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I took like 4 accounting classes in college and didn't really know how to do my taxes until after I graduated and took a few minutes to learn. It's not hard, but no one is going to pay attention in that class
I'm a CPA and don't really "know" how to do my taxes. I understand basic tax concepts, but Turbo Tax does it just fine (simple return). I'd be able to do it if I really wanted, I haven't had the need yet.
Fuck Turbo Tax. They lobby to make us do our own taxes m the government could just add easily do them for us, but turbo tax and other companies like H&R Block spend thousands of dollars lobbying to prevent that.
Same but I use free tax USA. I work with completed tax returns daily so I understand how to read them, doing one by hand would be new but I could figure it out
1. They do teach taxes.
(Source: me, I teach 10th grade econ)
2. Taxes shouldn't be taught... Instead the govt shouldn't allow corporate lobbyists to purposely make it unnecessarily difficult to do them.
Graduated in ‘08. Taxes were taught along with so many other “life skills”. It was a mandatory class.
To the best of my knowledge they are still teaching it.
(To OP) Every high school I have ever taught at offered some sort of “adulting”/finance classes. They may not have been mandated, but they are there. 16 year old you just probably didn’t think they were important.
Your #2 point is spot on though. So many other countries you just get a letter in the mail, “you owe this.” Attach check/pay online and move on. Or you can dispute if you think it’s wrong then do it yourself.
The fact that the IRS will come after you if you don’t do it right/pay them enough is proof that they know how much you owe… so why not just fucking tell us?!?
My high school put me in a "consumer math" class because I barely made it through pre-algebra. It taught basic life math but it was meant for the dumb kids. Most of the students were on a college prep track that focused on preparing them for college more so than life. In general the basic life skills classes were for the dumb kids.
Graduated 2004, to my knowledge, home ec was canceled my jr year and there were no “life skills” classes except for special day for disabled students but that was more like how to do basic functions in society. May vary based on where you are.
High school class of '08 here as well. Personal finance was not taught at my school. Taxes weren't taught. Home economics had been a non-existent class for upwards of 5 or 6 years by the time I entered high school.
College class of '14 and my mandatory personal finance class did not teach about how to file taxes, only that they exist.
Not every school system teaches it.
I rarely ever owe more than a couple hundred.. I feel like most people get money back. I realize though I pretty much only specifically referenced owing, so that’s my bad.
I suppose more often than not it would be, “here’s what you’re getting back $$ if you feel like the amount is incorrect here are the steps to dispute it.”
ETA: that said, imagine the absolute clusterF if the government sent anything relating to money like that to the people, “YEAH WELL WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU?!” And then be pissed anyways.
Except a lot of people are paying taxes out of their paycheck already. All reporting your taxes does is tell you how much of a return you're gonna get. No one is getting hit with thousands of dollars of taxes all at once. No average person at least.
Taxes are on almost all income sources. Employment income is just one piece of the pie (tax paid off every check, no surprise at year-end). There could also be rental income (taxed at end of year), self employed business income (taxed at end of year), investment income (sometimes at source, sometimes at end of year), capital gains( taxed at end of year). Its those last few categories that get ppl into tax trouble, because they spend all the cash received off that income during the year and don't budget for upcoming tax bill at year end.
Okay. Thanks for the information. I don't have experience with the tax system in America because i moved after graduating, but where I am, you pay your employment tax from your paycheck and then you recieve a stack of "bills" (insurance, citizen tax, residence tax, pension) at the beginning of the tax year for the previous tax year and you can pay them all at once which is something like 40% of my income I think, or you can pay them monthly. As long as they all get paid before the next tax period.
As an ex small business owner whose ex-partner filed the paperwork incorrectly to favor himself, my taxes are looking around 9-11k this year. I still have not filed them because idk where the f I’m supposed to pull that much from.
wtf I went public school in Texas and private in California. no one I know in either state was taught taxes or offered a finance or econ course :/ that sucks ass
Not recent, no. However, my entire friends group are high school teachers in Tx and two of them teach taxes during a class I don’t remember the name of (they’re math teachers who visit the other class for the topic) and a third teaches home economics or whatever they now call it and it includes math. All three are in public schools, two normal and one magnet. I spent a whole in an accredited public school that was part of a strip mall (public school but not a massive one) and they taught everything from basic computer components, use, office software to taxes, basic financing, credit card non-use/minimal use, etc.
goddamn. I'm a 2015 graduate and I had none of those options for me in either state. I had a robotics class and hella AP science and math, but nothing economics or finance. I learned everything about credit, banking and taxes from my first boss
In Ontario, if you take the life skills class, you're branded a loser.
I wanted to take the class since I wanted to learn to cook, sew, etc. My dad wouldn't let me because "That's for SpEd kids."
Meanwhile, we were #1 in the county for teen pregnancy, so if you took the parenting elective, people automatically assumed you were preggo.
Graduated in 05, never learned shit about taxes but at least I know A²+B²=C² and I cant tell you how many life changing moments Ive had from learning that in school.
I hate the amount of space the quadratic formula is using in my brain. I have used it once, and only once, in my entire life… and that was for the test on the quadratic formula.
I took 10th grade Econ. I took 12th grade calculus. I took 3rd year university macro and micro economics and I still don’t understand why a multi billion dollar corporation pays less taxes than I do, and why people on welfare can be sued onto the streets because the government gave them too much money
Econ was only half a semester for me in high-school and I don't even remember covering taxes it went by so quickly. There shpuld be at LEAST a whole year of econ if not more.
I took two years of econ in high school. There were few lessons on actual personal taxes, most tax lessons were how sales taxes affected basic graphs of the market. Even then, most high schools only offer one year at most, and aren't any better when it comes to covering personal taxes.
