As Tax Day approaches, many people are procrastinating on filing their tax returns. Fortunately, online filing makes it fast and easy, and even if you wait until the last minute, you can do so from the comfort of your home. But on Tax Day in decades past, taxpayers headed to the post office at the last minute and lined up in droves, as you can see 1940s-era Hoosiers doing in the photo below.
Taxpayers also used to wait in traffic to hand their returns over to postal workers, who stayed out on the streets until midnight collecting paperwork.
Here are some other tax filing fun facts:
- The very first Tax Day in America was on March 1, 1914.
- The IRS put legendary mobster Al Capone behind bars, finding that he never filed a tax return and charging him with 22 counts of income tax evasion.
- After the IRS seized most of his assets due to his accountants’ malfeasance, Willie Nelson released a greatest hits solo acoustic album called The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories? to pay off his tax debts.
- New Mexico exempts residents from filing and paying income taxes when they turn 100 years old.
- The Rhode Island form for an individual income tax return features emoticons — a frowny face on the “total amount due” line and a smiley face on the “amount overpaid” line.
If you’re having trouble with your taxes, don’t feel bad. Even legendary genius Albert Einstein once said, “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax,” which he confessed to longtime friend and accountant Leo Mattersdorf, who prepared Einstein’s yearly tax return.
For those who prefer to turn to professional tax preparers, the IRS established walk-in Tax Assistance Centers in the early 1950s.
We’ve come a long way in the history of Tax Day. Best wishes this year, and let us know if we can help!