Although most Americans know that April 15 is Tax Day, they may not realize it’s not a firm deadline this year. Your taxes aren’t actually due until next week — thanks to a little-known D.C. law that is invigorating the nation’s capital to push for more independence.
This year, the deadline for filing taxes is being pushed back to Monday, April 18 to accommodate Emancipation Day, a holiday celebrated in Washington, D.C. that commemorates the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the city.
Emancipation Day is usually celebrated on April 16, which is the date that President Abraham Lincoln freed about 3,100 slaves in D.C. back in 1862. But that date falls on a Saturday this year. Emancipation Day is instead being marked on Friday, April 15 — which prompted the IRS to move back the official tax-filing deadline.
“When April 15 falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday, a return is considered timely filed if it is filed on the next succeeding day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday,” an IRS spokesman explained to the Washington Post last year. “The term ‘legal holiday’ includes a legal holiday observed in the District of Columbia.”
Though Emancipation Day isn’t known widely outside of the nation’s capital city, it has been commemorated in the District for more than a decade by now. The city government shuts down and some public schools close. There’s typically a citywide parade.
And this year, the holiday is taking on particular significance to the city because D.C. leaders are using it as an opportunity to push for greater autonomy in the District — where residents pay federal taxes but have no federal representation in Congress.
This Emancipation Day, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) is convening local leaders and civil rights activists to renew the push for expanded rights for D.C. residents. Bowser has characterized the lack of D.C. statehood, which prevents its elected officials from having a say in Congress and having control over the city’s own budget matters, as on ongoing voting rights injustice.
This dynamic plays out in very real ways in the District, which is home to an overwhelmingly Democratic electorate and many African Americans who have lived in the city for generations. Conservative members of Congress frequently intervene in the city’s local affairs — for instance, blocking D.C. from using its own funds to pay for low-income women’s abortions or to implement the legalization of marijuana — and characterize the city as too irresponsible to govern itself. One Florida Republican once suggested that D.C.’s frequent pushes for budget autonomy are analogous to a teenager acting out.
Now, according to the Washington Post, the District’s fed up leaders plan to take a significant stand for their independence.
Congress has historically granted permission for D.C. to spend its money, similar to the way that federal lawmakers appropriate funds for government agencies. But when D.C. sends its latest city budget to Congress, it won’t be asking for approval anymore. Instead, D.C. plans on moving forward with spending its own money, essentially daring Congress to take the extra step to intervene to stop it — which is a more difficult process than denying initial approval.
Residents are also marching to the capitol building for a D.C. Tax Day Protest on Friday morning, declaring that they’re protesting “our status as the last vestige of Taxation Without Representation on American soil and demonstrate to the nation that we are committed, unified, and determined to be treated as full and equal Americans.”
It’s not clear how Congress, which has stubbornly opposed efforts to grant D.C. statehood, will respond to the city’s budget move. But D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) plans on using the holiday to talk to her colleagues about the issue on the House floor. As she explained in a press release, “On Emancipation Day we look to the unfinished business of freedom here in the nation’s capital.”