If you had just ripped a copy of, say, The Wailers' "Burnin'" but it was the Deluxe Edition, released in 2004, would you tag the album with its original release year (1973) or the reissue's release year (2004)?

Personally I tag them with the original release date. From a librarians standpoint I couldn't say. But it really comes down to what you prefer.

I would go with the original release date. If you ever want to put together music of the same period/year, you would look at the original release date of the album, not when the remastered CD was released.

Agreed.

Some apps support both a date field and an original year field.

Alternatively you could store one or the other in the comments and/or a custom tag dependent on the features of the app.

I store the original release year in the standard date tag field. Because of the same reasons that have already been mention, the old music won't show up together with new music. Besides I use the date tag field for sorting the albums and I want them to be ordered according to when the music was first made public and not when the specific release was.

The info about reissues I store in the standard album title tag field, because this is one of the main tag fields that every software displays. Therefore I can always see whether the album is the original CD release or the reissue. If I don't do it that way I would have to make the player display the extra tag field or else the same album will show up twice in my playlists and I can't see which one is which release.

PS: an additional catalog number tag field cannot hurt tho... every release should be 99% identifiable with this number, so when in doubt I can check this cat number in an online database like discogs.org.

I never tag with the re-release date, always use the original one. If you want, you could use something like ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE (self-explaining) and DATE for the reissue year. Also, you have to consider other things for the example you mention, like what name you'll use for ALBUM, "Burnin'" or "Burnin' (Deluxe Edition)". It's something very personal, but as I say I prefer the original release date in DATE for the reason Fandango mention. After all, what are The Wailers doing together with Green Day?

My way of naming the appendix varies a bit, but usually it's just "<album name> (<year of re-release> Reissue|Remaster)". When I don't know whether the re-issue was remastered I use "Reissue" and when I know it was remastered I suse "Remaster".

So for example "Surrealistic Pillow (2003 Remaster)" in the album title tag field and "1967" in the date tag field.

There's an obvious reason I put the re-issue date at the first place inside the brackets and why I put it in the name at all: in the directory of that artist all the issues of this album would sort in the order they have been published.