Why Is Tax Day April 15? By Jessica Sung  (FORTUNE Magazine) –
If the IRS has a hallmark, it's rigidity: A household head with
an income of $80,000 and no deductions owes the government
exactly $17,476 in taxes this year, and the dreaded filing day--
like it or not--is April 15. But how exactly did the IRS choose
that day?  Actually, Congress originally put tax day on the
calendar. When the 16th Amendment, which allows Congress to
institute the income tax, was adopted on Feb. 3, 1913, Congress
chose March 1--one year and a few dozen days later--as the
deadline for filing returns. Then, with the Revenue Act of 1918,
Congress inexplicably moved the date forward to March 15. The
next overhaul came in 1955, when buried between tax-code
revisions was yet another date change, this time to April 15.
According to an IRS spokesman, the move "spread out the peak
workload," but there's another explanation. Turns out that as
the income tax applied to more of the middle class, the
government had to issue more refunds. "Pus