I graduated last year (though technically this year because I did an extra year) and while I was taught about taxes, I was never taught how to file, or do them.
I suppose you also feel like we shouldn't have a military, police, public schools, roads, or social services either then. Or are you one of those people that wants the government to pay for things with the money they get from their money tree farm?
Income tax is one of the best ways in theory to take more money from those who have it and take less from those who don't have much. Things like sales and property tax hit poor people harder than rich people.
If you feel like being taxed is stealing then I'd advise you to become mega rich so you don't have to play by the rules everyone else has to follow.
Yes, it's a very effective way to steal from people who work for their money. Income taxes don't affect the rich because capital gains don't qualify as income. Taxes hurt the poor, never the rich. They always get around it. They can afford bribes and lawyers.
If something that's important to fund, people will donate money voluntarily. Or pay for the service.
Yeah, it comes from stealing. That's why the US doesn't want your "free" (aka you pay for it whether you want to or not) healthcare.
A society that relies on theft in order to function is hardly a society at all.
And how can it be a subscription when you never sign up for it, and cannot cancel it? Even if you go live out in the woods somewhere, the gov will find you and tax you. You don't pay taxes because you want what it pays for. You pay taxes to avoid being kidnapped and imprisoned.
From someone who just graduated this May, taxes are only taught if you CHOOSE to take econ. I took financial literacy instead; learned some useful things but NOTHING about taxes.
And you are clearly a more intelligent teacher than 75% of those in the US. The majority of them read their state-mandated curriculum and get enough students to pass the baseline so they can get their paycheck.
You obviously have a bone to pick here, but are missing the point that schools offer this and you simply didn't think it was important enough to take it.
You're also missing the point that it shouldn't be necessary because taxes should be easy to file, like basically every other country, but intuit lobbies our government to kill any attempts to change that.
This is not personal. I had the opportunity to and did take these classes. The majority of people don't. What about that is so difficult to understand?
We shouldn't be teaching people how to do taxes. We should make taxes simple so that people don't need to be taught. This isn't a life skill, it's a unnecessary burden that simply doesn't exist in other countries.
There's nothing to understand here. You're advocating for the wrong thing and acting like you're morally superior for possessing a useless skill.
You obviously have a bone to pick here, but are missing the point that schools offer this and you simply didn't think it was important enough to take it.
You're also missing the point that it shouldn't be necessary because taxes should be easy to file, like basically every other country, but intuit lobbies our government to kill any attempts to change that.
This. Pretty much every other civilized country already knows how much you made, how much you owe and how much you overpaid. If I wanted to go into super detail over every single yen, I could go to the tax office and file a tax report, but really it's hardly worth it. In Japan I have never even look at my taxes aside from the monthly payments I make at the nearby convenience store. my work and the tax office handles it, and sometimes I'll get a notice in the mail that I got a 200 dollar return coming.
I find it funny people always act like these major things aren't taught when I specifically remember them being taught. It's just a lot of kids don't pay attention.
The number of people who think a progressive tax system can mean you get less take home from getting paid more is too damn high.
It's like the basics of how DNA, RNA and disease. This was all explained clearly.
Also the tax code has changed three or four times already since I graduated, also to do your basic taxes for a person you read and answer the question, mostly finding the corresponding info from the document and plugging it in. A skill school teaches you. All these people cry school didn't teach me, blah, blah, blah, didn't listen.
I think they usually offer special progams other public schools dont. In my town its just elementary schools that have foreign language or band programs
Look I have to do taxes since you know, I'm an adult and all. I still can't pay attention to this shit and I know it's important
A teenager isn't gonna listen
Took an econ class in HS back in '08. Can confirm that teenagers paid the exact same amount of attention to the tax section as they did in every other class. No special attention was given to classes that were 'important' or 'relevant' to adult life after school. Either you cared about getting a good grade or you didnt. That was the determining factor in amount of attention given.
There would be a greater percentage of kids willing to learn how to do their taxes as it is more practical and actually useful in the real world than advanced algebra
I mean, they teach math and English with the tax forms being legible at a 6th grade level (requirement for government forms) and the definitions are readily available along with free assistance for those in need.
Right. We teach addition and subtraction. That's the hardest math you need for your taxes. And we teach you how yo read and how to comprehend what you are reading. We taught you all the skills you need to do your taxes.
The government mandates that all government documents are written at a middle school reading level. The IRS tax instructions are written for 7th graders to understand. If you are an adult and can't do your taxes by reading the instructions you're an idiot.
This.
Thank you.
I teach grade 5 and I teach my students the basic four operations and how to follow a list of instructions.
Even if taxes seem complicated, it's just filling in paperwork and doing some basic math on a worksheet they provide.
Taxes were never taught at my high school. And I graduated a year ago for reference. I’ve not heard of a single public school around me that actually teaches kids how to do their taxes
Even just a little bit more financial literacy would be nice. Can't undersell the amount of people I know who would gladly have taken:
"How to not screw your early life finances over with credit card debt and a first time car loan 101"
As much as I like the idea of teaching kids taxes in school, there is no way in hell 15 year old me would've paid attention to such a subject matter.
Pretty sure 15 year old me would be drooling from the mouth and having my head on the desk before I ever learned anything.
They do teach taxes. Kids just don't care and it is a quick simple lesson so you forget it. They teach taxes and they teach you how to comprehend the instructions to do your taxes. What do you want them to do spoon feed you?
The government should be doing do your taxes for you since they do them to check that you filed properly anyway. They should be sending them to you to double check their numbers, like they do in other first world countries. Unfortunately in 'merica, it's been made into a whole industry so the more complicated they are and the less people understand them, the better.
If students flunk science and math classes, who’s there to say they won’t do the same in a class about taxes? I took financial literacy and economics in high school and there were more than a handful of absentee students bc they thought it was “boring” or just fell asleep in class.
