8 ms·

How the lore of New Year defeated the law of New Year

114 points by quickfox 2y ago

cjs_ac 2y ago
In the UK, the financial year ends on 5 April. This is Lady Day (25 March) plus the 11 days lost in the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Most US annual taxes are due April 15; is that related somehow?
  - wiredfool 2y ago
    No, that’s the tax year, not when it’s due. The standard US tax year is Jan 1 -> Dec 31.
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    US tax return forms/documentation is due April 15, but the taxes needed to be paid by the previous Jan 15 (minus a several month reprieve for taxes on income that exceeds your previous year's income) on April 15 the taxes on your first quarter of the current year are also due.
    - mmooss 2y ago
      Jan 15 is quarterly estimates for those who have them. Annual taxes are due April 15 (as well as Q1 estimates).
      - ghaff 2y ago
        I'm not sure of the history of April 15 specifically, but April or so is probably about the earliest you can easily get all your reconciled financial statements if your finances are at all complex and put together your tax filings. I don't even get a W-2 until late January and I have at least one statement that tends to trail into early March.
      - fsckboy 2y ago
        You are wrong, I was right. the January 15 quarterly estimate is for the last quarter of the previous year, let's call it 2024. April 15 2025 is when you file your tax return for the 2024, but you HAVE ALREADY PAID OR HAD WITHHELD YOUR TAXES FOR 2024. If you have earned more wages in 2024 than you did in 2023, you will only have to have paid the same as you ultimately owed in 2023 for 2024, and in that case you will have the chance to cough up the remainder on April 15, 2025, but that is nowhere near close to saying that is when you 2025 taxes are "due" as you are claiming.
- postingawayonhn 2y ago
  It seems awkward not ending on the last day of the month. In NEw Zealand it's close, the FY ends on 31 March.
  - jsmith99 2y ago
    In practice most people treat the UK tax year as ending 31 March - this is sufficiently close and actually explicitly permitted.
    - ralferoo 2y ago
      Not at all. There is no explicit permission to do so, as you would very quickly find out if you have already filled your ISA by 31st March and pay into it again between 1st and 4th April. In practice, the only reason people can consider the tax year as ending on 31st March is because most people have no significant taxable events occurring between then and 5th April. But if you sell shares that put you over the capital gains threshold, receive dividends, pay into your ISA or even receive interest from your bank account in those few days, these are all considered taxable events. For most people they are a non-issue due to the tax-free allowances on all these classes of income, but if you exceed the tax-free allowance for any of them, it's important you apportion them to the correct year.
- kybernetikos 2y ago
  I believe IBM pay its UK workers on the 6th because at one point they wanted to move pay day to as early as possible without paying more than 12 times in a tax year. This means that the day lots of people get paid in 2025 has been set by a deliberate simplification Julius Ceasar made in 46BC. That's technical debt that lasted a long time.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Looking at the names of the months, September is the 9th month and October is the 10th? December is the 12th? Those names changed to those numberings roughly about the same time, and is also tech debt.
    - kridsdale1 2y ago
      I just looked that up (in 4o with Search), and it happened long before ceasar made the Julian calendar: “Your observation about the misalignment between the numerical prefixes of the later months and their positions in the calendar is astute. This discrepancy arises from the evolution of the Roman calendar over time. Original Roman Calendar: • Structure: The early Roman calendar, traditionally attributed to Romulus, the founder of Rome, comprised 10 months totaling 304 days. The year began in March (Martius) and concluded in December (December), followed by a winter period that was not assigned to any month. • Month Names and Numerical Order: 1. Martius (March) 2. Aprilis (April) 3. Maius (May) 4. Junius (June) 5. Quintilis (fifth month) 6. Sextilis (sixth month) 7. September (seventh month) 8. October (eighth month) 9. November (ninth month) 10. December (tenth month) Introduction of January and