Tax Day
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This Tax Day trivia quiz has 94 free questions with answers and covers the April 15 deadline and how it got there, from Lincoln's Civil War income tax and the Sixteenth Amendment to Form 1040, e-filing, Emancipation Day extensions and the pandemic postponements. Then it goes wider: Al Capone, Wesley Snipes and Leona Helmsley's little people; the Boston Tea Party and Stamp Act; England's window and hat taxes, Peter the Great's beard tax, Gandhi's Salt March and Lady Godiva; and modern oddities like the jock tax, Denmark's fat tax and the tampon tax. It works as an office icebreaker on filing day or as a history round for a trivia night. The first questions are easy; the last few will stretch accountants. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 94 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Filing Form 4868 for an automatic extension moves the federal return deadline to the 15th of which month?
October
October: the extra six months cover the paperwork only, because any tax owed is still due on the original April date.
Q 02Which president signed the 1913 law that brought back the federal income tax?
Woodrow Wilson
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.
Q 03Which amendment, ratified in 1913, let Congress tax incomes without apportioning by state population?
Sixteenth
The Sixteenth Amendment was put forward in 1909 by conservatives who expected the states to reject it; instead one legislature after another ratified it.
Q 04Which 1895 Supreme Court case struck down the federal income tax?
Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust
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.
Q 05The first US federal income tax was introduced to fund what?
The Civil War
The Civil War: Congress passed the tax in August 1861 to help pay for the fighting, then repealed it about a decade later.
Q 06Which 1794 tax uprising did President Washington call out the militia to end?
Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion melted away without a battle once the militia marched west; two men were convicted of treason and Washington pardoned both.
Q 07The IRS traces its origin to the Office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue, created in which year?
1862
The wartime income tax funded over a fifth of the Union's war costs before it lapsed a decade later.
Q 08Which two simplified versions of the main individual tax return were dropped for tax year 2018?
1040-A and 1040-EZ
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.
Q 09Limited electronic filing of US tax returns first became possible in which year?
1986
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.
Q 10Tax Day is pushed back when April 15 collides with which Washington, DC holiday?
Emancipation Day
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.
Q 11Which New England holiday has occasionally given Maine and Massachusetts filers an extra day?
Patriots' 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.
Q 12Which Treasury Secretary announced in March 2020 that Tax Day would move from April 15 to July 15?
Steven Mnuchin
Steven Mnuchin said Tax Day was moving 'at President Trump's direction', giving every filer three extra months during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Q 13Al Capone was finally jailed in 1931 for what crime?
Tax evasion
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.
Q 21Who invented 'Tax Freedom Day' in 1948?
Businessman Dallas Hostetler
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.
Q 22The tea dumped at the Boston Tea Party belonged to which company?
East India
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.
Q 23Britain's Stamp Act of 1765 taxed which colonial goods?
Printed paper and playing cards
Q 14Al Capone was moved from Atlanta in 1934 to which newly opened federal prison?
Alcatraz
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.
Q 15Actor Wesley Snipes was convicted in 2008 of what tax offence?
Willful failure to file returns
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.
Q 16Hotelier Leona Helmsley was reported to have said that only whom pay taxes?
The little people
'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.
Q 17Leona Helmsley's will left a $12 million trust to which pet?
Her dog
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.
Q 18Benjamin Franklin wrote that 'nothing is certain except death and taxes' while judging how long what would last?
The newly established Constitution
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.'
Q 19The top US income tax rate peaked at 94% during which war?
World War II
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.
Q 20Which of these states collects no state income tax on wages?
Texas
Texas levies no personal income tax, and in 2019 its voters went further and wrote a ban on one into the state constitution.
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.
Q 24From 1696 England taxed homes by counting which feature, a levy long blamed for bricked-up walls?
Windows
Windows were taxed until 1851, when the levy was repealed after protests from campaigners who called it a tax on 'light and air'.
Q 25Which Russian ruler introduced a beard tax in 1698 to westernise his subjects?
Peter the Great
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.
Q 26Gandhi's 1930 march to Dandi defied a British monopoly and tax on which everyday staple?
Salt
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.
Q 27Legend says Lady Godiva rode naked through which English city to win a tax cut for its people?
Coventry
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.
Q 28Which famous inscribed slab records a 196 BC decree cutting taxes for Egypt's temples and priests?
Rosetta Stone
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.
Q 29Britain's hat tax of 1784-1811 reserved the death penalty for what?
Forging hat-tax stamps
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'.
Q 30Which country introduced a pioneering 'fat tax' on saturated fat in 2011, only to drop it about a year later?
Denmark
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.