Is tax day literally killing us? A new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that traffic fatalities rise an average of 6 percent on tax day, compared to similar days. That makes it about as deadly as Super Bowl Sunday, another day of abnormal road carnage.
A drive-by tax return drop-off on April 15, 2010, in Pasadena, Calif. (Damian Dovarganes - Associated Press) The paper sifts through a few hypotheses: Stress is the leading suspect, as polls have found that tax day is the most stressful day of the year. Increased alcohol consumption, a major factor in Super Bowl accidents, seems like an unlikely culprit here, since nighttime road fatalities don’t go up on tax day. “Additional reasons,” the researchers write, “might include sleep deprivation, inadvertent inattention, and less tolerance of hassles.” Surprisingly, the advent of electronic filing doesn’t seem to have improved matters — the surge of tax day fatalities is even higher in recent years than it was in the 1980s.
It’s unlikely that this is all just a statistical fluke: The researchers pored through a large database of fatalities from 1980-2009, looking at 19,541 cases all told, and compared road fatalities on tax day with those on the same day in the week before and after.
Alternatively, perhaps the spike in stress and road fatalities have something to do with the increasing complexity of the tax code? Len Burman, a tax expert at Syracuse University who flagged the study, has the appropriate wonky follow-up questions: “In light of these results, it would be interesting to compare the tax returns of those involved in traffic fatalities with those who survive tax day. Are the victims more likely to have filed a tax return at the deadline. If they filed at the last minute, are the decedents more likely to have a balance due, especially complicated returns, or questionable income or deduction items than filers who survive?”
Tax day this year falls on Tuesday, April 17, for those keeping track.
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Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to MSNBC and Bloomberg. His work focuses on domestic and economic policymaking, as well as the political system that’s constantly screwing it up. He really likes graphs, and is on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. E-mail him here.
Suzy Khimm covers the budget, economic policy, and financial regulatory reform. Before coming to Washington, she was based in Brazil and Southeast Asia, where she wrote for the Economist, Slate, and the Wall Street Journal Asia. Follow her on Twitter here, and email her here.
Sarah Kliff covers health policy, focusing on Medicare, Medicaid and the health reform law. She tries to fit in some reproductive health and education policy coverage, too, alongside an occasional hockey reference. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Politico, and the BBC. She is on Twitter and Facebook.
Brad Plumer is a reporter focusing on energy and environmental issues. He was previously an associate editor at The New Republic. Follow him on Twitter. Email him here.
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