On the evening of May 16, 2025, a tornado carrying winds up to 152 mph tore through the City of St. Louis and neighboring Scott and St. Louis Counties. It killed five people, injured 38 more, and damaged or destroyed more than 5,000 buildings. The total damage estimate ran to $1.6 billion. Nearly 800 local businesses reported harm, a third of them concentrated in the city's 10th Ward alone. Of those, 216 sustained severe damage, 149 reported significant damage, and 60 were declared total losses.
In response, the IRS granted the affected area sweeping relief: nearly every federal tax deadline that would have fallen between May 16 and November 3, 2025, was automatically pushed to November 3. That date has now passed. But if you run a business in the covered area — or anywhere else the IRS has issued similar disaster relief — the story isn't over. Several of the most valuable provisions in a disaster declaration only become relevant after the extended deadline, and many business owners miss them entirely because they assume "tax relief" ends the day the postponement does.
Here's what actually happened, what's still on the table, and how to make sure you don't leave money on the table the next time a disaster hits your area.
What the November 3 Deadline Actually Covered
Following FEMA's disaster declaration (DR-4877) for the storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes, and flooding that began May 16, 2025, the IRS automatically postponed a wide range of federal deadlines for anyone in the City of St. Louis, Scott County, or St. Louis County — no application required, no phone call to make. If your address of record was in the disaster area, the extension applied automatically.
The postponement covered:
- Individual, corporate, and estate/trust income tax returns with original or extended deadlines in the window
- Partnership and S corporation returns
- Quarterly estimated income tax payments originally due on or after May 16, 2025
- Quarterly payroll and excise tax returns, including the July 31 and October 31, 2025 deadlines
- 2024 IRA and HSA contributions that hadn't yet been made
Two categories were notably excluded from the automatic postponement: information returns (W-2s, the 1099 series, Forms 1042-S, 3921, 3922, and 8027) and payroll/excise tax deposits, both of which stayed on their normal schedules. The IRS did waive penalties on payroll tax deposits made by June 2, 2025, giving employers a short grace window even though the deposit deadline itself didn't move.
If you filed or paid late during the postponement period and the IRS still charged you a penalty, that's worth a phone call — the relief was supposed to apply automatically, but automated penalty notices sometimes go out anyway when a taxpayer's address on file doesn't match the disaster area precisely (a common issue for businesses with a separate mailing address from their physical location).
The Provision Most Business Owners Miss: The Prior-Year Casualty Loss Election
This is the part of disaster relief that keeps paying off long after the postponed deadline is forgotten.
Under Section 165(i) of the tax code, a business that suffers a loss in a federally declared disaster area can elect to deduct that loss on the tax return for the year before the disaster happened, instead of waiting to claim it on the return for the year the disaster actually occurred. For the St. Louis tornado, that means a business could elect to claim its casualty loss on its 2024 return rather than its 2025 return.
Why would you want to go backward a year? Two reasons, and either one can be worth real money:
- Speed. If your 2024 return is already filed, amending it to add a disaster loss can generate a refund in weeks rather than making you wait until you file (and the IRS processes) a full 2025 return.
- Bracket and offset advantages. If 2024 was a stronger income year than 2025 is shaping up to be, claiming the loss against 2024 income may offset tax at a higher marginal rate, or offset income that would otherwise go untaxed by a loss with nothing to absorb it in a leaner 2025.
The election deadline for a St. Louis tornado loss is October 15, 2026 — six months after the unextended due date of the 2025 return. That deadline has not passed. If your business suffered physical damage, inventory loss, or equipment destruction in the tornado and you haven't yet decided which year to claim the loss against, you still have time to run the numbers with your accountant and choose the more favorable year. You make the election by completing Section D of Form 4684, filed with either your original or an amended return for the year you're electing.
One more detail that trips people up: once you file the election, you generally can't just change your mind on a whim later. You get a 90-day window after the election deadline to revoke it, by filing another amended return — but after that, you're locked in. Model both scenarios before you file.
Retirement Account Access Without the Usual Penalty
If the tornado forced you to tap savings to keep your business running — covering payroll, replacing damaged inventory, or making emergency repairs — you may have been eligible to pull from a retirement account without the usual 10% early-withdrawal penalty that normally applies before age 59½. Qualified disaster distributions from a 401(k), SEP IRA, or similar account are exempt from that penalty (though the withdrawal is still taxable income, spreadable over three years if you choose). If you took a hardship withdrawal during 2025 and your tax preparer isn't already aware it was disaster-related, flag it — it changes how the distribution should be reported.
Beyond Taxes: Where the Real Recovery Money Sits
Tax relief buys you time; it doesn't put cash in your account. For that, St. Louis-area businesses had (and in some cases still have) access to:
- SBA Physical Disaster Loans of up to $2 million to repair or replace damaged real estate, equipment, and inventory
- Zero-interest loans up to $5,000 from the St. Louis Local Development Company, aimed at working capital and inventory replacement for smaller operations
- The city's Business Recovery Center, which coordinated grants, permitting help, and rebuilding assistance for the hardest-hit commercial corridors
If your business is still working through a claim, a grant application, or a rebuilding timeline, it's worth checking directly with the city's recovery office — some of these programs have rolling or extended application windows well past the tax deadline.
The Broader Lesson: A Disaster Declaration Is a Checklist, Not a Single Deadline
The St. Louis tornado relief is a useful case study because it shows how many separate levers a single FEMA declaration pulls: a blanket filing extension, a penalty waiver on a narrower category of deposits, a multi-year casualty loss election, and penalty-free retirement access — each with its own deadline, and some of them (like the Section 165(i) election) outlasting the headline postponement by nearly a year.
If your business operates in an area that gets hit by a storm, wildfire, or flood in the future, don't stop at "when is the new filing deadline." Ask your accountant specifically about the prior-year loss election, whether any of your deposits qualify for penalty relief even if the deposit deadline itself didn't move, and whether a hardship retirement withdrawal is available and disaster-qualified. The IRS disaster relief page for your specific declaration (searchable by state) lists every provision in one place — it's worth reading end to end rather than skimming for the deadline date.
Keep Your Books Disaster-Ready
Disaster tax relief only works if you can document what you lost and when. That means having clean, dated records of your assets, inventory, and expenses before the disaster — not scrambling to reconstruct them from memory afterward. Beancount.io gives you plain-text accounting with full version history, so every entry has a timestamp and a git-backed audit trail that survives even if your physical records don't. Get started for free and make sure your books are ready for whatever comes next.