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From Ask Yahoo. Until 1955, individual income tax returns were due on March 15, not April 15. Congress passed the Sixteenth Amendment to the Consitution, which allows for the implementation of personal income tax, on February 3, 1913, and chose March 1 of the following year as the filing deadline. The deadline was changed to March 15 in 1918, and, as we learned at Tax History Project, to April 15 in 1955. Moving back the date from the end of the tax year served two purposes -- it gave the IRS more time to handle the work and, more importantly, more time to hang on to your money before issuing you a refund.
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The library of congress offers this explanation. "April 15th has not always been the filing deadline. March 1st was the date specified by Congress in 1913, after the passage of the 16th amendment. In 1918 Congress pushed the date forward to March 15th, where it remained until the tax overhaul of 1954, when the date was again moved ahead to April 15th." http://www.loc.gov/rr/business/hottopic/irs_history.html An article in Fortune magazine also gave an explanation for the date being pushed out which included spreading out the workload and allowing for the government to hold onto money for a longer period. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002/04/15/321414/index.htm
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