Tax Day: April 18 This Year

Story by Hal Goodtree

Cary, NC – Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, sent me a note on Tuesday asking me to remind CaryCitizens that the tax filing deadline this year is Monday, April 18, three days later than usual. But that’s not all that’s memorable about April 18.

Why the Change?

Tax Day is usually April 15. If it falls on a weekend, I could see the utility in moving the filing date to a week day. But April 15 falls on a Friday this year.

According to IRS.gov, the extra three days accomodate Emancipation Day, a holiday in the District of Columbia. Federal law prohibits Tax Filing Day from falling on a holiday anywhere in the country.

Anyway, the irony of Tax Day falling on Emancipation Day would have been too rich.

April 18 – No Slouch of a Date

April 18 has its own historical significance. It is the date of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, immortalized in the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1861:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, — “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light, —
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

Don’t Forget

Even though we have three extra days to file in 2011, all tax returns or extensions must be filed by April 18.

And on Monday, spare a moment to remember a man on a horse, riding from Lexington to Concord in 1775.