April 15th - a Day of Dread for Most Americans

April 15^th is fast approaching. While that date may not mean a lot to most of the world, it has a significant role in the calendar checking routine of Americans. April 15^th is the last day to submit your tax returns for the previous year. Actually, this year the filing deadline has been extended to April 17^th as April 15^th falls on a Sunday and April 16^th is Emancipation Day, a legal holiday in the District of Columbia.

While most Americans do their duty early because they are expecting a refund, many Americans hold off to the last possible minute to postmark their returns to avoid having to part with their hard earned money. The United States Post Office has even made it a habit to keep larger offices open until midnight of the filing day to accommodate the last minute filers. Why do we wait till the last minute to file? Why so the words IRS and Internal Revenue Service make every Red Blooded American cringe? To answer these questions, let us start by looking at the history of the Internal Revenue Service.

According to the Internal Revenue Service website:

"The roots of IRS go back to the Civil War when President Lincoln and Congress, in 1862, created the position of commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacted an income tax to pay war expenses. The income tax was repealed 10 years later. Congress revived the income tax in 1894, but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional the following year."

The decision of the Supreme Court held up for almost twenty years, until finally the government pushed through the 16^th Amendment. Up until that time most of the taxes that were collected were indirect taxes and not applicable to everyone, but the 16^th Amendment made all income, regardless of the source, taxable.