The tax-year calendar is not as arbitrary as it seems, with a history that dates back to the ancient Roman and is connected to major calendar reforms across Europe.
As with Oscar Wilde, many a sagacious or witty aphorism is wrongly attributed to Benjamin Franklin. In a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy in 1789, he speculated on the longevity of the new American constitution, a concern that recent events may have shown was well-founded, by noting that ‘in this world…