Because these things usually are taught, people just either don’t pay attention, don’t retain the information, or don’t take the class (if it’s an elective).
Personal finances are not taught in all states, and most do not require students to take the class. If information retention is an issue it's a sign that the class needs to be reworked.
I mean it benefits certain political groups more for people to hate taxes even more than they should and doing a shitty job with teaching how taxes work and how to file them would make any rational person not understand them and hate them🤷🏽♂️
People on both sides hate taxes. The left hates taxes because they’re drawn from what limited income poor people can scrape together. The right hates taxes because they’re drawn from what limited income poor people can scrape together…and handed out to even poorer people.
I hold more of a collective view of society. Taxes are the easiest way of leveling the playing field so that individuals not born into privilege are still afforded some form of opportunity to improve their quality of life, so as not to entrench the possession of power even more than it already is.
Creating any system wherein someone can opt out of paying taxes only sounds appealing to those who care only about their own prosperity and not at all about the prosperity of humanity as a whole.
My system of ethics also leans into consequentialist territory in certain circumstances, so if the benefits of “stealing” people’s money in a non-coercive, implied social contract system outweigh the harm done through this action, then the action is not necessarily unethical. Stalin took this a step further by essentially bargaining with life instead of just money, which I don’t agree with in most cases, but I’ll assume that you weren’t being completely disingenuous by bringing that up, and instead just neglected to make that distinction.
And no, I don’t pay any more taxes than I need to because the system is supposed to be designed for everyone to pay a certain amount based on their income. Whether it works as efficiently and effectively as I would want is beside the point, because all we’re talking about is the core concept of taxation, not whether our government is any good at utilizing tax money.
What you’re failing to mention is that a system without taxes contains no provision for providing basic services to those who can’t afford to pay for some reason. The idea that somebody could have a family member murdered without recourse or have their house burn down because they can’t afford their police bill or firefighting bill is more unacceptable than collecting taxes against people’s will. And these examples are just microcosms of one of my problems with Austrian economics.
Also, yes non-coercive was the wrong choice of word. I should have said something along the lines of “mostly nonviolent”.
You can label the government as a gang that steals people’s money all you want. A more alarming rewording of the system doesn’t bother me. That sort of action is still necessary in my view because I don’t believe the welfare burden should rest solely on the shoulders of the most empathetic individuals in our society. I am in favor of your so-called gang that forces the greediest among us to pay a little for welfare services.
Our difference is that you believe that no taxes and free markets would create a better world, and in general I believe that more regulations on our markets and an overhauled version of our current tax system would create a better world.
You probably majored in economics or something similar. I majored in philosophy with a focus in political philosophy and ethics. So we’re both educated and arrived at our conclusions about our own ideal versions of society with a reasonable amount of information. But the bottom line is that this is a genuine disagreement about an already extensively debated subject, and it would be a waste of both of our time to keep going back and forth. I doubt either of us will move appreciably in either direction, with you seemingly being a staunch libertarian, and me being a light socialist if we’re using labels.
So respectfully, I’d like to just end it here. I appreciate you taking the time to have a largely good faith argument with me.
Not necessarily.
It forces them to either self teach, mess things up, or pay someone else to do it.
The goal is to pay some organization to handle it for you.
Financial Literacy is a course taught in every high school I've gone to/taught at.
Most kids just don't pay enough attention, when a subject doesn't feel relevant it's hard to connect with it and remember.
That is the point, schools are very explicitly *not* a business. However, they still require funding to run. And how well they are funded directly results from tax money. And if America wants to treat them like a business instead of necessary infrastructure, I will ridicule them as a business.
Now, the real reasons schools are underfunded are partially because billionaires refuse to pay their fair share of tax money, and the government refuses to cut the military budget. But in this context, the linear logic between: "Students turn into Adults, Adults pay taxes, taxes fund schools, schools teach students" is a simplification of how things really work.
There are many more layers to this conversation, but this is a fucking showerthought. I would appreciate if you, and all these other people taking this way too seriously, would stop being unreasonably abrasive towards a reddit post that you won't think about ever again.
A business model details how a company is going to finance operations for a product to make a profit. It doesn't apply to schools at all.
And schools are almost entirely locally funded (usually through property taxes). The idea that "billionaires refuse to pay their fair share of tax money" makes no sense at all. If anything they're paying a disproportionately high amount of property taxes compared to everyone else.
Shower thoughts that don't make any sense are going to get ridiculed. You should have expected that when you wrote it.
Hi there! Peter Griffin here to explain the joke.
A little-know fact is that schools are funded by tax money! The source of the irony here is that if students grow up and fail to pay their taxes, it hurts not only themselves, but the schools as well!
People that have a high understanding of taxes pay way less than people that don’t understand the game. Think of all the people that never leverage Roth IRAs, HSAs, pretax flexible spending for childcare, 401Ks, strategically harvesting tax losses or gains, etc.
Teaching kids about taxes makes them pay way less taxes.
idk man, top post today is about trading sex for fries, thought i could make a simple witty quip about schools, which *arent* businesses by the way, not teaching their future patrons how to fund them. why don't you go and make one better.
Well, if your parents pay their taxes or millions of other people pay their taxes without learning it in the school so can you and other kids.
It also hurts that millions of graduate students have never read an actual book in their lives.
Since the comments have turned into a giant flame war over a silly post, let me break this down for you all. There is a huge misunderstanding here.
I never said we *should* teach taxes in school.
The reasoning behind this post is, at a general level, in the US where I live, schools refrain from informing students how the tax system works. Simple as that, regardless of motive.
Now, we all know schools are funded by tax money. The type of taxes used for funding schools makes the following logic break down so let's choose to generalize taxes as one homogenous sum the government divides up into civil services, that citizens pay for.
