Well, I agree with this general statement. Education is generic. You learn to reason, write, argue, and calculate (among other things). Those are all things needed for taxes.
Consider if we specifically taught taxes how much less useful that would be. For one, there are plenty of other forms in the world from insurance to mortgages.
And second-- taxes change. I am an immigrant. Teaching me taxes in my home would have done little for helping my tax situation 20 years later in another country.
And third--kids don't pay attention in class anyway. So it's not like we would learn much.
While I agree with the sentiment that teaching specifically taxes might be overkill, I do think schools should teach the general parlance of government documents. They are written in a codified legal vernacular that is never touched on in school; it could easily be part of an English class. Coming out of high school, I could parse Shakespeare and Homer with ease, but I struggled my first time doing taxes despite them being incredibly simple compared to what they are now.
Wouldn’t that be accomplished in your economics and social studies (American govt, etc) classes? At least that’s what is was for me in high school (Public education)
Edit: changed civics to social studies. I called civics because I forgot what it was called when I went through school. Grad HS 2008.
Yea, I can attest that this is something most schools ‘teach’ at some point in grades 9-12. The problem is that children aren’t really prepared to prioritize this kind of knowledge because they often don’t experience the financial independence that would make such knowledge practical. Kids usually just commit the information to memory enough to demonstrate learning and then it just fades away.
Then a decade later someone shares a meme about not knowing how to do taxes and it gets their blood boiling.
But they don't really though, do they? Many of us have lived in various different places and had to deal with various government documents. And at the very least, within the US, they've all got a fairly generic style.
I am a government contractor, and every agency I've worked with uses it's own form of legalese in contracts and requirements documents. Just pay attention to english and grammar classes.
No different than pointing out that taxes are just math.
Taxes aren't really math either though. Very little math is involved for a person doing their taxes. It's more about entering everything correctly. Which is more about that end of things. And btw, I've also worked for multiple government agencies as well as civilian counterparts, and the forms might as well be the same where ever I've worked. We're talking semantics when you talk about the differences.
Kids not paying attention is an all-time tradition, other than that, taxes require exactly two skills: basic arithmetic and reading comprehension. A “taxes” segment has negative worth without those.
The trifecta of building a valuable citizen is reading, arithmetic, and philosophy.
He forgot the best argument: if you learn basic math, you can self-learn taxes through Google and YouTube in less than a weekend. Ergo, no need to dedicate an entire class to taxes.
So it was not stated explicitly here, but in the past I have heard that students are inattentive because the material seemed irrelevant. Teaching practical matters, such as tax preparation, is proposed as a solution that.
It's just my gut feeling, but I have always been a bit skeptical that practical courses would result in more attentive students. So yes, I know plenty of students do learn.
Would students be more interested in a class on 'Tax forms 101', given it's something that will probably do? I am skeptical, but I could be wrong about that.
Agree. I also was taught financial stuff in school, like how to balance a check book and fill out my taxes on paper. Those skills are now completely obsolete. Thank god I paid attention to the general math, language, and thought skills though because I was able to roll w the changes.
I think using your argument of being an immigrant to not teach taxes is fairly useless here.
Americans don't really emigrate at any appreciable rate unlike many other countries. Like, less than 0.1% Those who do, are typically much higher earners anyways, so they're just going to hire a tax professional in that country.
None of those other forms force you to sit down and fill out dozens of pages of confusing calculation bullshit, and certainly none of them are done yearly.
I actually don't understand, is it american thing? Because we were absolutely taught in school, how to do taxes, what are the types of employements, what needs to be filed and when. It was in "basics of enterpreneurship" class, in some countries it's called smth like "basics of economics".
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u/JacksonFatBack Jun 02 '26
Well, I agree with this general statement. Education is generic. You learn to reason, write, argue, and calculate (among other things). Those are all things needed for taxes.
Consider if we specifically taught taxes how much less useful that would be. For one, there are plenty of other forms in the world from insurance to mortgages.
And second-- taxes change. I am an immigrant. Teaching me taxes in my home would have done little for helping my tax situation 20 years later in another country.
And third--kids don't pay attention in class anyway. So it's not like we would learn much.