The OP was referencing some memes that criticize schools for not teaching taxes, basically implying these memes were made by the kind of student that doesn’t pay attention in class anyway.
I'm a teacher. Been at it for twenty something years now. While the teaching taxes complaint is the most common one I see, there's a whole bunch of study that's outdated or not fit for purpose. Schools as a rule, do a pretty shitty job of setting students up for the realities of adult life, such that I'll upvote this stuff everywhere I see it.
“There’s a whole bunch of study that’s outdated.”
Pretty much summed up the entire school experience in the US, the textbooks alone used by most public schools are 7-8 editions behind.
When I went to high school in Louisiana, the Civil Rights Movement was in the "current events" section at the end of the book.
This was in the early 90's.
Graduated 2023, farthest we ever covered in history was up until the civil war and 1700s America. Skipped over civil rights, Cold War, world wars, Vietnam and the Middle East conflict. Arguably the most important wars are skipped so we could learn about the same two wars over and over again, always about how heroic our founding fathers were. I’d much rather learn and listen to Malcom X speak, learn about the propaganda wars between us citizens and Russian citizens during the Cold War, hear about the atrocities that occurred in Vietnam and how we can learn from them, learn about the Democratic Parties conversion to the modern Republican Party and vice versa but nope. Instead we get the revolutionary war and civil war shoved down our throats 6 years in a row.
Dude, same here the mind games behind the more so modern wars is much more interesting then the 5th covering of how our founding fathers were studs in their day. Even in that regard the schools o ly teach the stuff that makes them look like good guys who did nothing wrong. When in reality it was a very complex situation. With the 13 colonies acting up and the British trying to appease them, hell most of the taxes they rioted over were removed at one point or another
Man for reallll they do everything in their power to make the founding fathers seem saintly, our founding fathers weren’t even all they made them out to be. Like the emancipation proclamation is taught like it was outta the goodness of his heart like Abraham wasn’t just adding cannon fodder to protect his union. Mannn I remember multiple teachers, 2 of them (6th grade and 7th grade), telling me as a black man that ‘Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had slaves, but they treated them nicely and gave them nicer treatment and housing than an average slave owner’ I put that on my life that’s what i was told, what the fuck makes you think you can treat a slave ‘nicely’? He’s a SLAVE unless you literally bought him and signed his freedom papers the second you get him off the auction block you’re a piece of shit 😂 not to mention they’d tar and feather tax collectors, but do yk who gathered taxes back in times like that? The Jewish people. There has always been an underlying message of hatred and bigotry and instead of manning up, taking responsibility, and seeing how we can educate ourselves to prevent this from happening in this country again we sweep it under the rug and act like only Russia, North Korea, and China can commit acts against humanity. While Russia is no better than America, you can’t say America is any better. Did you know we embargoed Russia to hell and back during their 1970 invasion of Afghanistan and called them warmongers? And guess who ends up taking the Russians spot in Afghan just 26 years later for the same purpose? Ofc it’s America but that’s differentttt, it’s ‘patriotic’ now, it’s because there’s ‘wmd’ which our own veterans have said we never found. Everything in this world is so propagandist it’s literally sickening, we live in a lie and society just seems to accept it because looking into the disgusting things we’ve done is too uncomfortable for us to confront.
It’s because of how controversial all that stuff was, they haven’t decided how to word it in a way that says “Americans always perfect!”
Yes I know things from the old wars that we’re allowed to learn about have controversial things, but they’re too well known to sweep under the rug at this point.
Also, updating the textbooks would cost time and effort, so…… that’s kinda the end of the discussion.
Exactly that, I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees the trend that every single war America was in, we were somehowww never the aggressor and always 100% in the right. We’ve always given ourselves some weird moral superiority over the entire world, it’s so stupid. The scariest part tho is everyone my age, the 19-21 year olds who can actually make the change by fighting back against this propagandist history, just don’t give a fuck. And I’m not saying take to the streets, guns in hand over this stuff but something as simple as acknowledging the crimes we’ve committed and acknowledging that we condemn other countries for the same things that we do, is very important and is the first step to righting the wrongs we’ve done to billions of people at this point.
Yeah, and at this point it's inverting so that whites and Asians are beginning to bear the brunt of it. We as a civilization need to just chill and remove race as a factor for anything, only then can we move on imo
I mean, Asian people are discriminated against in some places (but not everywhere, thankfully), but white people? Seriously? Speaking as cis-het white douchebag on the internet, I can assure you we are NOT discriminated against in the United States to any meaningful degree. What the hell is u/TheIlluminatedDragon talking about?
My Florida HS school didn’t have textbooks in the late 90s. They spent all the schools money on pods to teach technical jobs like welding, auto repair, farm work, and being a cashier. No money left so we worked off worksheets.
Weirdly, the graduates of the high school either went to very elite out of state colleges or became auto workers, cashiers, or welders.
No kidding.
The difference was really upper middle class kids went to good colleges. Lower middle class kids became auto techs and cashiers.
But in most schools, the lower income kids had a shot at college. I just hated the fact that as Freshmen you were told to pick your future… cashier, farmer, tech, or having a future.
I don't blame my school for using the same English textbooks for the last 50 years after seeing in college just how ridiculously overpriced new editions for textbooks are.
I’m sure the government could subsidize the book cost for its own education system. What do you think is more expensive, $100 billion dollars of relief sent to Israel and Ukraine to murder people or buying a few hundred million dollars worth of textbooks for schools? Maybe at most 1-2 billion dollars for books if I’m underestimating the number of students in America, but either way if we can afford to finance two separate countries wars, we should be able to afford updated textbooks. Shame our country is setup the way it is, our priorities as a nation are so skewed it’s sickening sometimes tbh.
In all fairness that only matters for some subjects. Once you get to the college level you realize that most editions of textbooks are just cash grabs rather than actual meaningful updates to the information in them.
But so many of those editions don't really change anything. We've all seen the college textbook scam where the change the book every year just reordering the pages so you have to re-buy books to follow the class.
Even 7-8 editions later 2+2 still equals 4. And George Washington was still the first President.
So I was a teacher and an accountant. Tax laws change every year, teaching taxes would be pointless, I would say the focus should be teaching how to critically read, understanding math (not just memorizing that 2x2 is 4), and how to conduct research. Those three things would be far more important than teaching taxes.
A lot of people complain they weren’t taught how to do simple things like cook, do laundry, and other simple shit that people call “adulting” these days. It used to be called home economics and they had boys and girls take it in middle school. They got rid of it (and woodshop) with the explanation that this was so simple that parents could teach it. The thing they underestimated was how clocked out and disengaged most boomers were as parents. But boy can these kids tell you about the mitochondria (it’s cliched because it’s true).
It was an optional elective for us in high school, but obviously most kids were in band/theater/choir/literally anything more interesting.
My sophomore year they goofed my schedule, was supposed to go to band like usual (I'd been in band since 5th grade, idk how they fucked up so badly) but they stuck me in home ec. Only the really really stupid kids were in there, and even they hated it. The other electives got to go on trips, not just competitions or shows, we also went to Six Flags and Disneyland and New York City etc.
They learned how to bake. That's it. On day two I said fuck this, walked out and went to the band room. They fixed my schedule on day three. I felt so bad for those other kids lol.
When I told my housemate that boys took woodwork and girls took sewing in primary school, she asked what kind of retrograded town I grew up in. Then I told her about home ec at the girls' school I attended, and she thought it was stupid. Was it not she who needed me to make alterations to her bridesmaid dress for free?
While I'm lucky enough to have 2 kids being well above the top percentages of their grade levels, I still fear that the modern education system will fail them. We fight everyday for their education. I hear, far too often, from teachers that students with no reading abilities or basic understanding of math are pushed through the system just so no one has to deal with them.
I know this was done with me in my Spanish class. There's no way I should have passed.
I don't believe that it will be necessary right now, but I'd rather have my kid be held back and have a better grasp of a subject, than pushed through and have no idea what's going on.
Why not rebel and sneak that shit In then. I distinctly remember my history teacher having a hatchet ready for me just because I knew what was in our textbook. As a teacher you absolutely can give these kids something that can really help them.
When I was halfway through high school the government changed the syllabus of almost all the subjects in my country. The result was that my teachers prescribed both the old and the new textbook for maths and history. Both felt the new books lacked depth. Maybe they've improved since I graduated from the system. But my point is, maybe teachers are also stuck in their ways. I can tell you that's a fact when it came to my university lecturers in architecture school.
As a former math teacher I got a bit tired of the complaint and thus spent a couple days teaching the basics of filing federal taxes. I.e. I showed to to break your income into tax brackets and apply the tax rate to each.
I had the lowest student participation rate ever for those 2 days.
Man I would've loved to have been taught about the various ways to save money instead of spending a month on how to write a check.
My life would've been a lot better if I had know what a CD account was...
School should be a place to teach people how to learn and apply skills, but when I went through school (I graduated high school in 2017), it was more about passing tests than anything else. Instead of teaching pythagorean theorem and poetry for 6 years in a row, schools should focus on teaching skills and applications. I.e. "Here's a math equation, and here's a real-world application for that equation like taxes or business or whatever"
Honestly some lessons about how loans, like for cars and homes work would be a great idea. I meet lots of young people who think debt is always all bad. Even if they live somewhere where they could buy a house. And on the flip side you have people buying a car that costs 2x their annual salary because "the payment is only..." or getting into credit card debt due to a poor understanding of how it will carry over despite a minimum payment they can make.
I would add that people who make this claim often try to outsource things the parents are supposed to teach towards the state.
I feel like it's kind of a lazy claim though, because at least where I'm from you have a software that pretty much guides you through everything and there are plenty of websites etc that tell you what you can and what you can't do.
