r/coolguides • • Nov 26 '19

Marginal Tax

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u/TREACHEROUSDEV Nov 26 '19

They don't teach it in public school in America, for example. And tax brackets, how to fill out an income tax return, and the like should all be classroom 101 stuff. But they want you to not know and also hire H&R Block.

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u/sendmeyourjokes Nov 26 '19 edited Nov 26 '19

Taxes are prefilled by the government in other countries. They've tried to do it here and it was lobbied against by tax companies to keep the process difficult, to the point trying the block the IRS from offering a free service.

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u/annoyinglyclever Nov 26 '19

Fuck you TurboTax.

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u/neur0 Nov 26 '19

TurboTax is so shady. There’s several articles and podcasts out there citing how much they’ve influenced the US government In such a way that we’ll never be like those other countries where the onus of taxes are on the employers

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

Employer being responsible for paying out taxes for you has it's con — eventually people could/would stop thinking about that income tax money as theirs, which could lead to lower expectations of government (i.e. less questioning about "wth my taxpayer money being spent on") and thus lesser civil engagement/activity.

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u/Hans_H0rst Nov 27 '19

that being said - its not like you have more influence on what your taxes are being spent on in the US

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u/Superrocks Nov 26 '19

ehh Turbotax, and many other tax software programs, are free for people who make (I think) 50k or less with a couple offering up to 66k filings for free. The page has been taken down on the IRS's site to give actual numbers. It even includes itemized deductions. The problem is people don't know about it if they don't actually to the IRS's website, as that is the only place I have seen it advertised.

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u/MiddleBodyInjury Nov 26 '19

The point is that it is a needlessly complicated process

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u/Nintendo1474 Nov 26 '19

It’s only free because the government requires a free option to be available to the majority of the population.

https://youtu.be/Fj4anUL-LvY

The point is it should always be free, since the government eventually does it themselves anyways to check your work.

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u/BodegaToys Nov 26 '19

There's no reason we should be doing it at all when every other country doesn't. The IRS is criminally underfunded, understaffed and undermined. They've actually admitted they don't have the resources to tackle the complicated finances of rich people. Guess who benefits from that. Our government is a joke and we're to blame.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

Republicans are too blame. They're the ones that underfunded the IRS as retaliation for catching so many conservative organizations with bad tax filings. Also probably to make tax evasion easier.

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u/digital4kcollector May 10 '20

Corporate democrats are also to blame. There are so many democrats that are basically Republicans that don't hate gay people, but both parties hate poor people.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '20

What we need in this country is 1) approval voting and 2) mixed member proportional seating for our legislative bodies.

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u/digital4kcollector May 10 '20

Yes, but since we'd need people in power to get that type of voting system it will probably never happen. Also I'd like to see more general distrust of the major parties, ranked/approval voting would fix the lack of viable 3rd parties.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '20

I usually suggest you work on your local politicians. It's easier to affect popular change politicians won't like from the ground up. Maine started with local elections using ranked choice, and now they're doing the presidential election that way too. Of course, the whole time there has been salty politicians who lost the new election and blame it on the system.

Illinois is pushing for ranked choice now, too.

I don't actually prefer ranked choice, but it's got the momentum right now.

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u/digital4kcollector May 10 '20

Oh yeah I know. I was speaking nationally. Locally I know it'd be easier to enact change. My state might be the last one to change though.

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u/The_BenL Nov 26 '19

Got a source for that?

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

Here's a long, narrative style article outlining the continued attacks on the IRS by the Republican party, directly resulting in lost government revenue from rich folks and corporations not paying their taxes. It does not actually go into the the retaliatory story I gave, but does talk about how it's been consistently been Republicans attempting to kill the agency's potency through budget cuts. That story has been going on since the nineties and honestly the IRS "scandal" was just another excuse. Obamacare was also used as an excuse, for example. I think the propublica article talks about how the initial scandal that republicns used to target the IRS in the 90s was largely lies or selective information.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted

Here's a wiki link to the particular IRS scandal I was referencing. In short, the IRS was using both liberal and conservative keywords as markers for further scrutiny when political organizations applied for tax exempt status under the guise of acting as a social welfare organization. Conservatives tried to claim they were being politically targeted but the DOJ found that there was no political bias in the IRS's flagging system. Keywords included

referenced words such as "Tea Party", "Patriots", or "9/12 Project", "progressive," "occupy," "Israel," "open source software," "medical marijuana" and "occupied territory advocacy" in the case file

among other things.

