94 Fun Facts About Tax Day

Filing Form 4868 for an automatic extension moves the federal return deadline to the 15th of which month?

October: the extra six months cover the paperwork only, because any tax owed is still due on the original April date.

Which president signed the 1913 law that brought back the federal income tax?

Woodrow Wilson signed it in his first year in office mainly to cut tariffs; the small income tax was added to make up the customs revenue that would be lost.

Which amendment, ratified in 1913, let Congress tax incomes without apportioning by state population?

The Sixteenth Amendment was put forward in 1909 by conservatives who expected the states to reject it; instead one legislature after another ratified it.

Which 1895 Supreme Court case struck down the federal income tax?

Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust (1895) held that taxing income from property (rents, dividends, interest) was a direct tax that had to be apportioned, killing the 1894 income tax.

The first US federal income tax was introduced to fund what?

The Civil War: Congress passed the tax in August 1861 to help pay for the fighting, then repealed it about a decade later.

Which 1794 tax uprising did President Washington call out the militia to end?

The Whiskey Rebellion melted away without a battle once the militia marched west; two men were convicted of treason and Washington pardoned both.

The IRS traces its origin to the Office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue, created in which year?

The wartime income tax funded over a fifth of the Union's war costs before it lapsed a decade later.

Which two simplified versions of the main individual tax return were dropped for tax year 2018?

Forms 1040-A and 1040-EZ were retired for tax year 2018, when one shorter, redesigned Form 1040 replaced all three versions of the return.

Limited electronic filing of US tax returns first became possible in which year?

1986: the IRS ran its first electronic-filing pilot that year, accepting about 25,000 returns from a handful of tax preparers in three cities before taking e-file nationwide by 1990.

Tax Day is pushed back when April 15 collides with which Washington, DC holiday?

Emancipation Day, the April 16 DC holiday marking the end of slavery in the District, counts as a legal holiday for the IRS, so a clash with April 15 moves the deadline for everyone.

Which New England holiday has occasionally given Maine and Massachusetts filers an extra day?

Patriots' Day, the April Monday when the Boston Marathon is run, fell on the 2019 deadline; with a DC holiday the next day, Maine and Massachusetts filers got until April 17.

Which Treasury Secretary announced in March 2020 that Tax Day would move from April 15 to July 15?

Steven Mnuchin said Tax Day was moving 'at President Trump's direction', giving every filer three extra months during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Al Capone was finally jailed in 1931 for what crime?

Tax evasion: in October 1931 a federal jury convicted Capone on three counts of evading income tax and two of failing to file, crimes prosecutors could prove when his violence could not be.

Al Capone was moved from Atlanta in 1934 to which newly opened federal prison?

Alcatraz took Capone in August 1934 after claims that he was winning cushy treatment in Atlanta; he left in 1939, his health broken by syphilis.

Actor Wesley Snipes was convicted in 2008 of what tax offence?

Willful failure to file returns: a Florida jury convicted Snipes in 2008 on three misdemeanor counts for 1999-2001 while acquitting him of felony fraud and conspiracy; he got three years.

Hotelier Leona Helmsley was reported to have said that only whom pay taxes?

'Only the little people pay taxes' was the line a former housekeeper attributed to Helmsley at her 1989 tax trial; Helmsley always denied saying it.

Leona Helmsley's will left a $12 million trust to which pet?

Her dog, a Maltese named Trouble, lived on in Florida with a Helmsley hotel manager, though a judge later cut the trust to $2 million.

Benjamin Franklin wrote that 'nothing is certain except death and taxes' while judging how long what would last?

The newly established Constitution 'has an appearance that promises permanency', Franklin told a French friend in 1789, 'but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.'

The top US income tax rate peaked at 94% during which war?

World War II drove the top rate to 94% in 1944 and 1945, but it bit only on income above $200,000, far beyond almost every paycheck of the day.

Which of these states collects no state income tax on wages?

Texas levies no personal income tax, and in 2019 its voters went further and wrote a ban on one into the state constitution.

Who invented 'Tax Freedom Day' in 1948?

