moved to May 15 as well. Grab a box of Whip-Its and relax, everybody!

"California storm victims now have until May 15, 2023, to file various federal individual and business tax returns and make tax payments," the IRS said in their announcement. "The tax relief postpones various tax filing and payment deadlines that occurred starting on January 8, 2023. As a result, affected individuals and businesses will have until May 15, 2023, to file returns and pay any taxes that were originally due during this period."

The complete list of California counties qualifying for the tax deadline extension is seen above.

You don’t even have to prove any form of hardship, or that you were, in fact, a storm victim in any way. You just have to live in one of the designated counties. “The IRS automatically provides filing and penalty relief to any taxpayer with an IRS address of record located in the disaster area,” the announcement says. “Therefore, taxpayers do not need to contact the agency to get this relief.”

And if you do any maneuvering with retirement accounts or other contributions to limit your tax exposure, you get another month on that too. “This includes 2022 individual income tax returns due on April 18, as well as various 2022 business returns normally due on March 15 and April 18,” the IRS explains. “Among other things, this means that eligible taxpayers will have until May 15 to make 2022 contributions to their IRAs and health savings accounts.”  

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