February: • Reforms by Numa Pompilius: To align the calendar more accurately with the lunar year, the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, is traditionally credited with adding two months: • Januarius (January) • Februarius (February) • Impact on Month Positions: These additions shifted the original months from their positions, making September the ninth month, October the tenth, and so forth. Despite this shift, the original names were retained, leading to the current numerical misalignment. Renaming of Quintilis and Sextilis: • Quintilis to July: In 44 BCE, following the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Roman Senate renamed Quintilis to July in his honor, as it was the month of his birth. • Sextilis to August: Later, in 8 BCE, the month Sextilis was renamed August to honor Emperor Augustus. To match the length of July, a day was added to August, resulting in both months having 31 days. Clarifying Misconceptions: • Insertion of Months: The renaming of Quintilis and Sextilis did not involve the insertion of new months but rather the renaming of existing ones. Therefore, this action did not disrupt the numerical sequence of the months. • Retention of Numerical Names: The numerical names for September through December persisted even after calendar reforms and the renaming of months. This retention is why there is a discrepancy between their names and their positions in the modern calendar. Conclusion: The misalignment between the numerical prefixes of the months September through December and their positions in the calendar results from historical reforms and the retention of traditional names despite changes in the calendar’s structure. The renaming of months to honor Julius Caesar and Augustus did not disrupt the numerical naming convention; instead, it was the earlier addition of January and February that shifted the original positions of the months, leading to the current nomenclature.”
bee_rider 2y ago
It is absurd and stupid to have the beginning year not also be the beginning of a month. (Same for weeks to months, things a dumb feature of our calendar). But December vs March is totally arbitrary, right?
- ghjfrdghibt 2y ago
  Personally I'd go with 13 months of 4 weeks each. The only issue I see would be if you were born on a Monday your birthday would always be on a Monday.
  - bawolff 2y ago
    And leap years get more complicated.
    - ghjfrdghibt 2y ago
      It's just another day isn't it?
      - KeplerBoy 2y ago
        Sure, but what weekday would it have? Would we have a repeated Sunday there?
        bee_rider 2y ago
        We’ll call it KeplerBoy day in your honor, a new unique day.
        KeplerBoy 2y ago
        I'd like Keplerday. Seems appropriate.
      - bawolff 2y ago
        Well if you want to keep the whole number of weeks thing, you are then doing a leap week every 7 years except for multiples of 28, or something like that. Or if you want to keep each week same number of days maybe a leap month. Of course none of this is unheard of. The jewish calendar adds a leap month every 19 years to keep in sync with both the moon and the sun. Or if you want to go in the other direction you could just have one day not part of any week (cotsworth calendar)
mmooss 2y ago
In Exodus 12:1-2, at the beginning of the section that decrees Passover, God also tells Moses and Aaron that the month of Passover is the first month of the year: The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. ..."
- stevetodd 2y ago
  March coincides with the first month of the Jewish calendar. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2164005/jewish/Nisan.htm https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2164005/jewis... It was also the first month of the Roman calendar until January and February were added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martius_(month) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martius_(month)
  - eru 2y ago
    In March, the month of war, is also when Romans mustered their citizen levy of troops.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - madcaptenor 2y ago
    There's a weird parallel between the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars. In both cases, the historic "new year" is in spring (Hebrew Nisan, Gregorian March), perhaps to coincide with planting? And in both cases intercalation happens right before that, at the end of the year - the Hebrew calendar duplicates Adar, the month before Nisan, and the Gregorian has an extra day of February. (Historically this was February 24 happening twice, not an additional day numbered 29, which is a whole other story.) But in both cases the year number increments at a different time - Hebrew Tishri in the fall, Gregorian January in the winter - so the intercalation appears to happen at some "random" moment within the year.