Dallas Hostetler, a Florida businessman, coined and trademarked 'Tax Freedom Day' in 1948 and transferred it to the Tax Foundation when he retired in 1971.

The tea dumped at the Boston Tea Party belonged to which company?

The East India Company had just been allowed to undercut every rival tea seller in the colonies, and colonists who saw a monopoly in the making dumped its cargo.

Britain's Stamp Act of 1765 taxed which colonial goods?

Printed paper and playing cards carried the stamp duty, as did newspapers, wills and even dice; colonial resistance was so fierce that Parliament repealed the act in 1766.

From 1696 England taxed homes by counting which feature, a levy long blamed for bricked-up walls?

Windows were taxed until 1851, when the levy was repealed after protests from campaigners who called it a tax on 'light and air'.

Which Russian ruler introduced a beard tax in 1698 to westernise his subjects?

Peter the Great came home from his tour of western Europe set on changing Russian habits; men who would not shave had to pay a yearly tax to keep their beards.

Gandhi's 1930 march to Dandi defied a British monopoly and tax on which everyday staple?

Salt could not legally be gathered or sold by Indians, so after walking some 240 miles Gandhi scooped a handful from the shore, and tens of thousands were jailed for copying him.

Legend says Lady Godiva rode naked through which English city to win a tax cut for its people?

Coventry: the tale was first written down by the chronicler Roger of Wendover long after Godiva's death, and 'Peeping Tom' was added to it centuries later.

Which famous inscribed slab records a 196 BC decree cutting taxes for Egypt's temples and priests?

The Rosetta Stone carries priests' thanks to Ptolemy V for his tax cuts in hieroglyphic, Demotic and Greek, a repetition that later let scholars decode hieroglyphs.

Britain's hat tax of 1784-1811 reserved the death penalty for what?

Forging hat-tax stamps: the 1784 duty was paid via a stamp stuck inside the hat lining, and counterfeiting one was a capital offence; retailers had to display 'Dealer in Hats by Retail'.

Which country introduced a pioneering 'fat tax' on saturated fat in 2011, only to drop it about a year later?

Denmark announced the end of the tax 13 months after it began, saying Danes were crossing into Germany to shop and that jobs were at risk.

The modern 'jock tax' took off in 1991 when California taxed which team's players after the NBA Finals?

The Chicago Bulls beat the Lakers in the 1991 Finals, California taxed the visiting players' earnings, and Illinois hit back with a tax of its own on visiting athletes.

Which of these western states charges no statewide sales tax?

Oregon has no sales tax and leans on a high income tax instead, the reverse of its neighbour Washington, which taxes sales heavily and wages not at all.

Years before a global campaign demanded it, Kenya cut tax in 2004 on which items?

Sanitary pads got cheaper in Kenya years before the 'tampon tax' became a worldwide campaign; Canada did not drop its own tax until 2015.

Britain's tax year ends on April 5, a date inherited from which old quarter day when rents fell due?

Lady Day fell on March 25 and once opened the English year; when the calendar jumped eleven days in 1752, the old date landed on April 5 and the tax year kept it.

Which British prime minister's flat-rate 'Community Charge' set off riots in London in 1990?

Margaret Thatcher's charge billed almost every adult the same sum whatever their means; she left office that November and her successor replaced it with the council tax.

Which Beatle wrote 'Taxman' after learning how much of his earnings went in tax?

George Harrison opened the 1966 album Revolver with it, and the lyric names both Britain's prime minister and the leader of the opposition.

What were the firing offences for IRS staff in the 1998 Restructuring Act nicknamed?

The 10 deadly sins, as IRS staff nicknamed them, range from threatening an audit for personal gain to filing their own tax returns late, and only the commissioner can spare an offender.

On the first page of Form 1040, taxpayers can tick a box sending $3 to what?

The presidential election campaign fund gets $3 of tax the filer already owes: ticking the box neither raises the bill nor shrinks a refund.

What was the federal filing deadline from 1918 until it moved to April 15 in 1955?

The date now shifts only when April 15 hits a weekend or a holiday such as DC's Emancipation Day.

