When Do You File A Tax Return?

The first known income tax that Americans were legally required to pay was enacted in the 1860s, during the time Abraham Lincoln was a President. The Civil War was becoming really expensive to fund, and the President and Congress created the Commissioner of Revenue and endorsed a law requesting that citizens pay for income tax.

Initially, the deadline for completing and filing your income tax was not April 15th.  At first, it was set for March 1st.  Then, during 1918, Congress extended the date to March 15th.  After that, in the great overhaul of 1954, the date was again moved forward to April 15th, and up until today, this tax cutoff date has not changed.  However, it has only been set this way for a little over fifty years.  That's not really a long time, in historical terms, and there may be the possibility that it could be changed again. 

If you are an individual tax payer, you are required to file either a tax return or an extension of time to file (Form 4868) by April 15th.  Corporate and other legal entities are required to file their tax come return by March 15th, and if they don’t, they also are required to file a tax extension of time to file.  What this extension doesn't do, is to extend the amount of time you have to pay any taxes owed to the government.  Therefore, if you are not able to gather up your personal or business financial information on time, and have no reasonable estimate with regards to the amount of tax you might owe, you could expect to pay some type of penalty. 

In the years after World War II, the burden of tax responsibility was shared fairly equally by the corporate world and the individual tax payer.  Nowadays, however, the shift has been toward more responsibility on the part of the people, and less on the business backs.  To demonstrate how special interests have begun to overtake American politics, throughout 1867, public opinion was so strong, and the protest of the general public so loud, that the President and Congress had to repeal the income tax law, and from 1868 until 1913 almost all of the revenue for government operation came from the sale of liquor, beer, wine, and tobacco.   

A very interesting time during the formation and eventual taxation of America occurred in 1918.  Until that point in time, most of the revenue for government funding came from alcoholic beverage sales.  In 1919, Congress passed an amendment to the Constitution that made it illegal to produce or sell alcohol.  This was the 18th Amendment.  But, what would replace the revenue?  American income tax was the projected solution, and we've been paying ever since.  Even though during the great years known as Prohibition, a lot of "revenue agents" spent their days tracking down "moon shiners" not tax evaders, the American citizen, the individual taxpayer took on the heavy load of supporting government revenue, and it has become heavier with each passing year. 

Then, during 1942, the Revenue Act of 1942 was passed and the New Deal Period started.  Since that point in time, government control, power, and expenditures has been continually increasing at a phenomenal rate, and today the American taxpayer helps a trillion dollar giant referred as the United States government.  This ravenous beast eats more than 10% of our earned income every year, and if the Social Security Administration has their way, will continue consuming even more of our weekly earnings.  We can basically anticipate no other relief in view. 

Presently, all of the tax regulations for this country are the responsibility of the Internal Revenue Service, and there are four major separations of this government office: the Wage and Investment, Small/Business Self-Employed, the Large and Midsize Business and the Tax Exempt and Government Entities. Each one of the divisions has responsibilities as they pertain to their individual specialty.