Taxpayers get extra days to file returns in 2023
WASHINGTON – Every year taxpayers are focused on April 15 as the deadline to file their federal income tax returns. But taxpayers get a few extra days to finish filling out their returns this year.
Deadline falls on Tuesday, April 18, 2023
That’s because 2023 is a year when the deadline is adjusted to compensate for weekends and a holiday in Washington that shutters federal offices. This year, the deadline for filing tax returns falls on Tuesday, April 18, 2023 — the latest date on which the deadline can land.
Why did the tax deadline change?
Here’s why: The federal government established April 15 as the deadline for filing personal income tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service in 1955. That date holds so long as the 15th falls on a Monday through Thursday. But the deadline is adjusted if April 15 falls on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
For starters, if April 15 is on the weekend, tax filing deadline day moves to the next available workday. But that doesn’t always mean Monday.
That’s because April 16 is Emancipation Day in Washington, a holiday that commemorates the date in 1862 that the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act became law. That law freed 3,100 people from slavery, reimbursed those who had legally owned them and offered the newly freed women and men money to emigrate.
Federal offices in Washington close in observance of the holiday. If it falls on the weekend, then the holiday is observed on the nearest workday. If April 15 is a Friday, then Emancipation Day would fall on a Saturday and be observed on Friday. This year, April 15 falls on a Saturday. Emancipation Day is on a Sunday and will be observed on Monday. That’s why the tax deadline this year is delayed until Tuesday, April 18, the first available workday.
For many, that same deadline applies for state and local tax returns that often are tied to figures in the federal 1040 forms. This year people in most of California and parts of Alabama and Georgia were granted six extra months to file if their community was designated as a disaster area by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The filing deadline in those communities is Oct. 16.
Beginning next year, the extra days will be gone for a while. Filing deadline for 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027 will land on April 15.
– Robert Higgs
(Robert Higgs is Retired Senior Fellow in Political Economy, Founding Editor and former Editor at Large of the Independent Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.)