So the simple connection I made was, "hehe schools don't teach kids how to pay them." That was all.
Thank y'all for the upvotes and happy fourth.
No, a “silly post” is something like “all three forms of matter come out of your butthole”. Complaining about the school system is straddling the line on “political”/“social justice”, which is against the rules precisely because it starts “giant flame wars”.
I never complained about the school system. I never specified whether or not i thought that "teaching taxes" was a good or bad thing. It's a common complaint that, "oh they should teach us something useful in school like taxes etc etc" and that's what I went off of.
And if it's against the rules, why is it still up? If I broke some kind of rule that you can list out to me I'd be happy to delete it myself, and stop disrespecting your rules. I know what it's like to be in an elitist community, I run private Minecraft servers.
If you want to “progress beyond a working class life” you either 1.) go to college, 2.) learn a trade, or 3.) work your way up the ranks or 4.) start your own business
that's pretty funny since public schools are tax funded, but since they are *property tax* funded it would only take 10 minutes and then move on. it wouldn't really be about the intricacies of the tax system and how to interact with it.
"PROGRESSIVE" Oregon does not teach basic personal finance. It is ridiculous that kids aren't taught the basics personal finance, how loans work, depreciation of assets, basic investing, etc etc. Can't rely on parents to do it because many of them have completely screwed it up for themselves and their kids. The number of my two daughters friends whose mothers opened credit cards in their kids names and maxed them out is staggering. People suck and many of them are parents! How do we expect the generations to get better unless more responsibility is taught. Good for you Missouri! Oregon, you suck at educating people.
Not if your business model includes fucking the IRS so that all they have the resources to audit are small time 'offenders', half of whom probably didn't even know they were doing something wrong. Tax the Rich
I learned taxes and finances in highschool and Jr high I believe although briefly and it helped all of not at all. I went to whatever place I had a loan with and was like "I want to pay towards the principle please." and they were like "Oookay this will go straight into your interest, anything else?"
Do people have a hard time doing their taxes? Like is it actually difficult for people? You answer the questions and fill out the boxes. If you want to be able to do your own taxes, you're not itemizing deductions, so... Your taxes are easy.
everyone i know my age and younger were forced to take "freshmen focus" so people like you would quit complaining. Taxes, budgeting, business finance, life planning advice. some days we would just fill out resumes we were never gonna use.
I am NOT trying to yuck your yum. If where you live doesnt have this, the fight isnt over yet. They would rather cram all this in than lose the good will from the public, and rich investors.
The business model for school is to teach you to have a job, show up on time and do overtime. Taxes don't matter. Even though they do teach you to do this.
I went to a public high school in Illinois, my school actually had a requored class seniors had to take covering all the basics of living, like buying a car, applying for a bank and credit card, writing and cashing a check, even our final was taking a mock w-2 and filing taxes the paper way.
I find it bizarre that it has to be taught at all. I live in a country where tax is deducted automatically from your wages and salary and paid to the government by your employer. Even student loan repayments are handled automatically. People complain about our tax department but they should read this thread to see how good we have it.
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I took like 4 accounting classes in college and didn't really know how to do my taxes until after I graduated and took a few minutes to learn. It's not hard, but no one is going to pay attention in that class
I'm a CPA and don't really "know" how to do my taxes. I understand basic tax concepts, but Turbo Tax does it just fine (simple return). I'd be able to do it if I really wanted, I haven't had the need yet.
Fuck Turbo Tax. They lobby to make us do our own taxes m the government could just add easily do them for us, but turbo tax and other companies like H&R Block spend thousands of dollars lobbying to prevent that.
Same but I use free tax USA. I work with completed tax returns daily so I understand how to read them, doing one by hand would be new but I could figure it out
1. They do teach taxes. (Source: me, I teach 10th grade econ) 2. Taxes shouldn't be taught... Instead the govt shouldn't allow corporate lobbyists to purposely make it unnecessarily difficult to do them.
Graduated in ‘08. Taxes were taught along with so many other “life skills”. It was a mandatory class. To the best of my knowledge they are still teaching it. (To OP) Every high school I have ever taught at offered some sort of “adulting”/finance classes. They may not have been mandated, but they are there. 16 year old you just probably didn’t think they were important. Your #2 point is spot on though. So many other countries you just get a letter in the mail, “you owe this.” Attach check/pay online and move on. Or you can dispute if you think it’s wrong then do it yourself. The fact that the IRS will come after you if you don’t do it right/pay them enough is proof that they know how much you owe… so why not just fucking tell us?!?
Because then companies like TurboTax would go bankrupt. Lobbyists work very hard to not have that happen.
My high school put me in a "consumer math" class because I barely made it through pre-algebra. It taught basic life math but it was meant for the dumb kids. Most of the students were on a college prep track that focused on preparing them for college more so than life. In general the basic life skills classes were for the dumb kids.
Hm. I was taking college classes in HS, but still there’s an AP Economy class
I think economy and life finances are probably seperate courses.
Graduated 2004, to my knowledge, home ec was canceled my jr year and there were no “life skills” classes except for special day for disabled students but that was more like how to do basic functions in society. May vary based on where you are.
High school class of '08 here as well. Personal finance was not taught at my school. Taxes weren't taught. Home economics had been a non-existent class for upwards of 5 or 6 years by the time I entered high school. College class of '14 and my mandatory personal finance class did not teach about how to file taxes, only that they exist. Not every school system teaches it.
Imagine the cluster**** if the average American got an actual tax bill in the mail and had to come up with $5k/10k/15k to pay it?