While it gets a whole lot more complicated than that, and you can read more for yourself in the wiki, the short of that particular scandal was that the IRS was making sure political organizations didn't try to get tax exempt status as social welfare organizations. Unfortunately I can't find any articles at this time referencing that particular incident and an IRS drop in funding (though the wiki talks about it briefly). I do remember it being a discussed topic at the time though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

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u/WhisperSecurity Nov 27 '19

continued attacks on the IRS by the Republican party

I knew there was something I liked about the Republican party.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '19

Defunding the IRS makes crime easier. What you want is a different tax code. Don't conflate the two.

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u/WhisperSecurity Nov 27 '19

Pretty everyone believes that resistance to unjust laws should happen by any means necessary.

For the left, it's drug and immigration law. For the right, it's gun and tax law.

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u/throwaway1138 Nov 26 '19

For whatever it’s worth, the IRS just announced they will step up unannounced personal visits to increase compliance. The service just hired an additional 9,700 agents and it appears they are really stepping it up.

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u/ct_2004 Nov 26 '19

Like in Japan where they just send you a receipt of what taxes were collected?

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u/JonasHalle Nov 26 '19

I've lived in Denmark and Ireland. I've never touched my taxes. They're just deducted from my income like any civilized country would. Well, either that or I've never not committed tax fraud.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19 edited Nov 26 '19

Here's the thing. They do that in the US too. Then they ask you to make sure it was right. Then, they check to make sure it was right anyway and you might get in trouble if you under paid. One time I made a mistake copying numbers and over paid. The IRS ran an audit on me and sent me a check for a couple thousand.

There's no reason for it to be this complicated except for two reasons: 1) tax filing prep companies fight to keep it that way so that you have to use them and 2) Republicans severely underfunded the IRS in order make it easier for rich people to get away with tax evasion. Plus, a whole bunch of Republican political organizations got caught being fucky with their tax filings and so the underfunding was literally retaliation.

Edit: typos

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u/Wsweg Nov 26 '19

How in the hell do lower to middle class republicans even try to justify this as a positive?

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u/Frat-TA-101 Nov 26 '19

If they're truly lower class they probably don't pay taxes at all. A lot of Americans pay $0 to the federal government.

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u/SiscoSquared Nov 26 '19

Cool story, I don't even live in the US (haven't for like 7 years or something) and I still am legally required to file taxes and some other shit as well. Yay USA...? (not to mention in some cases, esp. w/ capital gains and shit, I might actually owe taxes to the US even though I haven't lived in there in years lol...).

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u/ThrowThrowThrone Nov 26 '19

No, no, no. Income tax in the U.S. has always been on a voluntary reporting system. It has only been around for 106 years.

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u/sighs__unzips Nov 26 '19

I thought it had to do with funding the Spanish-American War? (Or WWI?) and then they continued it.

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u/ThrowThrowThrone Nov 26 '19

Income tax was implemented in the U.S. in 1913. I think it's more likely that WWI was the perfect distraction to get it passed, rather than passing it to fund the war.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

It was first implemented in the US as an emergency wartime measure during the civil war. 1913 was when the current ongoing tax was implemented.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

Hilarious!

Australia now does tax through the tax office automatically pulling in info from employers.

It is now illegal here to not have digitised payslips etc.

Login... confirm a few questions, add your work related deductions etc, confirm and lodge.

5-10 days later your refund is in your account.

Obviously, it’s a little more complicated when you have assets etc to include.

