For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about the intriguing psychology behind why we postpone filing our taxes.
Putting off doing your taxes until the last minute has been a cliche from the beginning — in 1954, on the very first time that U.S. federal and state income taxes came due on April 15, the New York Times assigned reporters to cover the predicted chaos of last-minute filers. The resulting lede: “Federal and state income tax collectors were pleasantly surprised yesterday. The expected last-minute deadline rush of those filing 1954 returns failed to materialize at any of the offices.”
Last-minute tax filing provides a classic case of procrastination’s self-defeating effects: there’s no upside, and for anyone waiting on a refund there’s a real financial cost to delay. Over the years psychologists of procrastination have proposed a broad catalog of character challenges that procrastinators might struggle against: they lack self-control, they’re disorganized, they’re overwhelmed, neurotic, depressed.