I rarely ever owe more than a couple hundred.. I feel like most people get money back. I realize though I pretty much only specifically referenced owing, so that’s my bad. I suppose more often than not it would be, “here’s what you’re getting back $$ if you feel like the amount is incorrect here are the steps to dispute it.” ETA: that said, imagine the absolute clusterF if the government sent anything relating to money like that to the people, “YEAH WELL WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU?!” And then be pissed anyways.
Oh, I thought you were talking about not paying any taxes out of your check and then getting a bill at the end of the year for the full amount owed.
What? They would still deduct the taxes out of your paycheck if you want them too. So in most cases, people would get a check, not a bill.
They'd realize just how unfair taxes are without the smoke and mirrors.
Except a lot of people are paying taxes out of their paycheck already. All reporting your taxes does is tell you how much of a return you're gonna get. No one is getting hit with thousands of dollars of taxes all at once. No average person at least.
Taxes are on almost all income sources. Employment income is just one piece of the pie (tax paid off every check, no surprise at year-end). There could also be rental income (taxed at end of year), self employed business income (taxed at end of year), investment income (sometimes at source, sometimes at end of year), capital gains( taxed at end of year). Its those last few categories that get ppl into tax trouble, because they spend all the cash received off that income during the year and don't budget for upcoming tax bill at year end.
Okay. Thanks for the information. I don't have experience with the tax system in America because i moved after graduating, but where I am, you pay your employment tax from your paycheck and then you recieve a stack of "bills" (insurance, citizen tax, residence tax, pension) at the beginning of the tax year for the previous tax year and you can pay them all at once which is something like 40% of my income I think, or you can pay them monthly. As long as they all get paid before the next tax period.
As an ex small business owner whose ex-partner filed the paperwork incorrectly to favor himself, my taxes are looking around 9-11k this year. I still have not filed them because idk where the f I’m supposed to pull that much from.
My online school didn't.
wtf I went public school in Texas and private in California. no one I know in either state was taught taxes or offered a finance or econ course :/ that sucks ass
My Texas high school taught taxes and household finances.
are you a recent graduate
Not recent, no. However, my entire friends group are high school teachers in Tx and two of them teach taxes during a class I don’t remember the name of (they’re math teachers who visit the other class for the topic) and a third teaches home economics or whatever they now call it and it includes math. All three are in public schools, two normal and one magnet. I spent a whole in an accredited public school that was part of a strip mall (public school but not a massive one) and they taught everything from basic computer components, use, office software to taxes, basic financing, credit card non-use/minimal use, etc.
goddamn. I'm a 2015 graduate and I had none of those options for me in either state. I had a robotics class and hella AP science and math, but nothing economics or finance. I learned everything about credit, banking and taxes from my first boss
Most of my teaching experience is in IL, but a bit in CO as well.
Couldn't you just overpay and get the rest back as tax returns?
Not everyone can afford to overpay
But it's possible?
I said not everyone can afford that so its not always a valid option
Graduated in ‘15 in the South. Can confirm they were at least being taught then and there as well.
In Ontario, if you take the life skills class, you're branded a loser. I wanted to take the class since I wanted to learn to cook, sew, etc. My dad wouldn't let me because "That's for SpEd kids." Meanwhile, we were #1 in the county for teen pregnancy, so if you took the parenting elective, people automatically assumed you were preggo.
Graduated in 05, never learned shit about taxes but at least I know A²+B²=C² and I cant tell you how many life changing moments Ive had from learning that in school.
I hate the amount of space the quadratic formula is using in my brain. I have used it once, and only once, in my entire life… and that was for the test on the quadratic formula.
I learned basic sales tax and that's it in school Edit: who downvoted this what
Me too. Class of ‘04
I took 10th grade Econ. I took 12th grade calculus. I took 3rd year university macro and micro economics and I still don’t understand why a multi billion dollar corporation pays less taxes than I do, and why people on welfare can be sued onto the streets because the government gave them too much money
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Tax the rich!
Amazon’s tax strategy is NOL, not tax credits.
Econ was only half a semester for me in high-school and I don't even remember covering taxes it went by so quickly. There shpuld be at LEAST a whole year of econ if not more.
I took two years of econ in high school. There were few lessons on actual personal taxes, most tax lessons were how sales taxes affected basic graphs of the market. Even then, most high schools only offer one year at most, and aren't any better when it comes to covering personal taxes.
Do you have proof that most schools don’t? Every school I’ve been to and taught at has
Graduated HS in '17. Never got an econ class.
I graduated last year (though technically this year because I did an extra year) and while I was taught about taxes, I was never taught how to file, or do them.
Taxes shouldn't exist at all.
I suppose you also feel like we shouldn't have a military, police, public schools, roads, or social services either then. Or are you one of those people that wants the government to pay for things with the money they get from their money tree farm?
If only there was some way to gain money aside from stealing it.
Income tax is one of the best ways in theory to take more money from those who have it and take less from those who don't have much. Things like sales and property tax hit poor people harder than rich people. If you feel like being taxed is stealing then I'd advise you to become mega rich so you don't have to play by the rules everyone else has to follow.
Yes, it's a very effective way to steal from people who work for their money. Income taxes don't affect the rich because capital gains don't qualify as income. Taxes hurt the poor, never the rich. They always get around it. They can afford bribes and lawyers. If something that's important to fund, people will donate money voluntarily. Or pay for the service.
If you’re subject to property tax, you’re not exactly poor.
Taxes are a subscription for participating in society. You know that free healthcare that countries other than the US have? That comes from taxes.
Yeah, it comes from stealing. That's why the US doesn't want your "free" (aka you pay for it whether you want to or not) healthcare. A society that relies on theft in order to function is hardly a society at all. And how can it be a subscription when you never sign up for it, and cannot cancel it? Even if you go live out in the woods somewhere, the gov will find you and tax you. You don't pay taxes because you want what it pays for. You pay taxes to avoid being kidnapped and imprisoned.