nyc111 2y ago
"And the problem was that people ignored what they were supposed to think, and carried on celebrating the new year on 1 January anyway, as they had done since time immemorial." "Time immemorial" is an exaggeration, right, as many commenters here gave contrary examples.
- dylan604 2y ago
  To a genZ, 1980 was time immemorial. It's definitely a relative term
- eru 2y ago
  Time immemorial is a specific legal term of art.
labster 2y ago
Tolkien also timed the end of the War of the Ring, and the start of the Fourth Age the following year, to March 25th. It’s a deliberate echo of the Annunciation — or in-universe context, a foreshadowing. https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/25_March https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/25_March
tzs 2y ago
A decent case can be made for March 1 as the start of the year. With March 1 as the start of the year the extra day in leap years then comes on the last day of the year. This makes dealing with leap years when calculating the day of the week from a date simpler. It also makes the names of September, October, November, and December make sense. Those names come from the Roman words for 7, 8, 9, and 10, which were the numbers of those months in the old Roman calendar which did start the year on March 1. The Romans switch the start to January sometime around 700 BCE giving us the current ridiculous situation where those months are two months later in the year than their names suggest.
- kgwgk 2y ago
  > The Romans switch the start to January sometime around 700 BCE That doesn’t look right.
  - tzs 2y ago
    Well, that’s what the internet told me. But checking again it is also telling me 45 BC and 153 BC. The site that gave me the 700 BC date said it was done by king Numa Pompilius. Wikipedia’s article on him says that Plutarch is the source for the claim Numa moved the new year to January. But Plutarch was writing around the 2nd century and Wikipedia says his writings about Numa give unique information on the Roman calendar which suggests that there aren’t other sources. Probably not worth trusting a single source that old writing about something 900 years older.
- wazoox 2y ago
  The change was made by Caesar's reform of calendar in 46BC. January first was the date of consular elections, and Romans didn't used year number ab urbe condita ("since the foundation of Rome") regularly in daily life, instead they called the years by the running consuls' names. Therefore it made more sense for Romans to start the year at January first.
  - kridsdale1 2y ago
    Sounds like the Japanese Emperor Era system.
wazoox 2y ago
The year begins on January 1st per Julius Caesar's calendar reform of 46BC, because in Rome the year was called by the name of the elected consuls, and consuls were elected on January first. So basically, up until this change it was confusing for the Romans to call the year by the current consuls' names, though actually the current year ran from March to March (starting at the equinox).
booglie 2y ago
Isn’t this still sort of a thing? The fiscal new year vs the calendar new year?
- cafard 2y ago
  I came here to say that. The US government's fiscal year runs October to September.
fifticon 2y ago
The article mentions parliament may rival doctor Who. However, the Eleven-day Empire appears in Doctor Who. That organisation has set up their base in a time loop consisting of those days that this law excluded from the official calendar. Thus, Dr Who very explicitly has matched this parlimentary act, I suppose.
karmonhardan 2y ago
Engaging with TFA's thesis: occasionally, it's correct for institutions to insist on law over lore. For one, that lore might be just as artificial or short-lived or "mistaken" (as much as these things can be) as anything seeking to replace it - as some comments have mentioned, the "customary" start of the year was itself imposed by Caesar amid a history of a March start. It might also be in society's best interests that cooler heads determine a particular course. The "lore" of the demihumanity of certain populations takes hold popularly, from time to time, for example. The law prevents, in the worst cases, slaughter (or builds parameters for punishment and future deterrence after the fact).

