Disasters can happen at any time. As far as your business records go, you’ll be most equipped for a disaster if you’ve backed up and stored your most critical data online. To the extent you fail to do this, you’ll have to get copies of vital records from the IRS and other government agencies, your bank, clients, customers, and others. You’ll have to re-create other data as best you can.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act makes claiming a tax deduction for a personal casualty loss more difficult. And when you do qualify to deduct a personal casualty loss, you face a number of rules that add to your misery by making the loss deduction difficult. In select circumstances, you can use a safe harbor, which makes things a little easier.

Tax law grants relief, if you want to call it that, when you lose your tax records through no fault of your own. For example, say a flood, theft, hurricane, or earthquake caused the loss of your tax records. Your relief is the right to substantiate your deductions using a reasonable reconstruction of those records. Yikes, how long will that take?

Do you own a business that withholds taxes from employees? If so, you need 100 percent certainty that the withheld payroll tax monies are going to the IRS. You can achieve 100 percent certainty with the IRS EFTPS registration..

Learn when to tax deduct flood damage as a casualty loss or repair deduction and avoid capitalization. The law gives business owners an advantage when they fix up their business property after a floor or other casualty.

If you are the victim of a Ponzi scheme, you absolutely, positively must read this article to learn how the law gives you favored victim status. This includes a safe harbor election, possible carryback of the losses to one of five years, net operating loss treatment, and more.

At what point is a home destroyed so that it is eligible for the “involuntary conversion rules and the $250,000 ($500,000) exclusion of capital gains rules? In this chief counsel advice, the IRS gives some clarity.

If your tax records are destroyed in a fire, the IRS allows you to reconstruct the records. Reconstruction takes a big effort. Protect your records so that you don’t have to reconstruct them.

Tax law calls the wreckage and totaling of your vehicle both an involuntary conversion and a casualty. Special rules allow you to treat the involuntary conversion as either a sale or a trade-in. Thus, your first step in this process is to find your gain or loss and then decide how you want to claim your tax benefits.