On Friday, January 22, 2010, President Obama signed into law a bill allowing taxpayers who made charitable contributions to the Haiti earthquake relief efforts to claim an itemizable deduction on their 2009 Tax Returns instead of waiting until next year to claim the deduction….The IRS also announced on Friday that it has issued guidance designating the Haiti earthquake as a natural disaster for federal tax purposes. The guidance allows recipients of qualified disaster relief payments to exclude those payments from income tax.