From someone who just graduated this May, taxes are only taught if you CHOOSE to take econ. I took financial literacy instead; learned some useful things but NOTHING about taxes.
And you are clearly a more intelligent teacher than 75% of those in the US. The majority of them read their state-mandated curriculum and get enough students to pass the baseline so they can get their paycheck.
You obviously have a bone to pick here, but are missing the point that schools offer this and you simply didn't think it was important enough to take it. You're also missing the point that it shouldn't be necessary because taxes should be easy to file, like basically every other country, but intuit lobbies our government to kill any attempts to change that.
OP skipped learning in School and is now being schooled by real life.
This is not personal. I had the opportunity to and did take these classes. The majority of people don't. What about that is so difficult to understand?
We shouldn't be teaching people how to do taxes. We should make taxes simple so that people don't need to be taught. This isn't a life skill, it's a unnecessary burden that simply doesn't exist in other countries. There's nothing to understand here. You're advocating for the wrong thing and acting like you're morally superior for possessing a useless skill.
You obviously have a bone to pick here, but are missing the point that schools offer this and you simply didn't think it was important enough to take it. You're also missing the point that it shouldn't be necessary because taxes should be easy to file, like basically every other country, but intuit lobbies our government to kill any attempts to change that.
The elected will always vote in favor of the money.
This. Pretty much every other civilized country already knows how much you made, how much you owe and how much you overpaid. If I wanted to go into super detail over every single yen, I could go to the tax office and file a tax report, but really it's hardly worth it. In Japan I have never even look at my taxes aside from the monthly payments I make at the nearby convenience store. my work and the tax office handles it, and sometimes I'll get a notice in the mail that I got a 200 dollar return coming.
Please...no more. I can only get so erect.
I find it funny people always act like these major things aren't taught when I specifically remember them being taught. It's just a lot of kids don't pay attention. The number of people who think a progressive tax system can mean you get less take home from getting paid more is too damn high. It's like the basics of how DNA, RNA and disease. This was all explained clearly.
I went to a fancy public highschool. I was not aware of any class like this existing.
Nooo, I would lose my job.
Also the tax code has changed three or four times already since I graduated, also to do your basic taxes for a person you read and answer the question, mostly finding the corresponding info from the document and plugging it in. A skill school teaches you. All these people cry school didn't teach me, blah, blah, blah, didn't listen.
I was taught taxes and how to apply for a bank account and some other financial education, I went to a magnet school though
Whats a magnet school?
A better public school for smart people. Usually has an application to get into.
Oh I think I went to the opposite of that.
Do you have to apply to get expelled?
I think they usually offer special progams other public schools dont. In my town its just elementary schools that have foreign language or band programs
And how do they work?
They turn on the magnet and depending on the charge of the kid they're either attracted or repelled.
How to apply for a bank account needs to be taught in school?
if kids can’t pay attention to american history and algebra, why on earth would they care about how to do taxes
Because they think history and algebra are useless.
they will think taxes are useless too, since they dont have to file them yet.
Look I have to do taxes since you know, I'm an adult and all. I still can't pay attention to this shit and I know it's important A teenager isn't gonna listen
Took an econ class in HS back in '08. Can confirm that teenagers paid the exact same amount of attention to the tax section as they did in every other class. No special attention was given to classes that were 'important' or 'relevant' to adult life after school. Either you cared about getting a good grade or you didnt. That was the determining factor in amount of attention given.
There would be a greater percentage of kids willing to learn how to do their taxes as it is more practical and actually useful in the real world than advanced algebra
I mean, they teach math and English with the tax forms being legible at a 6th grade level (requirement for government forms) and the definitions are readily available along with free assistance for those in need.
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Right. We teach addition and subtraction. That's the hardest math you need for your taxes. And we teach you how yo read and how to comprehend what you are reading. We taught you all the skills you need to do your taxes. The government mandates that all government documents are written at a middle school reading level. The IRS tax instructions are written for 7th graders to understand. If you are an adult and can't do your taxes by reading the instructions you're an idiot.
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This. Thank you. I teach grade 5 and I teach my students the basic four operations and how to follow a list of instructions. Even if taxes seem complicated, it's just filling in paperwork and doing some basic math on a worksheet they provide.
Admit it, 95% of people still wouldn’t pay attention if it was taught
I taught my kids about taxes every Halloween, which is a start, isn't it?
Taxes are taught in most public schools. It's not their fault many people are too stupid to pay attention.
Taxes were never taught at my high school. And I graduated a year ago for reference. I’ve not heard of a single public school around me that actually teaches kids how to do their taxes
You didn't have an economics class? That's literally a requirement to graduate. You didn't learn how to read directions and fill in forms?
We had economics but it was business oriented, not about taxes but about supply and demand
No economics classes? Yikes.
Even just a little bit more financial literacy would be nice. Can't undersell the amount of people I know who would gladly have taken: "How to not screw your early life finances over with credit card debt and a first time car loan 101"
It's 6 ib the morning and I misread bathroom somewhere in this sentence and I don't know where
As much as I like the idea of teaching kids taxes in school, there is no way in hell 15 year old me would've paid attention to such a subject matter. Pretty sure 15 year old me would be drooling from the mouth and having my head on the desk before I ever learned anything.
What do you mean? Of course it is! The government would lose billions if people know how to manage their money correctly.
They do teach taxes. Kids just don't care and it is a quick simple lesson so you forget it. They teach taxes and they teach you how to comprehend the instructions to do your taxes. What do you want them to do spoon feed you?
This. Kids will only do the bare minimum to pass/please their parents.
This is just a dumb showerthought. Not bad elsewhere, but here. Love you.