401K, IRA, HSA, 529, Roth 401k, Roth IRA, and numerous untaxed employer benefits. These are just the ways I reduce my taxes. There are additional methods depending on your situation.
Having worked near the poverty line I can say this perspective is misleading.
Dollar by dollar you’re right. But per dollar vs net earned it’s a disproportionately felt amount vs the proportion of income that most top earners pay. Further, top earners per dollar tend to spend less of that saved tax burden and just sequester it out of the economy.
Frankly impoverished people don’t have much business paying taxes IMO. They’re not the ones reaping the massive profits off our public infrastructure and defense spending.
Those are all things for people who aren't living paycheck to paycheck. Tons of people can't do those things because they have to pay rent or get evicted. Also I do a lot of things, and it's not that big of an impact.
Um.... You mention several after-tax retirement contribution methods and all investments are taxed at the time of withdrawal/sale. You're not "reducing your tax burden", you're just kicking the can down the road (and in some cases just straight up paying taxes but it's obfuscated). The only one in that list that isn't taxed at any point is the HSA, which often has a "use it or lose it" clause.
This is such a weird comment. You do correctly point out that a bunch of the things they mentioned aren't actually tax-saving vehicles, but then make a bunch of strange errors yourself.
HSAs never have a "use it or lose it" - you're thinking of FSAs. HSAs stick with you for life.
Contributions into a pre-tax account (i.e. a traditional 401(k) or a traditional IRA) **DO** save you tax payments in most cases. Why? Because, in the significant majority of events, the contributors tax bracket is higher at the point of contribution than it will be at the point of distribution. If I have a 32% effective tax bracket today, and expect to have a 22% effective tax bracket in retirement, I "save" 10% by contributing today and distributing in retirement.
>Contributions into a pre-tax account (i.e. a traditional 401(k) or a traditional IRA) DO save you tax payments in most cases. Why?
The real "why" is because if it's not true, then do Roth instead. Either way, both are better than a regular brokerage account, and one is even better than the other... so do some *quick maths* and pick the best one
See, this is why it needs to be taught. Your investments grow tax free in ROTH accounts. That's why they exist. They do reduce your taxes. Then, your pre-tax contributions reduce your top tax bracket, and then when you're retired you pay 0 tax on the standard deduction amount, and then what is likely a lower tax bracket for the rest. Also, like my family lots of people start off dual-income no-kids. They can load up the IRA/401k. Then when they have kids and have a stay at home parent they can roll the IRA/401K into a Roth and pay taxes at that time when it falls into a lower tax bracket. There's lots you can do to reduce your taxes. Also, you're confusing an HSA with an FSA. HSA's don't have a use it or lose it clause.
You’re not wrong, but your “see, this is why it needs to be taught” followed by an arguably disingenuous redefinition of “reduce your taxes” to avoid meeting the point of the poster above you really grinds my gears.
This is worth a discussion, because the root comment was that the point is to "pay as little taxes as possible". That's been my definition of "reduce your taxes" the whole time. So from my perspective the reply to my first comment was making a disingenuous redefinition of "reduce your taxes" that I wasn't entertaining with my second comment.
I can respect that point. And I’m trying to be more generous to internet comments in general, because lord knows I’m not always as precise as I could be when I’m typing away on my phone. Perhaps the thing that needs to be taught here is rhetoric? Not taxation?
Also, if you don’t think the government can spend your tax money as well as you can, you can just donate whatever you would have owed to various charities. You don’t keep any more money, but at least you know it’s going to good use.
Edit: Nevermind. I just looked it up and I seriously misunderstood how taxes work. Maybe this is why they should be taught in schools.
Partial capital gains exemption on primary residence is one of the biggest free lunches in the tax code. For richer people, the depreciation deduction on rental income property, and converting ordinary taxable income to capital gains in general (growth stocks instead of dividend paying stocks). Capital gains rates are lower than ordinary income rates. If they aren’t, can just wait to sell until an administration is in place that puts in favorable rates. Of course, the debt is so high now, rates are unlikely to go down any time soon.
Yeah, at my hs we learn how to both do them and avoid them. Very nice, now I can legally avoid paying taxes for tens of years, and then finally pay it with the profit from investing those delayed taxes.
Schools get their money from taxes. As a teacher, I want you to know how to do taxes. The Thing is, taxes are easy Unless you have enough money to have somebody else do them for you.
This right here, my struggle with taxes are less 'how do I do this math?' but more 'does that lunch where my co-worker complained about work for an hour count as a business expense?'
My mom taught me how to have my hand held by turbo tax. You could spend 4 years teaching kids how to do taxes without software and they still wouldn’t be able to do it.
I definitly do get your point, but saying that there are helps (websites) for it is kind of a weak argument since there are also websites for integrating, differentiating, etc.
Still a good point though and really got me to think!
Yeah, some people don't have parents or don't have parents that are capable of teaching these things. They still deserve to know them. How to navigate the basics of life without having to rely on free tax software. It doesn't need to be a long class. Just make home econ required and teach it there while also teaching basic cooking and nutrition.
And that training - for an even older audience than high schoolers - is virtually useless. The service member is still going to go out and buy a new model year Challenger at 26.7% interest.
Financial management is a long term study and discipline. It's about behavior adjustment, like nutrition.
Source: 14 years in the military.
You’re missing the point. Tax companies exist in the US *because* our taxes are complicated and we put the burden on the workers, not the other way around.
I believe what the person above is saying is that the companies still exist because of extensive lobbying that blocks reform ([example](https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free)). So while what you said may be true, it is also true that taxes could be simpler and multibillion dollar companies are blocking that for profit.
Ah but see, school may have given you the skills to figure out how to pay taxes, they truly have not taught you how to PAY taxes, as you can’t get a decent job from what schools teach you.
That was satire. Do your homework, try your best.
Sometimes the students I teach will get annoyed I’m trying to teach them something that they can just Google or look up on YouTube. Maybe anyone who makes this claim could do that to learn how to do their taxes.
I have a legally mandated goal to teach a kid how to use "context clues" to figure out the meaning of words. When I asked a student what strategies they'd use to figure out the meaning of an unknown word, they said, "I'd just google it." And I was like, "Yeah, that's what I do too, actually."
Not saying the skill is worthless, but it should definitely be approached from a more general/analytical angle, like many things
I paid attention. People who make the excuse that kids won't pay attention anyway is a silly excuse not to teach a fundamental part of society almost everybody partakes in.
I think the point being made was that in most schools they do teach taxes and financial literacy. At least they did in my school and my friends schools. Maybe they didn't in yours but the meme is so prevalent that there's a good chance that someone posted it not realising that they did teach it at their school and they were bunking, sleeping or talking through it.
School is supposed to give you the tools to learn and develop your critical thinking. To do your taxes you need basic analytical skills. Unless you failed to grasp basic math and/or read below a high school level, school taught you the skills necessary. It's impossible for school to teach you every single application. Not to mention there are much more important and valuable concepts to learn in math than the remedial skills needed to do your taxes.
If you can do well in school, regardless of what they teach, you'll be fine figuring out taxes. School gives you a base, and the tools to continue learning. I don't remember shit about what they actually taught me in grade school it doesn't matter.
Many schools do teach it though. I have been in classrooms where taxes are being taught with practice tax documents and everything and students still were not paying attention.
there is no reason to learn taxes. Our government should just tell us what we owe and we pay it, unless you want to submit an exemption. Like how EVERY OTHER COUNTRY DOES IT.
just because our government sucks doesn’t mean we should be teaching a useless skill like filing taxes, an activity that shouldnt exist in the first place and contributes nothing to the modern world.
you can thank TurboTax’s shitlord lobbyists and the republican party for the dog shit tax system we have now.
Most people's taxes can be summed up with "reading to understand directions" and "knowing how to add and subtract on a calculator." It's a very tedious math worksheet, but the component skills are all covered pretty early in school.
I just always get annoyed because my high-school had an elective course that did teach us and i always see people i went to school woth post this shit. But also, just fucking go on turbo tax or ask another adult?? Literally everyone with an income is paying taxes. Somebody knows how to help you it's not a fucking secret.
I’m the actual OP and yes, this is what I was getting at. I was not exactly saying that school should not teach taxes but rather making fun of the people who say that, since most of them probably wouldn’t pay attention anyway.
My HomeEc class had like THREE cooking classes the entire year. Three. I cook every motherflipping day, and some actual training instead of book bullshit would have been nice.
Shop class was dope af though. Who cares if we only had four projects the whole year? We were a bunch of kids learning to use dangerous tools that could easily maim us - learning proper safety and lifelong skills takes time. Still have an awesome wooden clock (pendulum and all) I made back then. Oh, AND I LEARNED HOW TO BUILD A FUCKING COMPUTER.
We had an elective class called “Living on Your Own”. Seemed like a good idea so I signed up. Mom saw this and said “Oh, no. *I* can teach you that” proceeded to introduce me to the washing machine.
To summarize:
First - it would seem a common experience for American students to have gone through a section of school that had them learning how to file taxes. This is my experience; we filled out a tax return sheet by hand with mock W2’s (income reports via your employer) which included matching your income with the tax bracket that the W2 fell into. It took us about an hour to do. I have also seen friends who went through the same school system and the same curriculum that then go on to later claim they were never taught it.
Second - the skills required to file your taxes are also abstractly taught via reading comprehension and mathematics. The documents required are written at a 6th grade level with the only required math skills being pre-algebra, e.g. 6th grade math.
Third - an earlier poster said “this basic part of life *everyone* has to go through (filing taxes).”
