Make the IRS file our taxes for us like it is done in a lot of other developed countries. Ban tax preparation companies on top of that to make it stick.
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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If the schools taught us that how would the tax prep companies make their profits?
it's called dyscalculia is heavily comorbid with adhd, karen. i feel attacked.
I think all that we learned was the 'trick' to mentally calculating 17.5% VAT (sales tax) by taking 10%, then halving it twice, and adding the three numbers.
Pretty useless now, as it's gone up to 20%.
My high school had personal finance classes and I took them.
shrugs
British expat in the US here. I work in marketing for a tech company.
I was astonished that when someone suggested a rhyming couplet on one of our ads a) no one knew what a couplet was, and b) no one even understood the basic concept of meter.
Both those things are definitely covered in high school.
Whenever I see one of those "what would you tell your younger self / a younger generation to do" — definitely "pay attention to all your classes, it all becomes useful one day"
Yes even algebra. Yes even reading Of Mice and Men
Why are you using the word expat and not immigrant in the US?
a) because for this context where I'm from adds more context than where I went to
b) because immigrant in the US connotates South American heritage usually
“pay attention to all your classes, it all becomes useful one day”
Easier said than done. It’s nearly impossible to keep focus on something for 5 hours straight, even if you care about it. Expecting young people to remember all the stuff that’s being forcibly taught to them and will definitely be useless for the huge majority of their life is ridiculous.
For anyone who doesn’t work in very specific fields, remembering what a couplet is has the same usefulness as a random trivia. At that point it would be more useful to tell students to go on a wikipedia rabbit hole of their choice for an hour, at least if they chose it themselves there’s a higher chance they’re interested and it’ll stick to them.
Also echoing what the other commenter said, the fact that there’s a single stressed person on a schedule trying to teach the same thing simultaneously to 30 different people with 30 different needs definitely does NOT help.
You're putting a lot of the onus on the student, when often times it's the state. I went to a high school that should have had 2000 students but actually had 3000. So crowded we all abandoned going to lockers between class in order to make it on time, and just carried full backpacks all day. Most classes had too many students for the teachers to really help actually teaching at.
That last statement came from one of my teachers, so happy she had one of the few classes with around 20 students instead of 30 plus. It was a world history class, and still the one I recall the most, more than 20 years later. She had the option to work directly with us on stuff we didn't understand, and had more interactive classes (like having students with specific relations to civil rights type stuff discuss their experiences in front of the class).
When you're an exhausted kid being taught by an exhausted teacher who can't even check up if you're falling behind, you don't retain much.
Full agreement. As a kid I didn’t really understand that the goal was to make me a well rounded adult with a wide variety of knowledge to pull upon if needed.
And also more than any other classes math and English are about teaching you different ways to think. Algebra is applied logic and I use it on a regular basis, sure not on a whiteboard that often (though I do that too) but in my budget, in taxes, in how I approach problems
The fact is while they do not teach us taxes directly, school equips us with the skills needed to understand and calculate taxes amongst other things. I would say that is more important than directly teaching about taxes.
Also, if we're going to spend political capital on this, it should be spent on having tax filing be free and automatic. They know how much you made. It can all be done for you with essentially zero effort, and you just need to confirm it. Sadly the companies selling software make a good chunk of cash from this not being done.
i never really understood the argument that schools should teach taxes, since i feel like it inherently accepts that taxes are something that should be extremely contrived and complicated.
i think a better solution would be to simplify the tax system. make the tax system the way it is in many other countries: the government sends you a tiny little piece of paper that says “we calculated everything for you, here what you owe. reach out if you have any questions.”
i know that it will probably take a lot of work and be hard to reform the tax system, but will it be harder than changing the education system so they can teach you how to file taxes?
You can teach critical thinking with almost any topic, but I'd say understanding tax system in the place you live should be very important.
Btw why not simplify AND teach taxes in schools?
Yeah, even with simpler taxes, graduated tax brackets are a concept that a lot of adults don't get.
I agree it's important, but don't agree there should be a class on it. Something has to be removed to put something in. What do you propose removing? It should be discussed in a civics lesson, but there should be no need to learn how to do it, because it should just be done for you. They have all the information they need. They can trivially just tell you what it is and send a confirmation.
i think that this is a good point. you’re right that they’re not mutually exclusive.
my main thing is that i don’t think taxes should be so complicated that there needs to be a whole class dedicated to them. but making taxes part of a “practical life skills” class (for example) would probably be a good idea.
Reforming the federal tax system is an all or nothing proposition in the sense that any change however small would apply to the entire country. Changing the education system can be done district by district. You could go to your school board meeting and advocate for this and it could be put in place relatively quickly, compared to changing the federal system.
you’re probably right about the school side of things being easier, so i’ll retract my statement on that.
but i don’t see changing the education system as a viable alternative to changing the tax system. i feel like the current tax system is so complicated that teaching any kind of class on the tax system will amount to trying to teach an accounting class to high schoolers. and i don’t see that as a desirable solution. it would be better to simplify the system and teach high schoolers about that simplified system (in my opinion)
but i should probably make it clear that i’m not claiming to have any kind of authority over this stuff. i’m happy to change my mind on these things
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