MOUNT VERNON — Mickey Bechard was wrapping up a “man weekend” with a sandwich and a beer at the Olde Post Office Cafe Sunday, a little smug about a duty well done.

Sitting across from his brother, Bart, he announced he was able to enjoy his man weekend – poker on Friday, golf on Saturday and fishing on Sunday – because he’d long since filed his taxes.

Katrina Bouchard, of Clinton, fishes on Sunday in Mount Vernon with her son, Brysen, 5, and their friend, Mike Savage, also of Clinton. Both adults said they have filed their taxes already. Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal

This year, thanks to the confluence of two holidays, the deadline for Maine residents to file federal income taxes is Tuesday, April 19. Emancipation Day fell on April 15 this year. Because it’s a legal public holiday in Washington, D.C., it gets precedence over the tax filing deadline, and it pushed the deadline to Monday. Patriot’s Day is observed Monday in Maine and Massachusetts. Offices of the Internal Revenue Service in those two states will be closed on Monday, which gives filers another day because hand-delivery is one of the acceptable modes of filing them.

The due date for Maine state income tax returns was April 15.

As of April 8, the IRS had received 107,452,000 returns and had processed 104,527,000 of them. With little more than a week to go before this year’s extended deadline, it reports that both those numbers are 3 percent or more lower than they were for the same time period a year ago.

Whether Mickey Bechard, a salesman, thinks he might owe or get money back, he generally does them in February. “I like to get it out of the way,” he said, “so when I want to go fishing, I can.” Apparently, he’s not a man to procrastinate, because he took advantage of a warm spell in March to rake and thatch his lawn at home in Augusta, again, so he could go fishing whenever he wants. Also, his taxes don’t tend to be very complicated and he doesn’t have many business expenses to claim.

Bart Bechard’s taxes are also done, because his wife isn’t a procrastinator.

“She did them a month ago online,” he said. She has done them just as long as he can remember, and it’s clear he has little desire to change the order of things. “We’ll be getting some money back,” he said. The refund comes in handy when they’ve overspent at Christmas, or when they plan to take a trip, as they will do in the near future.

That leads to a bit of a lecture from Mickey to Bart, who is also a salesman, about letting the federal government use his money for free.

Across the street from the cafe, John K. Jones took advantage of Sunday’s fine weather to get some work done. He slid out from under his pickup, showing no external signs of tax-induced stress. As the owner of a small business, he said he’s been sending his taxes out to be done for a number of years, largely because of the complicated nature of some of the tax schedules.

“I used to do my own taxes,” Jones said, “but it feels safer to have them done by someone else.”

Katrina Bouchard is an early filer. The Clinton woman, out for a day of fishing with her son, Brysen, and with Mike Savage, also of Clinton, said because of her son, she qualifies for the Earned Income Tax Credit, a benefit for working people with low to moderate incomes, particularly those with children. She baited her son’s hook and turned him back to Minnehonk Lake, where Brysen and Savage were trying their luck.

Savage, she noted, did his taxes last Saturday, because, she suggested, he’s a procrastinator.

As he dropped his own line in the lake, Savage painted a slightly different picture. “I remodel Rite Aids,” he said, “and I work nights. So if anything’s going to get done, it’s got to get done on my day off.”

He has never owed money, he said, and he doesn’t think if he did owe, it would change the timing of his filing.

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