US Disaster Tax Relief Lookup

Whenever the IRS postpones tax deadlines for a federally declared disaster, it announces it as a one-off press release — no official machine-readable version, no central feed. This Actor turns those notices into a queryable API: look up relief by state and county (or tribal area), or pull everything that's changed since a given date to keep your own system in sync.

Every record links back to its original IRS notice and carries the exact sentence the IRS used to state the covered area and the deadline — not a paraphrase. Where a record hasn't been independently re-verified since extraction, its confidence field says so.

Free to use. No Apify subscription or per-call charge — get a free Apify account and API token, and call the endpoints below.

Not tax advice. This is informational data drawn from public IRS notices. Verify time-sensitive decisions against the source before relying on them.

Using the live API

This Actor runs in Standby mode, so it answers requests directly with no per-call cold start. Get a free API token from your Apify account (Settings > API & Integrations), then call:

https://makeshefa--codata-tax-relief.apify.actor

Bash:

export BASE="https://makeshefa--codata-tax-relief.apify.actor"
export TOKEN="your-apify-token"

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" "$BASE/lookup?state=TN&county=Davidson"
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" "$BASE/lookup?state=SD&area=Oglala%20Sioux%20Tribe"
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" "$BASE/changes?since=2026-09-01"
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" "$BASE/health"

PowerShell (uses curl.exe explicitly — plain curl is aliased to Invoke-WebRequest, which takes different flags):

$env:BASE = "https://makeshefa--codata-tax-relief.apify.actor"
$env:TOKEN = "your-apify-token"

curl.exe -H "Authorization: Bearer $env:TOKEN" "$env:BASE/lookup?state=TN&county=Davidson"
curl.exe -H "Authorization: Bearer $env:TOKEN" "$env:BASE/lookup?state=SD&area=Oglala%20Sioux%20Tribe"
curl.exe -H "Authorization: Bearer $env:TOKEN" "$env:BASE/changes?since=2026-09-01"
curl.exe -H "Authorization: Bearer $env:TOKEN" "$env:BASE/health"

Endpoints

• GET /lookup?state=<USPS code>&county=<name> — relief covering a specific county (also matches statewide-scope records).
• GET /lookup?state=<USPS code>&area=<name> — same, but for a tribal area name instead of a county.
• GET /lookup?fips=<5-digit code> — not yet supported. Returns a 501 explaining that FIPS codes aren't joined into the dataset yet. Included now so the shape of the API doesn't change later.
• GET /changes?since=YYYY-MM-DD — every record whose IRS notice was published on or after that date, for syncing your own copy.
• GET /health — record count and dataset freshness date.

Every response includes data_as_of (when the data was last checked against its sources), corrections_url, and the disclaimer above.

Example response

GET /lookup?state=TN&county=Davidson:

{
  "data_as_of": "2026-09-18",
  "results": [
    {
      "relief_id": "TN-2025-02",
      "state": "TN",
      "disaster_name": "Severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding in Tennessee",
      "postponed_until": "2025-11-03",
      "status": "expired",
      "covered_obligations_detail": [
        "individual income tax returns and payments",
        "estimated tax payments (April 15, June 16, September 15)",
        "quarterly payroll and excise tax returns"
      ],
      "citation": {
        "url": "https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-announces-tax-relief-for-tennessee-storm-victims-various-deadlines-postponed-to-nov-3",
        "quote_deadline": "As a result, affected individuals and businesses will have until Nov. 3, 2025, to file returns and pay any taxes that were originally due during this period.",
        "confidence": "high"
      }
    }
  ]
}

(Trimmed for readability — the full response includes every covered obligation, both source quotes, and revision history where the IRS has amended a notice in place.)

How the data is verified and kept current

Records are extracted from IRS.gov with AI assistance, then cross-checked against the source page — not manually re-typed line by line. Each record's citation.confidence (high/medium/low) reflects how certain that check was. Updating the dataset is currently a manual process; there's no scheduled auto-refresh yet.

Known limitations

• FIPS lookup (/lookup?fips=) isn't wired up yet — county name lookup works today.
• status (active/expired) is computed live from postponed_until, not stored per record.
• No scheduled collector yet, so newly issued IRS notices aren't picked up automatically.

Note: every call needs the Authorization header above, including a simple health check — there's no unauthenticated path, even though this Actor is free to use.

Questions or a correction to report

support@makeshefa.com, or use the corrections page on the site — include the relief_id so it's fast to find.