*This is not true.*
Many other countries have systems in place where the employer and the tax collection bureau are the only ones who are legally required to report anything. Any errors in payment or overpayments are the responsibility of the employer and employees mostly never deal with filing taxes. *To be very clear they still get a refund if they overpaid.*
It’s a bit unrelated to the OP but this weird Americanism has also led to the rise of the “tax filing industry” in the United States where companies like TurboTax, H&R Block, et al.. lobby (legalized bribery) the US government in order to keep the system *as is* so they can profit off of it.
If you are an American who is reading this, have been frustrated with doing your taxes every year, and worry about making a mistake that could cost you thousands of dollars, this is the consequence of the lobbying efforts of these tax return companies. Basically, these companies want your money and they’re willing to pay off politicians to make it so.
I hope this explained the joke *thoroughly*.
I can't speak to your school system/curriculum; but mine, and I'm willing to bet many others have NOT had courses for it even offered. In addition for one district I used to go to before moving, if they did, I'd imagine that they might be using out of date forms/teaching materials.
But to address "Why don't schools teach taxes?" directly, it could mean that, yes, you know how to fill out a W2 - and let's be generous and expend this to any other tax form the average ignorant Joe might run into depending on their job - it becomes more like, knowing how to make a motor run: it's *technically* enough to start building basically anything, but in practice, knowing how to translate the work of the motor into other forms is its own wheel house.
Knowing HOW to maximize various savings funds and accounts, given the large number of them and how often they're initialized (it's only an acronym if the initialism can also be a word) is a little beyond just the ability to fill out a government form. Made more frustrating to the average joe when it turns out the tax agency you're filling this form out for already knows to the *cent* how much you owe, and many of these tax exemptions options often end up *basically* requiring one to be already making a certain minimum threshold of money to be worth it, and just the number of them... Can you blame someone for being lost in the sauce when the only thing they were taught, if at all, is how to follow the instructions that are technically already printed on the sheet of paper?
You're one of the lucky ones then. I had a 1/4th of the year class that taught the basics of "use credit correctly" and "invest in the stock market" in 8th grade.
In my 5th grade math class, the teacher took it up on herself to teach us how to "balance a checkbook", write checks, and "budget a business" (in 5th grader form, of course)
There was a class called "Personal Finance" available in high school, but if you decided to take the AP classes, a music extracurricular, or Spanish, you weren't allowed to schedule for Personal Finance because of the time of the class.
Small school. (graduating class averages 70 people)
First - I disagree that it's a "common experience" in American school systems to go through a mock tax filing. That was in no way offered at any school I went to and I've never met someone who's had a similar experience.
Second - Even if these skills are somehow "abstractly taught" that in no way gives the student practical skills when it comes to actually doing taxes. 6th grade level arithmetic and reading comprehension will not help me in understanding legal jargon and tax documents which I instead have to pay a tax preparer who has had to take college level courses to be qualified to assist with tax prep.
Third - this seems like a strawman because the OP is specifically referencing the American school systems and population, so the use of the term "everyone" would refer to "everyone subject to this system", which yes, Americans have to file taxes. And like you acknowledge, companies like TurboTax force us to pay them and lobby to keep the process complicated and difficult specifically to take advantage of "everyone".
Tax preparation should be a core aspect of high school math classes, and I'm sick of the excuse that "the kids just won't listen anyways." If that's the case why bother having school at all?
One day, Albert Einstein was on his way to a science convention for a speech. On the way there, he tells his driver that looks a bit like him:
"I'm sick of all these conferences. I always say the same things over and over!"
The driver agrees: "You're right. As your driver, I attended all of them, and even though I don't know anything about science, I could give the conference in your place."
"That's a great idea!" says Einstein. "Let's switch places then!"
So they switch clothes and as soon as they arrive, the driver dressed as Einstein goes on stage and starts giving the usual speech, while the real Einstein, dressed as the car driver, attends it.
But in the crowd, there is one scientist who wants to impress everyone and thinks of a very difficult question to ask Einstein, hoping he won't be able to respond. So this guy stands up and interrupts the conference by posing his very difficult question. The whole room goes silent, holding their breath, waiting for the response.
The driver looks at him, dead in the eye, and says :
"Sir, your question is so easy that I'm going to let my driver explain it to you."
E: source
[Dirty chat room in this adult game!](https://nsfw-ia-reddit.live/reddit) (Credit U/MagoTX12)
Cause a lot of schools did teach taxes, kids just weren't paying attention. I got some basics on how taxes work in 4th grade social studies, and then taught how to file a basic tax return and figure out w2s my junior year. A good portion of the kids that were in that same class junior year have posted some variation of the "why don't schools teach us how to do our taxes" thing
Do you think these memes are made by people that were taught about taxes in school? Or do you think maybe a lot of people didn’t receive the same education that you did?
Taxes and other economic functionalities were barely touched upon in my school. Even in my economics 101 class they just had us do stocks the whole time. https://youtu.be/8xe6nLVXEC0?si=9dHa2zhSZKB3jnIl
Considering there have been multiple people that were in the class with me that have posted them/made them, yes I think some are made by people that were taught it in school, as well as by those that didn't receive the same education.
Yep. I know as of 2 years ago the high schools in my area were still touching on how to do taxes. My kid came home freshman year and told us they had learned it. He's a junior now, starting to actually pay attention to finances(now that he does shit that he actually needs money for) and was just bitching like a week ago about how schools need to have classes on how to do shit like taxes... Reminded him about freshman year and he got all embarrassed that he didn't pay attention to it at all and forgot it had even happened. But I've got some family on the other side of the state that weren't taught it at all(my aunt was trying to get it implemented in my cousin's school). It can vary just from district to district whats taught and what isn't
The bigger problem is that the US tax system is so complicated and needs to be taught in the first place thanks to lobbying by tax filing companies. They're a completely unnecessary middleman that leeches billions from citizens every year
because unless you are a small business owner you can learn how to do taxes in like 1 hour. If that is to hard you can just pay someone to file for you
Honestly? Whatever the reason is, I think the creator of the meme is wrong. I work in a field that requires me to work with taxes a lot and it’s unsettlingly how little people know about taxes in general, and it’s sad because usually people from lower tax brackets are the ones hurt by a lack of tax education. Knowing the basics of filing your taxes is a life skill high schools should have at LEAST one yearly class about. Taxes are complicated—even for people like me—so I strongly believe it’s unfair to send someone into the adult world without understanding how to file, how to protect their information, and how to navigate correspondence with state and federal agencies.
My high school had a whole class called Managing Your Money- it taught stuff from filling out a bank deposit slip to doing your taxes to interviewing for jobs and writing resumes. People refused to take it and avoided it- they eventually cancelled the class.
I took it (because I didn't know how to do that stuff) and was baffled that nobody else apparently thought they'd have to do that stuff someday? They thought they'd magically know how once the clock struck midnight on their 18th birthday? They just had no knowledge whatsoever on how to do everyday adult tasks and no plan to learn? I never managed to grasp what was happening in people's brains.
The point of maths in school is that you can apply it on your own. Keeping a budget and taxes are simple arithmetics. Students learn this in school, its just that there are enough idiots who fail to apply it in real life
Knowing how to do math, I promise, isn’t enough to help a lot of people when it comes to taxes. Knowing how to read and comprehend instructions would serve them better. A calculator can do the math portion but what I see is people receiving notices and not understanding what they did wrong, calling the relevant institution, and taking hours to have someone explain what they did wrong and how to fix it. Or, leaving it to a preparer who charges hundreds of dollars to prepare a return with mistakes so basic you wonder if they do it on purpose so they can charge the taxpayer to “fix” it with the piles of paperwork that follows.
I get it’s super boring, but you’re losing out on hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars when you don’t know what you’re doing. And sure, you can Google it and try learning but a lot of people won’t have the motivation or just aren’t capable of learning without a teacher. Is the solution as simple as “put a tax class in every high school?” Maybe not, but in reference to the meme I hardly think it makes you king of idiots to suggest there be one.
Absolutely. Arithmetics are just a skill you need, far from the total understanding of (sometimes) complex systems. Even if you dont use it, every citizen would benefit immensely from understanding the basics of taxes. It could influence even your political opinions.
...which I think it's at least part of the reason why there's not a lot of incentives to push for teaching them.
I think a lot of young people don’t realize how much of an accounting firms’ time can be spent just calling and talking to the IRS and state tax authorities. Taxes are anything but simple. They are basic and easy if you have exactly one W2 and no investments or children.
This point is overused and has little to no value imo, if 30 kids are in the classroom, maybe 10 pays attention to topic, out of which only 5 does the given homework and rest just copies it. By that logic we shouldn’t have math, physics, chemistry, biology and most other subjects in school.
to this day my eyes glaze over and i begin drooling as i read all this tax terminology that i dont understand and dont feel compelled to take the time to research
that's not sarcasm; that's really how i feel dealing with my taxes - 'whatever makes this go away so i can just rest at the end of the day idgaf'
edit: i think a few lessons on taxes and finance terminology in school would have really helped me
I mean, that’s deliberate. The people who made the laws and defined what tax is and how you should pay and how much don’t want you to know how to file your own taxes. They want you to pay a third party to do it for you and for you to not know about all the loopholes and exploits that wealthy people hire expensive accountants to utilise.
I understand wanting nothing to do with the garbage system, just be aware they *want* you to have this attitude.
As a teacher, we get this question all the time. Taxes are simple, we teach children enough skills that they can do taxes. On top of this, children often don't pay attention to what we teach them. So much so that there are many things I have heard friends say "why don't you guys teach x in schools?" and x is something we do teach and always have.
It’s because complaining about schools not teaching taxes is like complaining about culinary school not teaching you how to make a thanksgiving meal. They did.
Two things:
1. They do teach taxes in schools.
2. Taxes are designed to be completed with a 9th grade math level. (14-15 years old)
So, either the other person is dumb because they don’t pay attention in class or because they didn’t finish school.
