Why was Tax Day not April 15th this year?
No, it wasn’t just the IRS being nice to you and giving you the extra weekend to file your taxes in 2011. There was a real, albeit somewhat absurd, reason that the deadline to file taxes in 2011 was yesterday and not April 15.
Unless it’s a weekend or federal holiday, Tax Day will always be on April 15. This year, however, like a tree falling in an empty forest, a holiday happened upon us last Friday unbeknownst to most. In Washington D.C., they celebrated Emancipation Day, which marks the anniversary (officially April 16) of Lincoln signing the Compensated Emancipation Act which “was ‘for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia,’ freed 3,100 slaves in the District, making DC residents the ‘first freed’ by the federal government.”1
Wondering why you hadn’t stumbled on this fact in the past? The government didn’t recognize Emancipation Day as an official public holiday until 2005, and now that it fell on a Saturday, the holiday was moved up to Friday which meant your tax deadline got moved back until the next Monday.
Interesting fact: among the comments from the link below, a reader pointed out that Patriots’ Day actually fell on April 18, so Tax Day really should have been moved to April 19! Add a few more holidays, and soon taxes can be put off until the summer.
Read on:
WalletPop.com – Why Tax Day won’t be April 15 in 2011
- http://www.walletpop.com/2010/10/28/why-tax-day-wont-be-april-15-in-2011/ ↩
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