Wondering why all of this budget shutdown mishegoss is happening right now? Well, October 1 is technically New Year’s Day for the federal government’s finances. And apparently, Congress’s resolution wasn’t to pass a budget on time.

October 1 is the beginning of the federal government’s fiscal year, which will run 12 months through September 2026. But federal agencies aren’t the only organizations whose budget doesn’t work on the traditional January to December timeline — lots of private companies do it too.

There’s not a lot of partying for a federal fiscal new year. No ball drop from the top of the Congressional Budget Office, no Ryan Seacrest broadcast from the roof of the IRS.

University of Maryland federal budget expert Philip Joyce didn’t even stay up until midnight last night.

“It's not really much of a celebratory event, because we usually haven't done the things we need to do by the beginning of the fiscal year. So it's a little bit more of an opportunity to commemorate failure than it is success,” he said.

In 1974, Congress decided to push the beginning of the fiscal year back to October 1, to give it more time to deliver a budget.

Even though Congress has only met that October 1 deadline four times, Joyce said starting the fiscal new year on the actual calendar new year would be a bigger headache.

“If the fiscal year started on January 1, then it would be December when we were having all these sort of machinations around, you know, trying to approve the budget,” he said.

While they disagree on just about everything else, neither Republicans nor Democrats want to work during the holidays. Those holidays are when big box retailers do most of their business, which is why companies like Target and Walmart end their financial year January 31.

“They are capturing the revenues returns activity for that really busy period, and they kind of have the peace of mind to close the books at January 31st,” said Mike Bellin, a partner at accounting and consulting firm PwC.

Doing year-end financial results during the holiday rush is just too much work, so companies add a month of breathing room.

Even if a company wants to change its fiscal year, it might also have to change other aspects of the business — like its performance review schedule.

“There’s a lot more to think about outside of just financial reporting … tax, legal, operational matters, employee matters, that have to be considered. So it is pretty heavy lift,” Bellin said.

And private companies can’t postpone their budget deadlines as easily as Congress apparently can.