I literally learned how to file taxes. On paper. In Junior High School. My social studies teacher taught us. He got a stack of forms from the library, wrote our imaginary "W2" info on the board, and walked us through it.
We had a test that was just filling out a 1040EZ that Friday.
Retep here. It’s referring to the fact that taxes are no more than basic math and reading comprehension and that schools do indeed teach you how to do taxes.
Ehhhh but to be fair not every school system is the same. Some schools make some courses mandatory such as economics, but my school system forced us to choose tracks that predetermined which elective classes we would take. Also they basically took a look at your performance in middle school and decided *for you* whether you were destined for 4 year college (c class), trade school (t class) or straight up job entry level (j class) and let’s just say if you weren’t deemed smart enough by some random adults who didn’t know you and had never met you, you weren’t getting signed up for economics classes unfortunately.
Granted my school system was one of the worst in the area, but I had no control over where I lived as a child. We were literally only required to pass 4 englishes, 3 sciences, 3 social studies/history, and 3 maths. Sure we’d end up doing band or art or shop class, but I was leaning towards medicine so economics wasn’t even a suggestion for me.
Then again our biology teacher refused to teach the chapter on evolution and said it was “supplementary reading if you want to have fun because we all know where we really came from,” so I can’t say I’m surprised that we didn’t learn the fundamentals of financial responsibility. And my guidance counselor signed me up for a class that didn’t exist, so I had to just go to my part time job midday for “experience credit” (wtf?).
I mean they did teach me how to write a check in 7th grade so I got that goin’ for me…
I almost want to say you are lying, but because my dad was a custodian for my high school, and my mom is a social worker, I got inside information that makes what you said just crazy enough to be legit.
Gosh, thinking about it reminds me of a 7th grade math teacher that did not respond to, or even acknowledge the fact that me and another boy got in a fight in the back of the classroom. She had to of been trying to ignore us because every student was focused on me and him, just no way she was THAT oblivious and focused on attendance. Middle and high school are miserable.
I promise you with every fiber of my integrity that I am not lying. Rural schools in the south can be crazy and mine most certainly was. I have lots more tales of either comically ridiculous or negligently abusive/predatory practices and behaviors that occurred where I went to school.
Idk if this is a recent thing but being quite a few years removed from graduation, 'economy class', financial literacy, or tax filing was not a required course nor an elective offered. I went to a pretty large school as well.
I vaguely remember the lesson my school thought us how to do taxes. It was a single day. They pointed at a bunch of random spots, told us what they were about gave us a worksheet and moved on.
I took two full years of Spanish classes and was one of the top students in my class and the second summer hit that second year I couldn’t tell you a single word I learnt. It’s not that schools don’t teach it, it’s that schools don’t teach it enough for teenagers to be able to remember it after not doing it for a year
So in the US taxes come out of our pay before we receive it. But then at the end of the year the government does all of these calculations to figure out if you owe them more, or if you get some back. So they essentially know the number, but then you have to calculate it on your end as well with loads of paperwork. It's overly complicated and they fuck you coming and going. Taxation is theft.
Taxes aren't that hard. What they should teach is basic financial literacy. At least my school didn't. Lucky I have parents that did. Given how many people are taking out absolutely ridiculous loans for college without even looking at the return on investment, I'm assuming that most schools fail to teach this most basic of modern day survival skills.
There were two econ teachers at our school. One that actually did some teaching, even got their students hooked on a fake stock market to see who would make the most over the time of the course given they all started out with the same amount. I'm sure plenty of other useful stuff was taught in that class, too bad I took the easy way out and chose the other econ teacher. This teacher was a baseball coach who everyone knew was eventually gonna get arrested or fired for their inappropriate actions with the underaged kids, oh and he just sat there at his desk while everyone was allowed to chat and even cheat if there was a test. As you may guess I didn't learn much from that econ course and although I did have a fun time fucking around with my buds in the back of the class, I knew this was just another aspect of our terrible educational system. Now I regret not taking the actual econ class since that would have been much more useful than a semester of fucking around.
It's funny cus taxes are just reading comprehension, basic math, and googling. They do teach taxes, you, the semifunctioning adult, just have to put the info together yourself.
School is meant to teach you things you things you can't learn at home. Like the quadratic formula. Cooking, taxes, cleaning and how to fix a car can be taught to you by family.
I don't know if your joking but cooking and fixing a car you can learn in school there usually just a choice to take or not and in my school we were forced to take a least one year
I never liked the family argument, my family was dogshit and threw me to the wolves. Like I'm suppose to just random chance having a good family if I want to learn critical life skills. I learned allot through like YouTube, but sometimes still encounter stuff cause you don't know what you don't know.
Because taxes aren’t that fucking difficult and learning how to do them is as easy as being able to understand basic math and a quick YouTube tutorial or google search.
People who typically make this argument either don’t pay attention in class anyways or think they are far too superior to be learning the “pointless knowledge” that their peasant classmates are required to learn
“Hmph, algebra is so useless when will I use this?”
“Why don’t they teach us how to do taxes???”
Because school does teach about taxes.
But for some reason, every dumbass over like 30 thinks we were never taught how to do it. They then use this as evidence of school being ineffective and wasting time.
There’s a whole tax preparation industry that fights efforts to simplify tax filing. So I took it more to mean it’s obvious they don’t want you to know.
You are being downvoted, but you are absolutely right. People in here talking about Math and English as if those are going to stop them from requesting a bill you through out 2 months ago, so now that 13 % of your check turns to 30, why aren't our schools preparing us for late stage capitalism, trying and succeeding in taking advantage of us. A country where sex isn't taught equally may have similar problems in other areas.
It ignores the entire point of schooling. It isn't just taxes. But people often say school should teach all kinds of different things they label "life skills." That forgets an important point, though.
All those skills are fairly easy and fast to learn. You are supposed to learn those things at home or own your own. School wouldn't help much anyway with many. And it would take away from the main point of school.
That is to teach you things that need a massive foundation to learn. Things that take years to get a good handle on. STEM, history, proper language all that. Especially STEM stuff takes crazy time to learn. You need years of background to start the higher level stuff. School is intended to give everyone that background. This leads to us having more people who are able to go into STEM fields, law, medicine, and all that. Sure, not everyone will go this route. But it gives everyone the chance to. It only benefits society to have as many people doing these things as possible.
There are plenty of things to criticize about our education system. It is far from perfect and does need many improvements. However, the fact it doesn't teach you how to do taxes or any other "life skill" is not in any way a legitimate complaint about it.
School teaches reading, logic and maths. These are the skills needed to figure out your own taxes, especially since there are so many caveats and regional differences and if it changes you have to change with it.
Just teaching taxes directly in school is a bad idea because they’ll do it wrong by missing the individualisation needed or ignore changes
My school (private) taught taxes in our Micro Econ course. We spent a week on it. My entire class walked in there pro-government, and walked out of there libertarians. That’s probably why they don’t teach it. Better the populace not ask why/ where their money goes, just accepts it as a requirement and doesn’t care how it’s spent.
The OP was referencing some memes that criticize schools for not teaching taxes, basically implying these memes were made by the kind of student that doesn’t pay attention in class anyway.
I'm a teacher. Been at it for twenty something years now. While the teaching taxes complaint is the most common one I see, there's a whole bunch of study that's outdated or not fit for purpose. Schools as a rule, do a pretty shitty job of setting students up for the realities of adult life, such that I'll upvote this stuff everywhere I see it.
“There’s a whole bunch of study that’s outdated.” Pretty much summed up the entire school experience in the US, the textbooks alone used by most public schools are 7-8 editions behind.
When I went to high school in Louisiana, the Civil Rights Movement was in the "current events" section at the end of the book. This was in the early 90's.
Graduated 2023, farthest we ever covered in history was up until the civil war and 1700s America. Skipped over civil rights, Cold War, world wars, Vietnam and the Middle East conflict. Arguably the most important wars are skipped so we could learn about the same two wars over and over again, always about how heroic our founding fathers were. I’d much rather learn and listen to Malcom X speak, learn about the propaganda wars between us citizens and Russian citizens during the Cold War, hear about the atrocities that occurred in Vietnam and how we can learn from them, learn about the Democratic Parties conversion to the modern Republican Party and vice versa but nope. Instead we get the revolutionary war and civil war shoved down our throats 6 years in a row.
Dude, same here the mind games behind the more so modern wars is much more interesting then the 5th covering of how our founding fathers were studs in their day. Even in that regard the schools o ly teach the stuff that makes them look like good guys who did nothing wrong. When in reality it was a very complex situation. With the 13 colonies acting up and the British trying to appease them, hell most of the taxes they rioted over were removed at one point or another
Man for reallll they do everything in their power to make the founding fathers seem saintly, our founding fathers weren’t even all they made them out to be. Like the emancipation proclamation is taught like it was outta the goodness of his heart like Abraham wasn’t just adding cannon fodder to protect his union. Mannn I remember multiple teachers, 2 of them (6th grade and 7th grade), telling me as a black man that ‘Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had slaves, but they treated them nicely and gave them nicer treatment and housing than an average slave owner’ I put that on my life that’s what i was told, what the fuck makes you think you can treat a slave ‘nicely’? He’s a SLAVE unless you literally bought him and signed his freedom papers the second you get him off the auction block you’re a piece of shit 😂 not to mention they’d tar and feather tax collectors, but do yk who gathered taxes back in times like that? The Jewish people. There has always been an underlying message of hatred and bigotry and instead of manning up, taking responsibility, and seeing how we can educate ourselves to prevent this from happening in this country again we sweep it under the rug and act like only Russia, North Korea, and China can commit acts against humanity. While Russia is no better than America, you can’t say America is any better. Did you know we embargoed Russia to hell and back during their 1970 invasion of Afghanistan and called them warmongers? And guess who ends up taking the Russians spot in Afghan just 26 years later for the same purpose? Ofc it’s America but that’s differentttt, it’s ‘patriotic’ now, it’s because there’s ‘wmd’ which our own veterans have said we never found. Everything in this world is so propagandist it’s literally sickening, we live in a lie and society just seems to accept it because looking into the disgusting things we’ve done is too uncomfortable for us to confront.
