The Federal Government offers relief to those in areas who were impacted by certain Presidentially-declared disasters.

Per IRS Publication 596 Earned Income Credit (EIC), page 3:

Tax relief legislation. Recent legislation provided certain tax-related benefits, including an election to use your 2019 earned income to figure your 2021 earned income credit. See Election to use prior-year earned income, for more information.

Federal casualty losses, disaster losses and qualified disaster losses are three categories of casualty losses that refer to federally declared disasters. The requirements for each loss vary. For more information, see Publication 547 or refer to the Instructions for Form 4684.

For residents impacted by natural disasters, for example hurricanes and floods, the state of residence that you list in TaxAct will result in additional questions for you to complete to use the prior year earned income when calculating Earned Income Credit.

To indicate you were affected by a Presidentially-declared disaster in the TaxAct program:

1. From within your TaxAct return (Online or Desktop), click Federal (on smaller devices, click in the top left corner of your screen, then click Federal).
2. Click the Basic Information dropdown, then click Disaster tax relief.
3. Continue with the interview process to enter your information.

Note that any link in the information above is updated each year automatically and will take you to the most recent version of the webpage or document at the time it is accessed.