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1? As anyone who now is unfortunate enough to make a so-called living knows, the IRS form isn’t quite as simple as it used to be. The 1040 is no easier to decipher than the Dead Sea Scrolls.
    Kevin Knopf, of the Department of the Treasury, was kind enough to send us transcripts of the hearings before the House Ways and Means Committee in 1953 pertaining to the revision of the Internal Revenue Service Code. Now we don’t necessarily expect the contents of all hearings in the legislature to match the Lincoln-Douglas debates in eloquence and passion, but we were a little surprised to hear the original impetus for the legislation cited by a sponsor of the 1954 IRS revision, the Honorable Charles E. Bennett of Florida, who argued for changing the due date from March 15 to April 15:
     
         The proposal to change the final return date from March 15 to April 15 was first called to my attention by the Florida Hotel Association. They advised that many taxpayers must cut their winter vacations short to return to their homes and to prepare their tax returns for filing before March 15. They pointed out that changing the deadline to April 15 would help their tourist trade as well as that of other winter tourist areas in the United States such as California, Arizona, Maine, and Vermont.
     
    This is why we changed the tax code? Probably not. A succession of witnesses before the House Ways and Means Committee—everybody from the Georgia Chamber of Commerce to the American Federation of Labor to the American Cotton Manufacturers Institute—argued for moving back the date of tax filing. In descending order of importance, here were their arguments.
     
         1. Taxpayers need the extra time to compile their records and fill out the tax forms.
     2. The IRS needs more time to process returns efficiently. If the date were moved back to April 15, the IRS could rely more on permanent employees rather than hiring temporary help during the crunch. Perhaps so many taxpayers wouldn’t file at the deadline date if they had an extra month.
     3. An extension would also ease the task of accountants and other tax preparers.
     4. It would make it easier for people who have to estimate their tax payments for the next year to make an accurate assessment.
     5. It would allow businesses who have audits at the end of the year time to concentrate on their IRS commitments.
     
    The 1954 bill passed without much opposition. The April 15 date has proved to be workable, but it is no panacea. Any fantasy that most taxpayers wouldn’t procrastinate until the last minute was quickly dispelled.
    This drives the IRS nuts, because most taxpayers receive refunds. The basis of the free-market economic system is supposed to be that people will act rationally in their economic self-interest. If this were true, taxpayers with refunds would file in January in order to get their money as fast as possible, since the IRS does not pay interest on money owed to the taxpayer.
    The IRS would love to find a way to even out its workload from January through April. In reality, most returns are filed either in late January and early February or right before the April 15 deadline. A 1977 internal study by the IRS, investigating changing the filing dates, said that “These peaks are so pronounced that Service Centers frequently have to furlough some temporary employees between the two workload peaks.”
    Before the code changed in 1954, the IRS experienced the same bimodal pattern—the only difference was that the second influx occurred in mid-March instead of mid-April. If the due date was extended a month, the second peak would probably occur in mid-May.
    The IRS has contemplated staggering the due dates for different taxpayers, but the potential problems are huge (e.g., employers would have to customize W-2s for employees; single filers who get married might end up with extra-short or extra-long tax years when they decided to file a joint