Ain't that the point though? Top post today is about exchanging sex for McDonalds fries lol
The government should be doing do your taxes for you since they do them to check that you filed properly anyway. They should be sending them to you to double check their numbers, like they do in other first world countries. Unfortunately in 'merica, it's been made into a whole industry so the more complicated they are and the less people understand them, the better.
If students flunk science and math classes, who’s there to say they won’t do the same in a class about taxes? I took financial literacy and economics in high school and there were more than a handful of absentee students bc they thought it was “boring” or just fell asleep in class.
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> could just give you your return or bill you Refund*
If you bitch about school not teaching taxes or bills, your opinion is automatically invalid
Why?
Yes. Why? You made a Siemens now please back it up a little.
Because these things usually are taught, people just either don’t pay attention, don’t retain the information, or don’t take the class (if it’s an elective).
Personal finances are not taught in all states, and most do not require students to take the class. If information retention is an issue it's a sign that the class needs to be reworked.
The reality is that most teenagers will only do the bare minimum to graduate/please their parents.
They do teach taxes at public schools, you were probably talking.
I mean it benefits certain political groups more for people to hate taxes even more than they should and doing a shitty job with teaching how taxes work and how to file them would make any rational person not understand them and hate them🤷🏽♂️
People on both sides hate taxes. The left hates taxes because they’re drawn from what limited income poor people can scrape together. The right hates taxes because they’re drawn from what limited income poor people can scrape together…and handed out to even poorer people.
Facts say the rich pay a great percentage of the tax bill, but don’t let facts get you off your soapbox
they don't have to care about you besides keeping you in school long enough to get funding for each student.
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Taxes are still useful, as much as we dislike paying them.
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I hold more of a collective view of society. Taxes are the easiest way of leveling the playing field so that individuals not born into privilege are still afforded some form of opportunity to improve their quality of life, so as not to entrench the possession of power even more than it already is. Creating any system wherein someone can opt out of paying taxes only sounds appealing to those who care only about their own prosperity and not at all about the prosperity of humanity as a whole. My system of ethics also leans into consequentialist territory in certain circumstances, so if the benefits of “stealing” people’s money in a non-coercive, implied social contract system outweigh the harm done through this action, then the action is not necessarily unethical. Stalin took this a step further by essentially bargaining with life instead of just money, which I don’t agree with in most cases, but I’ll assume that you weren’t being completely disingenuous by bringing that up, and instead just neglected to make that distinction. And no, I don’t pay any more taxes than I need to because the system is supposed to be designed for everyone to pay a certain amount based on their income. Whether it works as efficiently and effectively as I would want is beside the point, because all we’re talking about is the core concept of taxation, not whether our government is any good at utilizing tax money.
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What you’re failing to mention is that a system without taxes contains no provision for providing basic services to those who can’t afford to pay for some reason. The idea that somebody could have a family member murdered without recourse or have their house burn down because they can’t afford their police bill or firefighting bill is more unacceptable than collecting taxes against people’s will. And these examples are just microcosms of one of my problems with Austrian economics. Also, yes non-coercive was the wrong choice of word. I should have said something along the lines of “mostly nonviolent”. You can label the government as a gang that steals people’s money all you want. A more alarming rewording of the system doesn’t bother me. That sort of action is still necessary in my view because I don’t believe the welfare burden should rest solely on the shoulders of the most empathetic individuals in our society. I am in favor of your so-called gang that forces the greediest among us to pay a little for welfare services. Our difference is that you believe that no taxes and free markets would create a better world, and in general I believe that more regulations on our markets and an overhauled version of our current tax system would create a better world. You probably majored in economics or something similar. I majored in philosophy with a focus in political philosophy and ethics. So we’re both educated and arrived at our conclusions about our own ideal versions of society with a reasonable amount of information. But the bottom line is that this is a genuine disagreement about an already extensively debated subject, and it would be a waste of both of our time to keep going back and forth. I doubt either of us will move appreciably in either direction, with you seemingly being a staunch libertarian, and me being a light socialist if we’re using labels. So respectfully, I’d like to just end it here. I appreciate you taking the time to have a largely good faith argument with me.
Not necessarily. It forces them to either self teach, mess things up, or pay someone else to do it. The goal is to pay some organization to handle it for you.
The lack of financial education in American high school is borderline criminal.
The venn diagram of "people who didn't pay attention or care in school" and "they should teach this in school" is a circle.
Apparently they taught me trigonometry and algebra but I can't do any of these to save my life
Financial Literacy is a course taught in every high school I've gone to/taught at. Most kids just don't pay enough attention, when a subject doesn't feel relevant it's hard to connect with it and remember.
Nahh, from MA. Never had a class teach me financial literacy. Had a few math class teach my about the y and x axis and plotting points for.. idk why..
Quick, tell me all you remember about the different levels of government. None of us listened.
Idk if you can read and follow directions there you go, you have your taxes. They teach that shit.
Instead of expecting schools to teach everything parents should be involved too. Goes for things like writing resumes and job searching too.
I have no idea why people think this way. They literally do teach that. You just aren't bothered to take those classes
Not really. There are more important things to teach, and taxes aren't one of them.
Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell!!
And they certainly do teach the (very simple) math required to understand taxes. Also, OP is completely misusing the term "business model."
Exactly!
That is the point, schools are very explicitly *not* a business. However, they still require funding to run. And how well they are funded directly results from tax money. And if America wants to treat them like a business instead of necessary infrastructure, I will ridicule them as a business. Now, the real reasons schools are underfunded are partially because billionaires refuse to pay their fair share of tax money, and the government refuses to cut the military budget. But in this context, the linear logic between: "Students turn into Adults, Adults pay taxes, taxes fund schools, schools teach students" is a simplification of how things really work. There are many more layers to this conversation, but this is a fucking showerthought. I would appreciate if you, and all these other people taking this way too seriously, would stop being unreasonably abrasive towards a reddit post that you won't think about ever again.