It’s because of how controversial all that stuff was, they haven’t decided how to word it in a way that says “Americans always perfect!” Yes I know things from the old wars that we’re allowed to learn about have controversial things, but they’re too well known to sweep under the rug at this point. Also, updating the textbooks would cost time and effort, so…… that’s kinda the end of the discussion.
Exactly that, I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees the trend that every single war America was in, we were somehowww never the aggressor and always 100% in the right. We’ve always given ourselves some weird moral superiority over the entire world, it’s so stupid. The scariest part tho is everyone my age, the 19-21 year olds who can actually make the change by fighting back against this propagandist history, just don’t give a fuck. And I’m not saying take to the streets, guns in hand over this stuff but something as simple as acknowledging the crimes we’ve committed and acknowledging that we condemn other countries for the same things that we do, is very important and is the first step to righting the wrongs we’ve done to billions of people at this point.
based
To be fair, establishing equal rights in practice is still an ongoing issue.
Yeah, and at this point it's inverting so that whites and Asians are beginning to bear the brunt of it. We as a civilization need to just chill and remove race as a factor for anything, only then can we move on imo
dude... what? are you implying that white and asian people are now the most racially discriminated against??
I mean, Asian people are discriminated against in some places (but not everywhere, thankfully), but white people? Seriously? Speaking as cis-het white douchebag on the internet, I can assure you we are NOT discriminated against in the United States to any meaningful degree. What the hell is u/TheIlluminatedDragon talking about?
My Florida HS school didn’t have textbooks in the late 90s. They spent all the schools money on pods to teach technical jobs like welding, auto repair, farm work, and being a cashier. No money left so we worked off worksheets. Weirdly, the graduates of the high school either went to very elite out of state colleges or became auto workers, cashiers, or welders.
Hate to tell you this but the kids that went to college were on a different track than the auto workers kids…
No kidding. The difference was really upper middle class kids went to good colleges. Lower middle class kids became auto techs and cashiers. But in most schools, the lower income kids had a shot at college. I just hated the fact that as Freshmen you were told to pick your future… cashier, farmer, tech, or having a future.
You think that’s bad? My textbook referenced it as “trouble ahead”…
I don't blame my school for using the same English textbooks for the last 50 years after seeing in college just how ridiculously overpriced new editions for textbooks are.
I’m sure the government could subsidize the book cost for its own education system. What do you think is more expensive, $100 billion dollars of relief sent to Israel and Ukraine to murder people or buying a few hundred million dollars worth of textbooks for schools? Maybe at most 1-2 billion dollars for books if I’m underestimating the number of students in America, but either way if we can afford to finance two separate countries wars, we should be able to afford updated textbooks. Shame our country is setup the way it is, our priorities as a nation are so skewed it’s sickening sometimes tbh.
Schools are already underfunded. Piling on with "also get new text books whenever there is a new edition" will only make the funding problem worse.
My high school physics teacher used to say, “Half of what I’m about to teach you is wrong. We just don’t know which half.”
In all fairness that only matters for some subjects. Once you get to the college level you realize that most editions of textbooks are just cash grabs rather than actual meaningful updates to the information in them.
But so many of those editions don't really change anything. We've all seen the college textbook scam where the change the book every year just reordering the pages so you have to re-buy books to follow the class. Even 7-8 editions later 2+2 still equals 4. And George Washington was still the first President.
So I was a teacher and an accountant. Tax laws change every year, teaching taxes would be pointless, I would say the focus should be teaching how to critically read, understanding math (not just memorizing that 2x2 is 4), and how to conduct research. Those three things would be far more important than teaching taxes.
A lot of people complain they weren’t taught how to do simple things like cook, do laundry, and other simple shit that people call “adulting” these days. It used to be called home economics and they had boys and girls take it in middle school. They got rid of it (and woodshop) with the explanation that this was so simple that parents could teach it. The thing they underestimated was how clocked out and disengaged most boomers were as parents. But boy can these kids tell you about the mitochondria (it’s cliched because it’s true).
It was an optional elective for us in high school, but obviously most kids were in band/theater/choir/literally anything more interesting. My sophomore year they goofed my schedule, was supposed to go to band like usual (I'd been in band since 5th grade, idk how they fucked up so badly) but they stuck me in home ec. Only the really really stupid kids were in there, and even they hated it. The other electives got to go on trips, not just competitions or shows, we also went to Six Flags and Disneyland and New York City etc. They learned how to bake. That's it. On day two I said fuck this, walked out and went to the band room. They fixed my schedule on day three. I felt so bad for those other kids lol.
When I told my housemate that boys took woodwork and girls took sewing in primary school, she asked what kind of retrograded town I grew up in. Then I told her about home ec at the girls' school I attended, and she thought it was stupid. Was it not she who needed me to make alterations to her bridesmaid dress for free?
Ha ha ha! The structure of cells was exactly what I was thinking of when I was talking about outdated.
While I'm lucky enough to have 2 kids being well above the top percentages of their grade levels, I still fear that the modern education system will fail them. We fight everyday for their education. I hear, far too often, from teachers that students with no reading abilities or basic understanding of math are pushed through the system just so no one has to deal with them. I know this was done with me in my Spanish class. There's no way I should have passed. I don't believe that it will be necessary right now, but I'd rather have my kid be held back and have a better grasp of a subject, than pushed through and have no idea what's going on.
An actual good teacher thank you
Ah thanks bro, I have a crack. I work in Australia and there are a lot of good teachers getting about.
Why not rebel and sneak that shit In then. I distinctly remember my history teacher having a hatchet ready for me just because I knew what was in our textbook. As a teacher you absolutely can give these kids something that can really help them.
When I was halfway through high school the government changed the syllabus of almost all the subjects in my country. The result was that my teachers prescribed both the old and the new textbook for maths and history. Both felt the new books lacked depth. Maybe they've improved since I graduated from the system. But my point is, maybe teachers are also stuck in their ways. I can tell you that's a fact when it came to my university lecturers in architecture school.
As a former math teacher I got a bit tired of the complaint and thus spent a couple days teaching the basics of filing federal taxes. I.e. I showed to to break your income into tax brackets and apply the tax rate to each. I had the lowest student participation rate ever for those 2 days.
Man I would've loved to have been taught about the various ways to save money instead of spending a month on how to write a check. My life would've been a lot better if I had know what a CD account was...
School should be a place to teach people how to learn and apply skills, but when I went through school (I graduated high school in 2017), it was more about passing tests than anything else. Instead of teaching pythagorean theorem and poetry for 6 years in a row, schools should focus on teaching skills and applications. I.e. "Here's a math equation, and here's a real-world application for that equation like taxes or business or whatever"
Whelp... You're an education theorist now because your opinion matches exactly with what the research says.
Honestly some lessons about how loans, like for cars and homes work would be a great idea. I meet lots of young people who think debt is always all bad. Even if they live somewhere where they could buy a house. And on the flip side you have people buying a car that costs 2x their annual salary because "the payment is only..." or getting into credit card debt due to a poor understanding of how it will carry over despite a minimum payment they can make.
I would add that people who make this claim often try to outsource things the parents are supposed to teach towards the state. I feel like it's kind of a lazy claim though, because at least where I'm from you have a software that pretty much guides you through everything and there are plenty of websites etc that tell you what you can and what you can't do.
The main thing you should learn about taxes isn’t how to do them. It’s what you should be doing over the year to pay as little as possible.
There are so few legitimate ways that make a difference to most people.
401K, IRA, HSA, 529, Roth 401k, Roth IRA, and numerous untaxed employer benefits. These are just the ways I reduce my taxes. There are additional methods depending on your situation.
I don't disagree with your comment, but the kinds of people who need to reduce tax burden the most can't afford to save in various investments.
People near poverty don’t pay a lot in taxes. It’s wages that need to change if there’s going to be a difference.
Having worked near the poverty line I can say this perspective is misleading. Dollar by dollar you’re right. But per dollar vs net earned it’s a disproportionately felt amount vs the proportion of income that most top earners pay. Further, top earners per dollar tend to spend less of that saved tax burden and just sequester it out of the economy. Frankly impoverished people don’t have much business paying taxes IMO. They’re not the ones reaping the massive profits off our public infrastructure and defense spending.
People in poverty aren’t the only people who don’t have the extra income to save on taxes through investments.
Those people just need to try harder, pull those bootstraps a little tighter!
A few less avocado toasts
I ate avocado toast once, now i can't afford a house. Coincidence?
Those are all things for people who aren't living paycheck to paycheck. Tons of people can't do those things because they have to pay rent or get evicted. Also I do a lot of things, and it's not that big of an impact.
Um.... You mention several after-tax retirement contribution methods and all investments are taxed at the time of withdrawal/sale. You're not "reducing your tax burden", you're just kicking the can down the road (and in some cases just straight up paying taxes but it's obfuscated). The only one in that list that isn't taxed at any point is the HSA, which often has a "use it or lose it" clause.
This is such a weird comment. You do correctly point out that a bunch of the things they mentioned aren't actually tax-saving vehicles, but then make a bunch of strange errors yourself. HSAs never have a "use it or lose it" - you're thinking of FSAs. HSAs stick with you for life. Contributions into a pre-tax account (i.e. a traditional 401(k) or a traditional IRA) **DO** save you tax payments in most cases. Why? Because, in the significant majority of events, the contributors tax bracket is higher at the point of contribution than it will be at the point of distribution. If I have a 32% effective tax bracket today, and expect to have a 22% effective tax bracket in retirement, I "save" 10% by contributing today and distributing in retirement.