Which 2021 law made $10,200 of jobless benefits tax-free days before Tax Day moved to May 17?

The American Rescue Plan was signed on March 11, 2021, after many people had already filed, so the IRS recalculated their returns and sent the refunds itself.

April 15, Tax Day's usual date, is also the anniversary of which disaster?

The sinking of the Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912, led to the first international treaty on safety at sea, which set rules for lifeboats and radio watches.

Roughly how much did the IRS collect in fiscal year 2023?

About $4.7 trillion: the IRS reported gross collections of nearly $4.7 trillion in fiscal 2023, while processing more than 271 million returns and other forms.

Which form must US employers send every employee after each year ends, showing wages and tax withheld?

Form W-2 goes to the employee and to the government alike, which is how the IRS can check a return's wage figure against what the employer reported.

Which president's 'enemies list' did the IRS commissioner lock in his safe instead of ordering the audits the White House wanted?

Richard Nixon's counsel John Dean handed over the list in 1972; commissioner Johnnie Walters sealed it in an envelope, locked it away and later passed it to Congress.

Astronaut Jack Swigert asked Mission Control for a tax-filing extension during which 1970 moon flight?

Apollo 13 was on its way to the Moon when Swigert realised that, in the last-minute rush, he had never filed his return; controllers laughed as he asked how to get more time.

Which Disney character starred in 'The New Spirit', a 1942 cartoon urging Americans to pay their income tax?

Donald Duck was enlisted by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. to sell wartime taxes, and the short earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary.

Which Beatle wrote 'Taxman', the 1966 song protesting the 95 per cent supertax on the band's earnings?

George Harrison wrote it after learning how much of the band's income went to the Treasury, and the song name-checks the politicians Harold Wilson and Edward Heath.

Which country singer released 'The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories?' to help pay off a huge federal tax debt?

Willie Nelson made the album with only his voice and guitar after the IRS seized most of his assets in 1990, and it raised $3.6 million towards the bill.

Which talk show host gave 276 audience members a new Pontiac in 2004, leaving winners with tax bills up to $7,000?

Oprah Winfrey's giveaway counted as prize income, so each $28,500 car had to be declared; winners could pay the tax, sell the car to cover it, or turn the gift down.

Richard Hatch went to prison for not paying tax on the $1 million he won on which reality show's first season?

Survivor crowned Hatch its first champion in 2000, but he never filed the returns his accountants had prepared showing the prize, and he was sentenced to 51 months in prison.

Who won an Oscar as IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre in the film 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'?

Jamie Lee Curtis took Best Supporting Actress as the auditor examining a struggling laundromat owner's taxes, one of seven Academy Awards the film collected.

A 1791 federal tax on which drink sparked a Pennsylvania uprising that George Washington rode out to suppress?

Whiskey was the first domestic product the new federal government taxed, and Washington himself rode at the head of about 13,000 militiamen to put the rebellion down.

IRS Publication 17 tells thieves to do what with the value of property they steal and keep?

Report it as income, says the IRS guide, unless the property goes back to its rightful owner in the same year; bribes and drug-dealing profits are taxable too.

Economist Arthur Laffer reportedly sketched his tax-rate curve on what during a 1974 meeting with Dick Cheney?

A napkin is where the Laffer curve was reportedly drawn for Ford aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, though Laffer himself says he has no memory of it.

A mailed US tax return counts as filed on time if what is dated on or before the deadline?

The postmark is what counts, provided the envelope is properly addressed and carries enough postage, so a return can land at the IRS days later and be on time.

Which software company has made TurboTax since buying the tax program from its creator Chipsoft in 1993?

Intuit has since run a multi-million-dollar lobbying campaign against the IRS building an online filing system of its own, the kind most other wealthy countries offer.

Which IRS form must US employers give each employee by January 31, showing the past year's wages and tax withheld?

The W-2 lands by the end of January so that workers have time to prepare their returns, and employers send the same figures to the Social Security Administration.

Which tax preparation chain did two Missouri brothers found in 1955, changing one letter of their surname?

