Seldom do we hear or read anything positive about income taxes. It doesn’t help to grumble about it – it will not make it go away. In the U.S., Tax Day is day on which individual income tax returns are due to be submitted to the government.
Federal Income Tax was briefly introduced with the Revenue Act of 1861 to help fund the Civil War. The Act was subsequently repealed, re-adopted and held unconstitutional. Early taxes were based on assessments rather than voluntary tax returns. That meant a government representative decided how much you owned and taxed that amount accordingly, similarly to the way property tax and real estate taxes are taxed today. Tax Day varied by whichever Act was in effect.
The legal case of Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. challenged the constitutionality of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act of 1894, which taxed incomes over $4000 at the rate of two percent. The United States Supreme Court, in its deliberations, decided the Act’s unapportioned income taxes on interest, dividends and rents were effectively direct taxes, levied on the income or profits of the person who pays it rather than on goods and services. The Act was unconstitutional because it violated the Constitution’s rule that direct taxes be apportioned among the states.
In 1913 the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified giving Congress the legal authority to tax all incomes without regard to the apportionment requirement.
The filing deadline for individuals was March 1 in 1913 and was changed to March 15 in 1918. It was changed to April 15 in 1955. Today it remains April 15 unless that date falls on a weekend, national holidays, natural disasters or public health emergencies. These extensions might be granted for a county or for certain regions based on FEMA declarations.
If an individual needs more time to prepare their tax return he/she may ask for an extension, which can provide an extra six months to file, but the estimated payment is still due on tax day.