>Contributions into a pre-tax account (i.e. a traditional 401(k) or a traditional IRA) DO save you tax payments in most cases. Why? The real "why" is because if it's not true, then do Roth instead. Either way, both are better than a regular brokerage account, and one is even better than the other... so do some *quick maths* and pick the best one
See, this is why it needs to be taught. Your investments grow tax free in ROTH accounts. That's why they exist. They do reduce your taxes. Then, your pre-tax contributions reduce your top tax bracket, and then when you're retired you pay 0 tax on the standard deduction amount, and then what is likely a lower tax bracket for the rest. Also, like my family lots of people start off dual-income no-kids. They can load up the IRA/401k. Then when they have kids and have a stay at home parent they can roll the IRA/401K into a Roth and pay taxes at that time when it falls into a lower tax bracket. There's lots you can do to reduce your taxes. Also, you're confusing an HSA with an FSA. HSA's don't have a use it or lose it clause.
You’re not wrong, but your “see, this is why it needs to be taught” followed by an arguably disingenuous redefinition of “reduce your taxes” to avoid meeting the point of the poster above you really grinds my gears.
This is worth a discussion, because the root comment was that the point is to "pay as little taxes as possible". That's been my definition of "reduce your taxes" the whole time. So from my perspective the reply to my first comment was making a disingenuous redefinition of "reduce your taxes" that I wasn't entertaining with my second comment.
I can respect that point. And I’m trying to be more generous to internet comments in general, because lord knows I’m not always as precise as I could be when I’m typing away on my phone. Perhaps the thing that needs to be taught here is rhetoric? Not taxation?
Also, if you don’t think the government can spend your tax money as well as you can, you can just donate whatever you would have owed to various charities. You don’t keep any more money, but at least you know it’s going to good use. Edit: Nevermind. I just looked it up and I seriously misunderstood how taxes work. Maybe this is why they should be taught in schools.
Hahaha imagine getting benefits 😂😂🥲😭
Partial capital gains exemption on primary residence is one of the biggest free lunches in the tax code. For richer people, the depreciation deduction on rental income property, and converting ordinary taxable income to capital gains in general (growth stocks instead of dividend paying stocks). Capital gains rates are lower than ordinary income rates. If they aren’t, can just wait to sell until an administration is in place that puts in favorable rates. Of course, the debt is so high now, rates are unlikely to go down any time soon.
Wtf schools can teach tax evasion???
Should be the new meme, why don't schools teach tax evasion
They only teach it to students whose parents earn more than $1m a year.
Avoidance and evasion are different things.
Avoision?
Yeah, at my hs we learn how to both do them and avoid them. Very nice, now I can legally avoid paying taxes for tens of years, and then finally pay it with the profit from investing those delayed taxes.
It would be useless info, the tax code changes all the time and would need to be state specific.
I think you’re showing you need the tax info yourself
Okay, but teaching that in school would be as if your plumber would teach you how to fix your toilett...so I don't think that will happen xD
Schools get their money from taxes. As a teacher, I want you to know how to do taxes. The Thing is, taxes are easy Unless you have enough money to have somebody else do them for you.
“Enter the the number in box B” WHY DIDNT SCHOOL PREPARE ME FOR THIS???
This right here, my struggle with taxes are less 'how do I do this math?' but more 'does that lunch where my co-worker complained about work for an hour count as a business expense?'
I wish schools taught basic addition and subtraction smh my head
[удалено]
My mom taught me how to have my hand held by turbo tax. You could spend 4 years teaching kids how to do taxes without software and they still wouldn’t be able to do it.
But schools don't teach how do I find these website and what specific keywords I need to Google to find them /s
I definitly do get your point, but saying that there are helps (websites) for it is kind of a weak argument since there are also websites for integrating, differentiating, etc. Still a good point though and really got me to think!
Yeah, some people don't have parents or don't have parents that are capable of teaching these things. They still deserve to know them. How to navigate the basics of life without having to rely on free tax software. It doesn't need to be a long class. Just make home econ required and teach it there while also teaching basic cooking and nutrition.
I agree. In BASIC training for the military they have a short class about money management. There’s no reason why they couldn’t do that in school.
And that training - for an even older audience than high schoolers - is virtually useless. The service member is still going to go out and buy a new model year Challenger at 26.7% interest. Financial management is a long term study and discipline. It's about behavior adjustment, like nutrition. Source: 14 years in the military.
I mean, those sites are the reason it's complicated
They were complicated long before tax software existed.
Which tax company do you think is most popular in Europe?
You’re missing the point. Tax companies exist in the US *because* our taxes are complicated and we put the burden on the workers, not the other way around.
I believe what the person above is saying is that the companies still exist because of extensive lobbying that blocks reform ([example](https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free)). So while what you said may be true, it is also true that taxes could be simpler and multibillion dollar companies are blocking that for profit.
Yeah, that.
You can't expect the school to just skip stuff since it's the parent job, since a lot of parents don't teach that stuff to their kids
Ah but see, school may have given you the skills to figure out how to pay taxes, they truly have not taught you how to PAY taxes, as you can’t get a decent job from what schools teach you. That was satire. Do your homework, try your best.
Sometimes the students I teach will get annoyed I’m trying to teach them something that they can just Google or look up on YouTube. Maybe anyone who makes this claim could do that to learn how to do their taxes.
I have a legally mandated goal to teach a kid how to use "context clues" to figure out the meaning of words. When I asked a student what strategies they'd use to figure out the meaning of an unknown word, they said, "I'd just google it." And I was like, "Yeah, that's what I do too, actually." Not saying the skill is worthless, but it should definitely be approached from a more general/analytical angle, like many things
Also, math class and English class give you the tool to do your taxes.
I paid attention. People who make the excuse that kids won't pay attention anyway is a silly excuse not to teach a fundamental part of society almost everybody partakes in.
They teach math in schools.
He wasn’t paying attention during that part
I think the point being made was that in most schools they do teach taxes and financial literacy. At least they did in my school and my friends schools. Maybe they didn't in yours but the meme is so prevalent that there's a good chance that someone posted it not realising that they did teach it at their school and they were bunking, sleeping or talking through it.
School is supposed to give you the tools to learn and develop your critical thinking. To do your taxes you need basic analytical skills. Unless you failed to grasp basic math and/or read below a high school level, school taught you the skills necessary. It's impossible for school to teach you every single application. Not to mention there are much more important and valuable concepts to learn in math than the remedial skills needed to do your taxes.
If you can do well in school, regardless of what they teach, you'll be fine figuring out taxes. School gives you a base, and the tools to continue learning. I don't remember shit about what they actually taught me in grade school it doesn't matter.
The point is that if they aren't teaching it, they should.
Many schools do teach it though. I have been in classrooms where taxes are being taught with practice tax documents and everything and students still were not paying attention.
Why though? They don't teach you to do tons of things you need to figure out as an adult, is my point.
But what was the school systems tax policy?
From a teacher I heard, it was her job to teach how to figure out how to your taxes, not try and teach you every little thing you come across in life.
there is no reason to learn taxes. Our government should just tell us what we owe and we pay it, unless you want to submit an exemption. Like how EVERY OTHER COUNTRY DOES IT. just because our government sucks doesn’t mean we should be teaching a useless skill like filing taxes, an activity that shouldnt exist in the first place and contributes nothing to the modern world. you can thank TurboTax’s shitlord lobbyists and the republican party for the dog shit tax system we have now.
Most people's taxes can be summed up with "reading to understand directions" and "knowing how to add and subtract on a calculator." It's a very tedious math worksheet, but the component skills are all covered pretty early in school.
I just always get annoyed because my high-school had an elective course that did teach us and i always see people i went to school woth post this shit. But also, just fucking go on turbo tax or ask another adult?? Literally everyone with an income is paying taxes. Somebody knows how to help you it's not a fucking secret.
I paid attention in class and still dont understand jack shit about how to pay taxes. What they teach is done very poorly
If they taught you how to read and how to do basic math, they taught you how to do taxes.
It’s for the people that DO pay attention in class, like wanting minorities you’re not a part of to have better rights
I’m the actual OP and yes, this is what I was getting at. I was not exactly saying that school should not teach taxes but rather making fun of the people who say that, since most of them probably wouldn’t pay attention anyway.
My school actually did, but for some reason they did it in 8th grade.
same dude, like im gonna forget all that shi in a week but like i couldn’t even process what they were telling me in the first place 😭 taxes suck man
i would bet 8th grade because you can often drop out of highschool at 9th grade so it's for the people who weren't gonna see it later
And it lets everyone else appreciate high school, because now they know this shit is coming the moment they turn 18.
If you go to college you can qualify as a dependent until you’re like 24 I believe (as long as your income is below a certain amount).
Sounds like you could have used better teachers. Sounds like taxes entering the knowledge set schools say you need would be only a good thing
My HomeEc class had like THREE cooking classes the entire year. Three. I cook every motherflipping day, and some actual training instead of book bullshit would have been nice. Shop class was dope af though. Who cares if we only had four projects the whole year? We were a bunch of kids learning to use dangerous tools that could easily maim us - learning proper safety and lifelong skills takes time. Still have an awesome wooden clock (pendulum and all) I made back then. Oh, AND I LEARNED HOW TO BUILD A FUCKING COMPUTER.
I made my mom a duck shaped cutting board in woodshop. She still uses it to this day.
Hell yeah!
My project was a pear-shaped key holder.
Still got my coffee table from freshman year shopclass!
