please empty your brain below
One correction, (unless I'm missing a much broader satirical undertone...) the two extra Roman months were July (after Julius Caesar) and Augustus (after Emperor Augustus), rather than January and February.
July and August were only (well-known) renamed months; January and February were indeed the actual additional ones!
Happy New Year.
Also even today land charges such as maintenance are paid on the quarter days of which 25/3 is the first.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
nothing new there then
I highly recommend never using the word 'surely' in a comment.
https://www.irishtimes.com/293941
However, it hangs around as a ghost in one area - legally leave allocation years are April 1st-March 31st still when calculations are done for redundancy purposes; no business I have ever encountered actually works that way though.
See Pepys Diary -- for 31 Dec 1661: "So home, and after supper, and my barber had trimmed me, I sat down to end my journell for this year, and my condition at this time, by God’s blessing, is thus: ... "
When did leap days fall in the old-style calendar, when February was the last month of year Y-1 rather than the second of year Y ?
1st January had a religious excuse for celebration, Christmas in some centuries being a solemn time, in contrast to the exchange of gifts on the 1st January Feast of the Circumcision.
> In 1800, which was the first century year not to be a leap year, the Exchequer nudged the [tax year] start date ahead one more day.
I reckon the tax year skipping a day in 1800 is a myth; or else better understood as anticipating the 1800 non-leap rather than changing with it. Adding on the 11 lost days indeed takes old New Year’s Day to 5th April not 6th April but the income tax year seems always to have begun on 6th April. Perhaps they were too busy celebrating on the day itself to start afresh. The original income tax act of 9th January 1799 unhelpfully refers to the year from “from the Fifth Day of April One thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, until the Fifth Day of April One thousand eight hundred; and every subsequent Assessment shall be made for One Year, from the Fifth Day of April yearly”. This makes sense if “from” here has the old sense of “from the end of” (which is why amendments in parliamentary motions still refer to “from” in the exclusive sense). Until well into the 19th century, public accounts of various kinds were drawn up to all manner of annual dates, so it’s plausible that 5th April seemed as good a day to end on as to start, a bit like an advent calendar might include 25th December. Hence, at risk of being proven wrong by an earlier (pre-income tax) Act, I think that there was never an official tax year in Britain other than one as now, from 6th April until 5th April inclusive, Lady Day notwithstanding.
@ Gregg: Read on into General Tables I and II annexed to the same Act, and there are references to the year 8500. But who knows when Brexit day will yet end up.
@ Timbo: Leap years went by the Julian calendar beginning on 1st January, though the leap day was notionally inserted after 24th February even though the month continued until 29th.
Is that baptism recorded as 23 Feb 1674 supposed to be 1673-4 or 1674-5?
America managed to switch its tax year to coincide with the calendar year, so why can't we?
Trying to marry the 2 different systems into one in order to do my taxes when I lived in America, was a pain to be beheld!!
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