114 points by quickfox 2y ago

In the UK, the financial year ends on 5 April. This is Lady Day (25 March) plus the 11 days lost in the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.

mmooss 2y ago
Most US annual taxes are due April 15; is that related somehow?
- wiredfool 2y ago
  No, that’s the tax year, not when it’s due. The standard US tax year is Jan 1 -> Dec 31.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  US tax return forms/documentation is due April 15, but the taxes needed to be paid by the previous Jan 15 (minus a several month reprieve for taxes on income that exceeds your previous year's income) on April 15 the taxes on your first quarter of the current year are also due.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    Jan 15 is quarterly estimates for those who have them. Annual taxes are due April 15 (as well as Q1 estimates).
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I'm not sure of the history of April 15 specifically, but April or so is probably about the earliest you can easily get all your reconciled financial statements if your finances are at all complex and put together your tax filings. I don't even get a W-2 until late January and I have at least one statement that tends to trail into early March.
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      You are wrong, I was right. the January 15 quarterly estimate is for the last quarter of the previous year, let's call it 2024. April 15 2025 is when you file your tax return for the 2024, but you HAVE ALREADY PAID OR HAD WITHHELD YOUR TAXES FOR 2024. If you have earned more wages in 2024 than you did in 2023, you will only have to have paid the same as you ultimately owed in 2023 for 2024, and in that case you will have the chance to cough up the remainder on April 15, 2025, but that is nowhere near close to saying that is when you 2025 taxes are "due" as you are claiming.
postingawayonhn 2y ago
It seems awkward not ending on the last day of the month. In NEw Zealand it's close, the FY ends on 31 March.
- jsmith99 2y ago
  In practice most people treat the UK tax year as ending 31 March - this is sufficiently close and actually explicitly permitted.
  - ralferoo 2y ago
    Not at all. There is no explicit permission to do so, as you would very quickly find out if you have already filled your ISA by 31st March and pay into it again between 1st and 4th April. In practice, the only reason people can consider the tax year as ending on 31st March is because most people have no significant taxable events occurring between then and 5th April. But if you sell shares that put you over the capital gains threshold, receive dividends, pay into your ISA or even receive interest from your bank account in those few days, these are all considered taxable events. For most people they are a non-issue due to the tax-free allowances on all these classes of income, but if you exceed the tax-free allowance for any of them, it's important you apportion them to the correct year.
kybernetikos 2y ago
I believe IBM pay its UK workers on the 6th because at one point they wanted to move pay day to as early as possible without paying more than 12 times in a tax year. This means that the day lots of people get paid in 2025 has been set by a deliberate simplification Julius Ceasar made in 46BC. That's technical debt that lasted a long time.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Looking at the names of the months, September is the 9th month and October is the 10th? December is the 12th? Those names changed to those numberings roughly about the same time, and is also tech debt.
  - kridsdale1 2y ago
    I just looked that up (in 4o with Search), and it happened long before ceasar made the Julian calendar: “Your observation about the misalignment between the numerical prefixes of the later months and their positions in the calendar is astute. This discrepancy arises from the evolution of the Roman calendar over time. Original Roman Calendar: • Structure: The early Roman calendar, traditionally attributed to Romulus, the founder of Rome, comprised 10 months totaling 304 days. The year began in March (Martius) and concluded in December (December), followed by a winter period that was not assigned to any month. • Month Names and Numerical Order: 1. Martius (March) 2. Aprilis (April) 3. Maius (May) 4. Junius (June) 5. Quintilis (fifth month) 6. Sextilis (sixth month) 7. September (seventh month) 8. October (eighth month) 9. November (ninth month) 10. December (tenth month) Introduction of January and February: • Reforms by Numa Pompilius: To align the calendar more accurately with the lunar year, the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, is traditionally credited with adding two months: • Januarius (January) • Februarius (February) • Impact on Month Positions: These additions shifted the original months from their positions, making September the ninth month, October the tenth, and so forth. Despite this shift, the original names were retained, leading to the current numerical misalignment. Renaming of Quintilis and Sextilis: • Quintilis to July: In 44 BCE, following the assassination of Julius Caesar, the Roman Senate renamed Quintilis to July in his honor, as it was the month of his birth. • Sextilis to August: Later, in 8 BCE, the month Sextilis was renamed August to honor Emperor Augustus. To match the length of July, a day was added to August, resulting in both months having 31 days. Clarifying Misconceptions: • Insertion of Months: The renaming of Quintilis and Sextilis did not involve the insertion of new months but rather the renaming of existing ones. Therefore, this action did not disrupt the numerical sequence of the months. • Retention of Numerical Names: The numerical names for September through December persisted even after calendar reforms and the renaming of months. This retention is why there is a discrepancy between their names and their positions in the modern calendar. Conclusion: The misalignment between the numerical prefixes of the months September through December and their positions in the calendar results from historical reforms and the retention of traditional names despite changes in the calendar’s structure. The renaming of months to honor Julius Caesar and Augustus did not disrupt the numerical naming convention; instead, it was the earlier addition of January and February that shifted the original positions of the months, leading to the current nomenclature.”

bee_rider 2y ago

It is absurd and stupid to have the beginning year not also be the beginning of a month. (Same for weeks to months, things a dumb feature of our calendar). But December vs March is totally arbitrary, right?

ghjfrdghibt 2y ago
Personally I'd go with 13 months of 4 weeks each. The only issue I see would be if you were born on a Monday your birthday would always be on a Monday.
- bawolff 2y ago
  And leap years get more complicated.
  - ghjfrdghibt 2y ago
    It's just another day isn't it?
    - KeplerBoy 2y ago
      Sure, but what weekday would it have? Would we have a repeated Sunday there?
      - bee_rider 2y ago
        We’ll call it KeplerBoy day in your honor, a new unique day.
        KeplerBoy 2y ago
        I'd like Keplerday. Seems appropriate.
    - bawolff 2y ago
      Well if you want to keep the whole number of weeks thing, you are then doing a leap week every 7 years except for multiples of 28, or something like that. Or if you want to keep each week same number of days maybe a leap month. Of course none of this is unheard of. The jewish calendar adds a leap month every 19 years to keep in sync with both the moon and the sun. Or if you want to go in the other direction you could just have one day not part of any week (cotsworth calendar)

mmooss 2y ago

In Exodus 12:1-2, at the beginning of the section that decrees Passover, God also tells Moses and Aaron that the month of Passover is the first month of the year: The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. ..."

