Do you ever wonder why April 15 became the day we file our income tax returns? There's a story going around that back in 1913, when the income tax was enacted, the theory was that only the very wealthy would have to pay income tax. It was decided that April 15 would be a god day to collect taxes from the super-rich before they left town for the summer.
That's a cute story, but it's not true. When the 16th Amendment was adopted on February 3, 1913, Congress chose March 1 as tax day, which was moved forward to March 15 in 1918. In 1955, it was moved to the current date of April 15, officially to "spread out the peak workload." But the real reason may have been to allow the government to keep the money from the refunds longer.
The latter explanation is probably more in force today. In recent years, the IRS reports about 20 percent of returns have been filed in the last week before the deadline.
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