It’s Tax Day in America. On the off chance that you have yet to file, there’s still time to get your paperwork in by tonight’s deadline. Need an extension? Here are some details on how to make that happen:
When Is the 2025 Tax Deadline, How Can You Get an Extension? | TIME
It may also be comforting to know that taxes have been with us for a long, long time. Here’s a bit of ancient history on that subject.
The World’s Earliest Evidence of Taxation
What remains today, such as stone inscriptions, clay tablets and bamboo records, tells a story far beyond administration. These tax relics reveal how early states governed, what they valued and how they balanced power with the burden on taxpayers. From Sumer to China, civilizations devised ingenious, and sometimes bizarre, ways to track, collect and enforce taxes, leaving behind vivid clues of how they funded their ambitions—and proved that even in the Bronze Age, nothing was certain but death and taxes.
(And given the timeframes involved, I’m going to give this round to taxes.)
Taxes can hurt but they do have benefits. And once you’ve sent off your paperwork, check out these sweet Tax Day food deals 2025.
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J.R. Johnson 
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