H&R Block was founded by Henry and Richard Bloch, who swapped the final letter for a K so that nobody would pronounce the company's name 'blotch'.

Which Nobel-winning economist helped invent wartime paycheck tax withholding, then later wished it could be abolished?

Milton Friedman worked on tax policy at the Treasury from 1941 to 1943, when Washington needed money quickly for World War II; the free-market champion never apologised for it.

Which Supreme Court justice's line that taxes buy a civilized society is carved above the IRS headquarters entrance?

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the line in a 1927 tax case about goods shipped from the Philippines, and he later left the remainder of his own fortune to the US government.

The FICA tax taken from American paychecks funds Social Security and which other federal programme?

Medicare's hospital insurance takes a slice of every dollar earned, with no ceiling, while the Social Security share stops once a worker's pay passes an annual cap.

Which federal tax do American opponents call the 'death tax', while some supporters call it the 'Paris Hilton tax'?

Estate tax opponents have used the gloomier nickname since the 1940s, and a 1954 tax law even used the phrase 'death taxes' in one of its section headings.

The 401(k) retirement plan, pioneered by benefits consultant Ted Benna, takes its name from what?

A tax code subsection, numbered 401(k), named the plan after Benna spotted the favourable treatment it gave savings schemes, back when the top income tax rate was 70%.

What film-title nickname does the IRS give its yearly list of the most common tax scams?

The Dirty Dozen is compiled every year, and the IRS warns that many of the schemes peak in filing season, when people are preparing returns or hiring someone to help.

Which Roman emperor, around AD 70, taxed urine from Rome's public urinals and reputedly said that money does not stink?

Vespasian is said to have held a coin from the tax under the nose of his son Titus, who had complained about it, and asked whether it smelled.

Which French chemist, who named oxygen, was guillotined in 1794 for his part in a hated private tax-collecting company?

Antoine Lavoisier owned a share in the Ferme générale, which paid the crown in advance for the right to collect taxes, and he even had a customs wall built around Paris.

Which Spanish novelist was briefly jailed in the 1590s over irregularities in his accounts as a state tax collector?

Miguel de Cervantes became a collector in 1592, seven years after publishing his first novel, 'La Galatea', and more than a decade before 'Don Quixote' appeared.

Louis XIV's minister Colbert is credited with comparing taxation to plucking which bird with the least hissing?

A goose, in the image credited to Colbert, should give up the most feathers for the least noise, which he called the whole art of taxation.

Which 1086 survey of England, ordered by William the Conqueror, recorded who held land and what dues the king was owed?

Domesday Book was built on assessment lists for the geld, a national land tax, and its primary purpose was to set down the fiscal rights of the king.

Which British prime minister introduced the first modern income tax in 1799 to pay for war with revolutionary France?

Pitt the Younger hoped the new levy would bring in £10 million a year, but the first year's receipts came to only just over £6 million.

Which American writer spent a night in jail in 1846 for refusing to pay poll taxes in protest at slavery?

Henry David Thoreau was stopped in Concord by the tax collector Sam Staples, who wanted six years of unpaid dues; the Mexican–American War was his other grievance.

An attempt to collect unpaid poll tax in Essex in May 1381 triggered which English uprising?

Peasants' Revolt leaders were tracked down and executed after the rising collapsed, and at least 1,500 rebels had been killed by November of that year.

Which Swedish children's author wrote a 1976 satire after her marginal tax rate reached 102 per cent?

Astrid Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking, ran her fairy-tale satire in a Stockholm tabloid, and the row is often credited with helping to unseat the government that year.

Which band became tax exiles in 1971 and recorded much of 'Exile on Main St.' at a rented villa in France?

The Rolling Stones found they had underpaid British taxes for years and left England before their assets could be seized, with Keith Richards renting the villa near Nice.

Which president broke his 1988 convention pledge of no new taxes by agreeing to a 1990 budget deal?

George Bush senior made the promise while accepting the Republican nomination in New Orleans, then compromised with a Congress controlled by the Democrats.

Which president signed the bipartisan tax reform that cut the top income tax rate from 50 to 28 per cent?

