[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 190 (Wednesday, December 7, 2022)]
[House]
[Page H8807]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           FIRE VICTIMS TRUST

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Throughout California there are tens of thousands of 
residents who lost their homes, their belongings, and, for some, even 
their loved ones due to wildfires.
  In 2020, the fire victims trust was established to compensate 
survivors of the 2015 Butte, the 2017 North Bay, and the 2018 Camp 
fires with a total of $13.5 billion of settlement award money.
  Survivors have waited years for compensation to rebuild their lives, 
and they have long awaited these funds. Instead, to add insult, many of 
them are facing immense tax burdens and navigating the uncertainty of 
our ambiguous tax code trying to find concrete answers of how much they 
may or may not owe the Government in taxes.
  We should not force survivors to pay Federal taxes on compensation 
they would otherwise use to rebuild their lives, and we certainly 
should not be forcing them to pay taxes on funds that are going to the 
lawyers involved as well.
  Congressman   Mike Thompson and I have introduced H.R. 7305 to 
correct this injustice. I am urging all my colleagues in the House to 
support this bipartisan legislation and bring much-needed financial 
reprieve to these wildfire survivors.
  They shouldn't have to live with this uncertainty over their heads. 
This needs to be passed by the end of this year.

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