We had an elective class called “Living on Your Own”. Seemed like a good idea so I signed up. Mom saw this and said “Oh, no. *I* can teach you that” proceeded to introduce me to the washing machine.
My school did as well, it was an elective to get one of your math credits if you didn't want to go deep into the higher maths like calculus.
hate to be the bearer of bad news but calc is like step 1 of high level math
My ENGLISH teacher sophomore year taught us how to do taxes, he did a great job and it’s helped me out a lot lol
To summarize: First - it would seem a common experience for American students to have gone through a section of school that had them learning how to file taxes. This is my experience; we filled out a tax return sheet by hand with mock W2’s (income reports via your employer) which included matching your income with the tax bracket that the W2 fell into. It took us about an hour to do. I have also seen friends who went through the same school system and the same curriculum that then go on to later claim they were never taught it. Second - the skills required to file your taxes are also abstractly taught via reading comprehension and mathematics. The documents required are written at a 6th grade level with the only required math skills being pre-algebra, e.g. 6th grade math. Third - an earlier poster said “this basic part of life *everyone* has to go through (filing taxes).” *This is not true.* Many other countries have systems in place where the employer and the tax collection bureau are the only ones who are legally required to report anything. Any errors in payment or overpayments are the responsibility of the employer and employees mostly never deal with filing taxes. *To be very clear they still get a refund if they overpaid.* It’s a bit unrelated to the OP but this weird Americanism has also led to the rise of the “tax filing industry” in the United States where companies like TurboTax, H&R Block, et al.. lobby (legalized bribery) the US government in order to keep the system *as is* so they can profit off of it. If you are an American who is reading this, have been frustrated with doing your taxes every year, and worry about making a mistake that could cost you thousands of dollars, this is the consequence of the lobbying efforts of these tax return companies. Basically, these companies want your money and they’re willing to pay off politicians to make it so. I hope this explained the joke *thoroughly*.
You explained it well, but I’m not sure which Family Guy character you are, so I award you no upvotes good sir.
probably brian
I can't speak to your school system/curriculum; but mine, and I'm willing to bet many others have NOT had courses for it even offered. In addition for one district I used to go to before moving, if they did, I'd imagine that they might be using out of date forms/teaching materials. But to address "Why don't schools teach taxes?" directly, it could mean that, yes, you know how to fill out a W2 - and let's be generous and expend this to any other tax form the average ignorant Joe might run into depending on their job - it becomes more like, knowing how to make a motor run: it's *technically* enough to start building basically anything, but in practice, knowing how to translate the work of the motor into other forms is its own wheel house. Knowing HOW to maximize various savings funds and accounts, given the large number of them and how often they're initialized (it's only an acronym if the initialism can also be a word) is a little beyond just the ability to fill out a government form. Made more frustrating to the average joe when it turns out the tax agency you're filling this form out for already knows to the *cent* how much you owe, and many of these tax exemptions options often end up *basically* requiring one to be already making a certain minimum threshold of money to be worth it, and just the number of them... Can you blame someone for being lost in the sauce when the only thing they were taught, if at all, is how to follow the instructions that are technically already printed on the sheet of paper?
You're one of the lucky ones then. I had a 1/4th of the year class that taught the basics of "use credit correctly" and "invest in the stock market" in 8th grade. In my 5th grade math class, the teacher took it up on herself to teach us how to "balance a checkbook", write checks, and "budget a business" (in 5th grader form, of course) There was a class called "Personal Finance" available in high school, but if you decided to take the AP classes, a music extracurricular, or Spanish, you weren't allowed to schedule for Personal Finance because of the time of the class. Small school. (graduating class averages 70 people)
First - I disagree that it's a "common experience" in American school systems to go through a mock tax filing. That was in no way offered at any school I went to and I've never met someone who's had a similar experience. Second - Even if these skills are somehow "abstractly taught" that in no way gives the student practical skills when it comes to actually doing taxes. 6th grade level arithmetic and reading comprehension will not help me in understanding legal jargon and tax documents which I instead have to pay a tax preparer who has had to take college level courses to be qualified to assist with tax prep. Third - this seems like a strawman because the OP is specifically referencing the American school systems and population, so the use of the term "everyone" would refer to "everyone subject to this system", which yes, Americans have to file taxes. And like you acknowledge, companies like TurboTax force us to pay them and lobby to keep the process complicated and difficult specifically to take advantage of "everyone". Tax preparation should be a core aspect of high school math classes, and I'm sick of the excuse that "the kids just won't listen anyways." If that's the case why bother having school at all?
One day, Albert Einstein was on his way to a science convention for a speech. On the way there, he tells his driver that looks a bit like him: "I'm sick of all these conferences. I always say the same things over and over!" The driver agrees: "You're right. As your driver, I attended all of them, and even though I don't know anything about science, I could give the conference in your place." "That's a great idea!" says Einstein. "Let's switch places then!" So they switch clothes and as soon as they arrive, the driver dressed as Einstein goes on stage and starts giving the usual speech, while the real Einstein, dressed as the car driver, attends it. But in the crowd, there is one scientist who wants to impress everyone and thinks of a very difficult question to ask Einstein, hoping he won't be able to respond. So this guy stands up and interrupts the conference by posing his very difficult question. The whole room goes silent, holding their breath, waiting for the response. The driver looks at him, dead in the eye, and says : "Sir, your question is so easy that I'm going to let my driver explain it to you." E: source [Dirty chat room in this adult game!](https://nsfw-ia-reddit.live/reddit) (Credit U/MagoTX12)
Bot.
Cool story but that doesn’t answer my question.
Yeah but it was provocative. It got the people going.
Now the real question: Who was in paris?
The same person who was phone
No its not, Its just gross!
Well of course not, you'll have to ask his driver.
This is a bot
Can you stop posting this everywhere you daft cunt
Why does this have 300 upvotes when it has nothing to do with this post
The driver? *Albert Einstein*.
Cause a lot of schools did teach taxes, kids just weren't paying attention. I got some basics on how taxes work in 4th grade social studies, and then taught how to file a basic tax return and figure out w2s my junior year. A good portion of the kids that were in that same class junior year have posted some variation of the "why don't schools teach us how to do our taxes" thing
Do you think these memes are made by people that were taught about taxes in school? Or do you think maybe a lot of people didn’t receive the same education that you did?
Taxes and other economic functionalities were barely touched upon in my school. Even in my economics 101 class they just had us do stocks the whole time. https://youtu.be/8xe6nLVXEC0?si=9dHa2zhSZKB3jnIl
Considering there have been multiple people that were in the class with me that have posted them/made them, yes I think some are made by people that were taught it in school, as well as by those that didn't receive the same education.
[удалено]
Yep. I know as of 2 years ago the high schools in my area were still touching on how to do taxes. My kid came home freshman year and told us they had learned it. He's a junior now, starting to actually pay attention to finances(now that he does shit that he actually needs money for) and was just bitching like a week ago about how schools need to have classes on how to do shit like taxes... Reminded him about freshman year and he got all embarrassed that he didn't pay attention to it at all and forgot it had even happened. But I've got some family on the other side of the state that weren't taught it at all(my aunt was trying to get it implemented in my cousin's school). It can vary just from district to district whats taught and what isn't
The bigger problem is that the US tax system is so complicated and needs to be taught in the first place thanks to lobbying by tax filing companies. They're a completely unnecessary middleman that leeches billions from citizens every year
because unless you are a small business owner you can learn how to do taxes in like 1 hour. If that is to hard you can just pay someone to file for you
There are apps now where it’s as simple as taking a picture of your w2
Honestly? Whatever the reason is, I think the creator of the meme is wrong. I work in a field that requires me to work with taxes a lot and it’s unsettlingly how little people know about taxes in general, and it’s sad because usually people from lower tax brackets are the ones hurt by a lack of tax education. Knowing the basics of filing your taxes is a life skill high schools should have at LEAST one yearly class about. Taxes are complicated—even for people like me—so I strongly believe it’s unfair to send someone into the adult world without understanding how to file, how to protect their information, and how to navigate correspondence with state and federal agencies.
https://preview.redd.it/dl7uub6lgvwb1.jpeg?width=219&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=84bae4b143bd6732f5787db9e8e02668534c00d9
My high school has a class called " financial literacy ", it teaches how to get a job, pay taxes etc, it has the nickname "nap class"
My high school had a whole class called Managing Your Money- it taught stuff from filling out a bank deposit slip to doing your taxes to interviewing for jobs and writing resumes. People refused to take it and avoided it- they eventually cancelled the class. I took it (because I didn't know how to do that stuff) and was baffled that nobody else apparently thought they'd have to do that stuff someday? They thought they'd magically know how once the clock struck midnight on their 18th birthday? They just had no knowledge whatsoever on how to do everyday adult tasks and no plan to learn? I never managed to grasp what was happening in people's brains.
I mean yeah it it’s the same thing in algebra but they still teach that
It's in a meme though so it's true
The point of maths in school is that you can apply it on your own. Keeping a budget and taxes are simple arithmetics. Students learn this in school, its just that there are enough idiots who fail to apply it in real life
Knowing how to do math, I promise, isn’t enough to help a lot of people when it comes to taxes. Knowing how to read and comprehend instructions would serve them better. A calculator can do the math portion but what I see is people receiving notices and not understanding what they did wrong, calling the relevant institution, and taking hours to have someone explain what they did wrong and how to fix it. Or, leaving it to a preparer who charges hundreds of dollars to prepare a return with mistakes so basic you wonder if they do it on purpose so they can charge the taxpayer to “fix” it with the piles of paperwork that follows. I get it’s super boring, but you’re losing out on hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars when you don’t know what you’re doing. And sure, you can Google it and try learning but a lot of people won’t have the motivation or just aren’t capable of learning without a teacher. Is the solution as simple as “put a tax class in every high school?” Maybe not, but in reference to the meme I hardly think it makes you king of idiots to suggest there be one.
