DOVER — It’s not quite a tax-freedom day, but people who have yet to file their federal tax returns have a grace period this year.
Instead of midnight Friday, most federal individual tax returns for 2015 are due Monday.
The deadline moves when it falls on a legal holiday, Saturday or Sunday. While Friday is not an official holiday in the 50 states, it is in the District of Columbia, which will mark Emancipation Day one day in advance of the city’s official April 16 date.
The holiday celebrates when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act in 1862, freeing the more than 3,000 slaves held in Washington, D.C.
He later issued the more famous Emancipation Proclamation which freed on Jan. 1, 1863, slaves in the states in rebellion against the United States.
According to the IRS, any legal holiday celebrated in the District of Columbia on April 15 moves the tax deadline for the entire nation to the next business day, which is Monday this year.
But the deadline is Monday in only 48 states. Two states get an additional reprieve for official state holidays.
Taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts have until Tuesday to file their federal returns because those two states celebrate Patriots’ Day on the third Monday of April.
For the record, the holiday commemorates the 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord, not the NFL football team.
The deadline to file 2015 Delaware personal income tax returns is May 2.
That, too, is a change from the normal April 30 date.
April 30 falls on a Saturday this year, thereby pushing the deadline to the next business day: May 2.