Providing Tax Relief for Fire Victims

Floor Speech

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Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, the House Committee on Ways and Means is marking up a comprehensive tax relief bill for disaster survivors. My bipartisan bill, H.R. 4970, the Protect Innocent Victims Of Taxation After Fire Act, is included as a provision.

H.R. 4970 will exempt all wildfire relief payments from Federal income taxes and is especially time-sensitive given the recent extension from the October 16 tax filing deadline in California until November 16.

It is essential that Congress get this done and every Fire Victim Trust beneficiary has this massive tax headache alleviated. Fire victims need this tax relief to help rebuild their lives, and they should not go through this tax season with this uncertainty about what they are going to have to pay this year.

The initiative has been a long time coming. Indeed, the fifth year anniversary of the Camp fire in Paradise, California, and surrounding communities is coming up in 1 week.

In the previous term, we had a similar bill included in the government funding package at the end of the year, but it was removed by the Senate because of a disagreement on tax policy.

The bipartisan bill is a top priority. I commend and thank my colleague Mike Thompson, from the wine country, in helping, and our Ways and Means chairman, Jason Smith, in seeing it through in committee in order to bring this relief to disaster survivors and fire victims.

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