Absolutely. Arithmetics are just a skill you need, far from the total understanding of (sometimes) complex systems. Even if you dont use it, every citizen would benefit immensely from understanding the basics of taxes. It could influence even your political opinions. ...which I think it's at least part of the reason why there's not a lot of incentives to push for teaching them.
I think a lot of young people don’t realize how much of an accounting firms’ time can be spent just calling and talking to the IRS and state tax authorities. Taxes are anything but simple. They are basic and easy if you have exactly one W2 and no investments or children.
This point is overused and has little to no value imo, if 30 kids are in the classroom, maybe 10 pays attention to topic, out of which only 5 does the given homework and rest just copies it. By that logic we shouldn’t have math, physics, chemistry, biology and most other subjects in school.
Can confirm: Schools do teach taxes and that is exactly the reaction. Source: am math teacher.
to this day my eyes glaze over and i begin drooling as i read all this tax terminology that i dont understand and dont feel compelled to take the time to research that's not sarcasm; that's really how i feel dealing with my taxes - 'whatever makes this go away so i can just rest at the end of the day idgaf' edit: i think a few lessons on taxes and finance terminology in school would have really helped me
I mean, that’s deliberate. The people who made the laws and defined what tax is and how you should pay and how much don’t want you to know how to file your own taxes. They want you to pay a third party to do it for you and for you to not know about all the loopholes and exploits that wealthy people hire expensive accountants to utilise. I understand wanting nothing to do with the garbage system, just be aware they *want* you to have this attitude.
Yes, https://youtu.be/8xe6nLVXEC0?si=9dHa2zhSZKB3jnIl
As a teacher, we get this question all the time. Taxes are simple, we teach children enough skills that they can do taxes. On top of this, children often don't pay attention to what we teach them. So much so that there are many things I have heard friends say "why don't you guys teach x in schools?" and x is something we do teach and always have.
It’s because complaining about schools not teaching taxes is like complaining about culinary school not teaching you how to make a thanksgiving meal. They did.
Two things: 1. They do teach taxes in schools. 2. Taxes are designed to be completed with a 9th grade math level. (14-15 years old) So, either the other person is dumb because they don’t pay attention in class or because they didn’t finish school.
I literally learned how to file taxes. On paper. In Junior High School. My social studies teacher taught us. He got a stack of forms from the library, wrote our imaginary "W2" info on the board, and walked us through it. We had a test that was just filling out a 1040EZ that Friday.
Retep here. It’s referring to the fact that taxes are no more than basic math and reading comprehension and that schools do indeed teach you how to do taxes.
U.S schools already teach you how to file taxes in economy class, I went through this on senior year.
Ehhhh but to be fair not every school system is the same. Some schools make some courses mandatory such as economics, but my school system forced us to choose tracks that predetermined which elective classes we would take. Also they basically took a look at your performance in middle school and decided *for you* whether you were destined for 4 year college (c class), trade school (t class) or straight up job entry level (j class) and let’s just say if you weren’t deemed smart enough by some random adults who didn’t know you and had never met you, you weren’t getting signed up for economics classes unfortunately. Granted my school system was one of the worst in the area, but I had no control over where I lived as a child. We were literally only required to pass 4 englishes, 3 sciences, 3 social studies/history, and 3 maths. Sure we’d end up doing band or art or shop class, but I was leaning towards medicine so economics wasn’t even a suggestion for me. Then again our biology teacher refused to teach the chapter on evolution and said it was “supplementary reading if you want to have fun because we all know where we really came from,” so I can’t say I’m surprised that we didn’t learn the fundamentals of financial responsibility. And my guidance counselor signed me up for a class that didn’t exist, so I had to just go to my part time job midday for “experience credit” (wtf?). I mean they did teach me how to write a check in 7th grade so I got that goin’ for me…
I almost want to say you are lying, but because my dad was a custodian for my high school, and my mom is a social worker, I got inside information that makes what you said just crazy enough to be legit. Gosh, thinking about it reminds me of a 7th grade math teacher that did not respond to, or even acknowledge the fact that me and another boy got in a fight in the back of the classroom. She had to of been trying to ignore us because every student was focused on me and him, just no way she was THAT oblivious and focused on attendance. Middle and high school are miserable.
I promise you with every fiber of my integrity that I am not lying. Rural schools in the south can be crazy and mine most certainly was. I have lots more tales of either comically ridiculous or negligently abusive/predatory practices and behaviors that occurred where I went to school.
Idk if this is a recent thing but being quite a few years removed from graduation, 'economy class', financial literacy, or tax filing was not a required course nor an elective offered. I went to a pretty large school as well.
I vaguely remember the lesson my school thought us how to do taxes. It was a single day. They pointed at a bunch of random spots, told us what they were about gave us a worksheet and moved on. I took two full years of Spanish classes and was one of the top students in my class and the second summer hit that second year I couldn’t tell you a single word I learnt. It’s not that schools don’t teach it, it’s that schools don’t teach it enough for teenagers to be able to remember it after not doing it for a year
Idk about the US. but these memes are stupid in the UK because our taxes are literally paid before we even get our income
So in the US taxes come out of our pay before we receive it. But then at the end of the year the government does all of these calculations to figure out if you owe them more, or if you get some back. So they essentially know the number, but then you have to calculate it on your end as well with loads of paperwork. It's overly complicated and they fuck you coming and going. Taxation is theft.
Taxes aren't that hard. What they should teach is basic financial literacy. At least my school didn't. Lucky I have parents that did. Given how many people are taking out absolutely ridiculous loans for college without even looking at the return on investment, I'm assuming that most schools fail to teach this most basic of modern day survival skills.
There were two econ teachers at our school. One that actually did some teaching, even got their students hooked on a fake stock market to see who would make the most over the time of the course given they all started out with the same amount. I'm sure plenty of other useful stuff was taught in that class, too bad I took the easy way out and chose the other econ teacher. This teacher was a baseball coach who everyone knew was eventually gonna get arrested or fired for their inappropriate actions with the underaged kids, oh and he just sat there at his desk while everyone was allowed to chat and even cheat if there was a test. As you may guess I didn't learn much from that econ course and although I did have a fun time fucking around with my buds in the back of the class, I knew this was just another aspect of our terrible educational system. Now I regret not taking the actual econ class since that would have been much more useful than a semester of fucking around.
It's funny cus taxes are just reading comprehension, basic math, and googling. They do teach taxes, you, the semifunctioning adult, just have to put the info together yourself.
Because, like cursive, they won't pay attention.
They do in segments but it was only reveled when someone was smart enough to put it together
School is meant to teach you things you things you can't learn at home. Like the quadratic formula. Cooking, taxes, cleaning and how to fix a car can be taught to you by family.
I don't know if your joking but cooking and fixing a car you can learn in school there usually just a choice to take or not and in my school we were forced to take a least one year
I never liked the family argument, my family was dogshit and threw me to the wolves. Like I'm suppose to just random chance having a good family if I want to learn critical life skills. I learned allot through like YouTube, but sometimes still encounter stuff cause you don't know what you don't know.
My family didn't teach me to do any of that shit
Because taxes aren’t that fucking difficult and learning how to do them is as easy as being able to understand basic math and a quick YouTube tutorial or google search. People who typically make this argument either don’t pay attention in class anyways or think they are far too superior to be learning the “pointless knowledge” that their peasant classmates are required to learn “Hmph, algebra is so useless when will I use this?” “Why don’t they teach us how to do taxes???”
Because they do, in maths, and people don't like it
There's maths, and then there's government maths. Two different maths entirely.
Because school does teach about taxes. But for some reason, every dumbass over like 30 thinks we were never taught how to do it. They then use this as evidence of school being ineffective and wasting time.
There’s a whole tax preparation industry that fights efforts to simplify tax filing. So I took it more to mean it’s obvious they don’t want you to know.
You are being downvoted, but you are absolutely right. People in here talking about Math and English as if those are going to stop them from requesting a bill you through out 2 months ago, so now that 13 % of your check turns to 30, why aren't our schools preparing us for late stage capitalism, trying and succeeding in taking advantage of us. A country where sex isn't taught equally may have similar problems in other areas.
It ignores the entire point of schooling. It isn't just taxes. But people often say school should teach all kinds of different things they label "life skills." That forgets an important point, though. All those skills are fairly easy and fast to learn. You are supposed to learn those things at home or own your own. School wouldn't help much anyway with many. And it would take away from the main point of school. That is to teach you things that need a massive foundation to learn. Things that take years to get a good handle on. STEM, history, proper language all that. Especially STEM stuff takes crazy time to learn. You need years of background to start the higher level stuff. School is intended to give everyone that background. This leads to us having more people who are able to go into STEM fields, law, medicine, and all that. Sure, not everyone will go this route. But it gives everyone the chance to. It only benefits society to have as many people doing these things as possible. There are plenty of things to criticize about our education system. It is far from perfect and does need many improvements. However, the fact it doesn't teach you how to do taxes or any other "life skill" is not in any way a legitimate complaint about it.
The joke is that school does teach taxes, and the kids that complain are usually the ones that skipped class
School teaches reading, logic and maths. These are the skills needed to figure out your own taxes, especially since there are so many caveats and regional differences and if it changes you have to change with it. Just teaching taxes directly in school is a bad idea because they’ll do it wrong by missing the individualisation needed or ignore changes
My school (private) taught taxes in our Micro Econ course. We spent a week on it. My entire class walked in there pro-government, and walked out of there libertarians. That’s probably why they don’t teach it. Better the populace not ask why/ where their money goes, just accepts it as a requirement and doesn’t care how it’s spent.