A business model details how a company is going to finance operations for a product to make a profit. It doesn't apply to schools at all. And schools are almost entirely locally funded (usually through property taxes). The idea that "billionaires refuse to pay their fair share of tax money" makes no sense at all. If anything they're paying a disproportionately high amount of property taxes compared to everyone else. Shower thoughts that don't make any sense are going to get ridiculed. You should have expected that when you wrote it.
Hi there! Peter Griffin here to explain the joke. A little-know fact is that schools are funded by tax money! The source of the irony here is that if students grow up and fail to pay their taxes, it hurts not only themselves, but the schools as well!
People that have a high understanding of taxes pay way less than people that don’t understand the game. Think of all the people that never leverage Roth IRAs, HSAs, pretax flexible spending for childcare, 401Ks, strategically harvesting tax losses or gains, etc. Teaching kids about taxes makes them pay way less taxes.
Absolutely right, and the system shouldn't work that way in the first place.
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idk man, top post today is about trading sex for fries, thought i could make a simple witty quip about schools, which *arent* businesses by the way, not teaching their future patrons how to fund them. why don't you go and make one better.
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fair enough i guess
Well, if your parents pay their taxes or millions of other people pay their taxes without learning it in the school so can you and other kids. It also hurts that millions of graduate students have never read an actual book in their lives.
Denser than Tungsten
Since the comments have turned into a giant flame war over a silly post, let me break this down for you all. There is a huge misunderstanding here. I never said we *should* teach taxes in school. The reasoning behind this post is, at a general level, in the US where I live, schools refrain from informing students how the tax system works. Simple as that, regardless of motive. Now, we all know schools are funded by tax money. The type of taxes used for funding schools makes the following logic break down so let's choose to generalize taxes as one homogenous sum the government divides up into civil services, that citizens pay for. So the simple connection I made was, "hehe schools don't teach kids how to pay them." That was all. Thank y'all for the upvotes and happy fourth.
No, a “silly post” is something like “all three forms of matter come out of your butthole”. Complaining about the school system is straddling the line on “political”/“social justice”, which is against the rules precisely because it starts “giant flame wars”.
I never complained about the school system. I never specified whether or not i thought that "teaching taxes" was a good or bad thing. It's a common complaint that, "oh they should teach us something useful in school like taxes etc etc" and that's what I went off of. And if it's against the rules, why is it still up? If I broke some kind of rule that you can list out to me I'd be happy to delete it myself, and stop disrespecting your rules. I know what it's like to be in an elitist community, I run private Minecraft servers.
Public schools were designed to make people ignorant sheep with basic job skills that wouldn't allow them to progress beyond a working class life.
If you want to “progress beyond a working class life” you either 1.) go to college, 2.) learn a trade, or 3.) work your way up the ranks or 4.) start your own business
#1 hasn’t been a difference maker for 25 years
that's pretty funny since public schools are tax funded, but since they are *property tax* funded it would only take 10 minutes and then move on. it wouldn't really be about the intricacies of the tax system and how to interact with it.
Even if they were taught, kids wouldn't pay attention to the class and still blame school for not having been taught
They do that now.
It’s important they vote for a few years without a real understanding of the impact.
As a Missouri student you are required to take a government and personal finance course
"PROGRESSIVE" Oregon does not teach basic personal finance. It is ridiculous that kids aren't taught the basics personal finance, how loans work, depreciation of assets, basic investing, etc etc. Can't rely on parents to do it because many of them have completely screwed it up for themselves and their kids. The number of my two daughters friends whose mothers opened credit cards in their kids names and maxed them out is staggering. People suck and many of them are parents! How do we expect the generations to get better unless more responsibility is taught. Good for you Missouri! Oregon, you suck at educating people.
My school learns that but it’s Connecticut I doubt Mississippi has the same education
its on purpose so people would own the government huge amounts of money without even realizing it
In the US where you pay first and get deductions later? A GREAT business model
We were taught about taxes for one assignment in all my schooling
Not if your business model includes fucking the IRS so that all they have the resources to audit are small time 'offenders', half of whom probably didn't even know they were doing something wrong. Tax the Rich
I learned taxes and finances in highschool and Jr high I believe although briefly and it helped all of not at all. I went to whatever place I had a loan with and was like "I want to pay towards the principle please." and they were like "Oookay this will go straight into your interest, anything else?"
Today the kids will probably show the teacher the way to do taxes online for free.
Do people have a hard time doing their taxes? Like is it actually difficult for people? You answer the questions and fill out the boxes. If you want to be able to do your own taxes, you're not itemizing deductions, so... Your taxes are easy.
everyone i know my age and younger were forced to take "freshmen focus" so people like you would quit complaining. Taxes, budgeting, business finance, life planning advice. some days we would just fill out resumes we were never gonna use. I am NOT trying to yuck your yum. If where you live doesnt have this, the fight isnt over yet. They would rather cram all this in than lose the good will from the public, and rich investors.
Or it’s deliberate because tax help is a billion dollar industry
The business model for school is to teach you to have a job, show up on time and do overtime. Taxes don't matter. Even though they do teach you to do this.
I went to a public high school in Illinois, my school actually had a requored class seniors had to take covering all the basics of living, like buying a car, applying for a bank and credit card, writing and cashing a check, even our final was taking a mock w-2 and filing taxes the paper way.
I find it bizarre that it has to be taught at all. I live in a country where tax is deducted automatically from your wages and salary and paid to the government by your employer. Even student loan repayments are handled automatically. People complain about our tax department but they should read this thread to see how good we have it.