stevetodd 2y ago
March coincides with the first month of the Jewish calendar. https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2164005/jewish/Nisan.htm https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2164005/jewis... It was also the first month of the Roman calendar until January and February were added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martius_(month) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martius_(month)
- eru 2y ago
  In March, the month of war, is also when Romans mustered their citizen levy of troops.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- madcaptenor 2y ago
  There's a weird parallel between the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars. In both cases, the historic "new year" is in spring (Hebrew Nisan, Gregorian March), perhaps to coincide with planting? And in both cases intercalation happens right before that, at the end of the year - the Hebrew calendar duplicates Adar, the month before Nisan, and the Gregorian has an extra day of February. (Historically this was February 24 happening twice, not an additional day numbered 29, which is a whole other story.) But in both cases the year number increments at a different time - Hebrew Tishri in the fall, Gregorian January in the winter - so the intercalation appears to happen at some "random" moment within the year.

nyc111 2y ago

"And the problem was that people ignored what they were supposed to think, and carried on celebrating the new year on 1 January anyway, as they had done since time immemorial." "Time immemorial" is an exaggeration, right, as many commenters here gave contrary examples.

dylan604 2y ago
To a genZ, 1980 was time immemorial. It's definitely a relative term
eru 2y ago
Time immemorial is a specific legal term of art.

labster 2y ago

Tolkien also timed the end of the War of the Ring, and the start of the Fourth Age the following year, to March 25th. It’s a deliberate echo of the Annunciation — or in-universe context, a foreshadowing. https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/25_March https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/25_March

tzs 2y ago

A decent case can be made for March 1 as the start of the year. With March 1 as the start of the year the extra day in leap years then comes on the last day of the year. This makes dealing with leap years when calculating the day of the week from a date simpler. It also makes the names of September, October, November, and December make sense. Those names come from the Roman words for 7, 8, 9, and 10, which were the numbers of those months in the old Roman calendar which did start the year on March 1. The Romans switch the start to January sometime around 700 BCE giving us the current ridiculous situation where those months are two months later in the year than their names suggest.

kgwgk 2y ago
> The Romans switch the start to January sometime around 700 BCE That doesn’t look right.
- tzs 2y ago
  Well, that’s what the internet told me. But checking again it is also telling me 45 BC and 153 BC. The site that gave me the 700 BC date said it was done by king Numa Pompilius. Wikipedia’s article on him says that Plutarch is the source for the claim Numa moved the new year to January. But Plutarch was writing around the 2nd century and Wikipedia says his writings about Numa give unique information on the Roman calendar which suggests that there aren’t other sources. Probably not worth trusting a single source that old writing about something 900 years older.
wazoox 2y ago
The change was made by Caesar's reform of calendar in 46BC. January first was the date of consular elections, and Romans didn't used year number ab urbe condita ("since the foundation of Rome") regularly in daily life, instead they called the years by the running consuls' names. Therefore it made more sense for Romans to start the year at January first.
- kridsdale1 2y ago
  Sounds like the Japanese Emperor Era system.

wazoox 2y ago

The year begins on January 1st per Julius Caesar's calendar reform of 46BC, because in Rome the year was called by the name of the elected consuls, and consuls were elected on January first. So basically, up until this change it was confusing for the Romans to call the year by the current consuls' names, though actually the current year ran from March to March (starting at the equinox).

booglie 2y ago

Isn’t this still sort of a thing? The fiscal new year vs the calendar new year?

cafard 2y ago
I came here to say that. The US government's fiscal year runs October to September.

fifticon 2y ago

The article mentions parliament may rival doctor Who. However, the Eleven-day Empire appears in Doctor Who. That organisation has set up their base in a time loop consisting of those days that this law excluded from the official calendar. Thus, Dr Who very explicitly has matched this parlimentary act, I suppose.

karmonhardan 2y ago

Engaging with TFA's thesis: occasionally, it's correct for institutions to insist on law over lore. For one, that lore might be just as artificial or short-lived or "mistaken" (as much as these things can be) as anything seeking to replace it - as some comments have mentioned, the "customary" start of the year was itself imposed by Caesar amid a history of a March start. It might also be in society's best interests that cooler heads determine a particular course. The "lore" of the demihumanity of certain populations takes hold popularly, from time to time, for example. The law prevents, in the worst cases, slaughter (or builds parameters for punishment and future deterrence after the fact).