Ronald Reagan made simplifying the tax system the central aim of his second term at home, and the bill passed with majorities of both parties in Congress.

Which US vice president resigned in 1973 after pleading no contest to a single federal tax charge?

Spiro Agnew had insisted on his innocence for months before the plea, and he was only the second vice president to resign, after John C. Calhoun.

Which amendment, ratified in 1964, stopped Americans being charged a poll tax to vote in federal elections?

Twenty-fourth Amendment backers were aiming at the South: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia had yet to drop the charge when it was ratified.

What was the US government's biggest money-raiser from the 1790s until income taxes overtook it around World War I?

Tariffs on imports paid Washington's way for more than a century, and cutting them was Woodrow Wilson's first priority in 1913, the year he signed the income tax into law.

The 'Chicken Tax', a 25 per cent US import duty begun in 1964, applies to which vehicles?

Light trucks were hit in retaliation for French and West German duties on American chicken, and importers have used loopholes to get around the charge.

Which US state has no income tax or state sales tax and pays its residents a yearly dividend from oil wealth?

Alaska voters created the Permanent Fund in 1976, the year before oil began flowing through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, to save a share of the windfall for future generations.

Which African country, like the United States, taxes the foreign income of its citizens who live abroad?

Eritrea charges its diaspora a flat 2 per cent, a levy the UN Security Council condemned in a 2011 resolution; in most countries citizenship has no bearing on tax at all.

Which tax, used by about 175 countries, has the United States alone among OECD members never adopted?

Value-added tax was first put into practice in 1954 by the French official Maurice Lauré; American states and cities collect sales taxes at the till instead.

Which 1978 California ballot measure, championed by Howard Jarvis, capped property taxes at 1% of assessed value?

Proposition 13 presaged a 'taxpayer revolt' across the country, and it also made any state tax increase need a two-thirds majority in California's legislature.

Which comedian plays Harold Crick, an IRS agent who starts hearing a narrator, in the film 'Stranger than Fiction'?

Will Ferrell's taxman lives a solitary, strictly scheduled life until the voice, seemingly reading from a novel about him, declares that he will soon die.

Which unfinished David Foster Wallace novel, published in 2011, follows IRS employees in Peoria, Illinois?

The Pale King was one of three finalists for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in a year when the board gave no award; Wallace had died before completing it.

Which of the twelve apostles does the New Testament describe as a tax collector called by Jesus in Capernaum?

Matthew was sitting at the 'receipt of custom' when the call came, and the Gospels of Mark and Luke tell the same story about a collector they name Levi.

Which American sports league's head office gave up its federal tax-exempt status in 2015 after public criticism?

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called the status a 'distraction' in a letter to club owners, complaining that its effects had been mischaracterised again and again.

The IRS manual makes an audit mandatory every year for the individual tax returns of which two officeholders?

President and vice president get no say in the matter: the agency's own manual orders the examinations, in a section that also covers returns from officials' blind trusts.

Which phrase for escaping punishment comes from an old word for a tax or payment that someone avoided?

Scot-free has nothing to do with Scotland: a 'scot' was a medieval tax or payment, and a person who escaped paying it got off without cost.

Which tax break for low-paid workers was proposed by Senator Russell Long and signed into law by Gerald Ford in 1975?

Earned Income Tax Credit payments have grown into one of the largest anti-poverty tools in the United States, designed above all to promote and support work.

Which federal tax grew out of a 1969 revelation that 155 high-income households had paid no income tax at all?

Alternative minimum tax began as a net for a few rich households, but inflation and cuts in ordinary rates later pulled in many more taxpayers.

Which Midwestern state passed the first modern state income tax in 1911, two years before the federal one?

Wisconsin's tax came into effect in 1912 and raised money so successfully that, together with the new federal levy, it prompted other states to imitate it.

Sending the IRS Form 4868 by the spring deadline gives an individual taxpayer extra time to do what?

File the return is all the extra time covers; the IRS spells out that an extension to file is not an extension to pay, so any money owed remains due in spring.