Doug LaMalfa Federal Disaster Tax Relief Certainty Act

The qualified disaster area window was expanded from disasters with incident periods beginning after July 4, 2025 to those beginning on or after December 28, 2019, making the tax relief retroactive to cover disasters over five years earlier.

The wildfire income exclusion limitation changed from restricting payments received during taxable years 2026 through 2030 to instead requiring the underlying disaster to have been declared before January 1, 2027. This removes the upper time limit on when relief payments can be received.

The provision that would have excluded the disaster loss deduction from alternative minimum tax (AMT) adjustments was removed entirely, meaning the deduction may now be subject to AMT limitations.

A new coordination clause was added stating that section 304(b) of the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2020 and section 70438 of Public Law 119-21 shall not apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2024, effectively superseding prior temporary disaster tax relief provisions.

The mechanism for allowing non-itemizers to deduct disaster losses was restructured from a separate 'disaster loss deduction' definition added to the standard deduction into a new paragraph (8) of section 63(b) that directly allows the deduction as an additional item above the standard deduction.

The bill title was changed from 'Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2025' to 'Doug LaMalfa Federal Disaster Tax Relief Certainty Act,' adding a personal name and the word 'Certainty.'