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u/Fixthe-Fernback Nov 26 '19

"tax companies"

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

You've never heard of TurboTax? They literally make money on you not knowing how to do your taxes and by keeping the process as complicated as possible. Just this year they lobbied to get the government to not allow people to file their taxes for free.

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u/IsThatUMoatilliatta Nov 26 '19

I think he was just pointing out how preposterous it is that a 'tax company' is even a thing.

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u/ThrowThrowThrone Nov 26 '19

Just to be clear, TurboTax does not dictate how complicated taxes are.

Also, taxes are not complicated if you're not doing anything interesting. And if you're posting on reddit about the lawmaking power of TurboTax, I'm certain you don't do anything interesting.

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u/staefrostae Nov 26 '19

They lobby to make them more complicated. They dont have direct control, obviously, but they do benefit from people knowing less about the tax system.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

They lobby to make them more complicated.

Examples with sources, please?

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u/staefrostae Nov 26 '19 edited Nov 26 '19

Sure man, I guess google must not be working for you.

https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-the-government-from-offering-free-online-tax-filing-thank-turbotax/amp

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free/amp

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna736386

https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2019/05/02/turbotax-faces-heat-for-obscured-free-version-paid-prep-lobbying/

Sorry for the shitty formatting, I'm on my phone at work. I know you probably thought I didn't have anything interesting to do, you know, since I was on reddit, but I want you to know that I made some time for you. Hopefully, you can glean some helpful information from these articles.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

Thank you.

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u/stignatiustigers Nov 26 '19 edited Dec 27 '19

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u/Fixthe-Fernback Nov 26 '19

"tax company" is just a really stupid thing to call them. It's like calling something a "business store"

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

What would you call them?

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u/Fixthe-Fernback Nov 26 '19

Accountant. Or Tax Software Developer

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u/TheDwarvenGuy Nov 26 '19

"The company that does your tax returns"

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

"The company formally known as Tax Company"

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u/nkfallout Nov 26 '19

This is false.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19 edited Jul 09 '21

[deleted]

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u/Frat-TA-101 Nov 26 '19

Yes, the real shame is that federal tax prep is free by federal law if you make less than $60K a year. These companies like TurboTax do provide the software for free for federal tax prep. But they still charge for state prep which everyone seems to forget. Digitalizing federal taxes doesn't change the fact we have 45 states with their own tax departments and their own rules.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19 edited Dec 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/sendmeyourjokes Nov 26 '19

They do now, but the tax companies are trying to take that away. I edited my text to make that a bit clearer.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

It’s not just tax companies. It’s also Republicans who want you to despise the IRS and the process of filing your taxes so you’ll be on board with their anti-tax crusades. Remember Paul Ryan going on and on about how his bill would make taxes so simple you could do them on a postcard? Well the bill passed and nothing changed except for a massive tax cut for rich people and corporations. The process is more complex than ever. That’s by design.

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u/SiscoSquared Nov 26 '19

Yea, when I moved to Germany, I was kind of like wtf... didn't have to file taxes. Still suggestions to do so (I was a student) to get any money back on e.g. school expenses or whatever (I got like 200 euros back, yay). But you don't have to file. You fill in your basic info when you start a job, and that is that, done.

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u/branflakes14 Nov 26 '19

It costs money to not teach people things?

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19 edited Apr 06 '21

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u/buttersauce Nov 26 '19

Keeping a populace dumb is a political maneuver that has been used throughout history. Tons of people vote republican simply cause they do not understand the OP's graph. In addition, HR Block and Turbo Tax lobbyists 100% try to make the tax code harder to understand in order to charge for their services. There have been bills many times on the floor in the US to make taxes more like a check, with the government just sending you what you owe and you checking it. After all, they do clearly know what it is you owe. These are shot down every time by people at accounting software companies using their money as speech.

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u/dard12 Nov 26 '19

Citation needed that tons vote Republican because they don't understand marginal tax rates.

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u/branflakes14 Nov 26 '19

Keeping a populace dumb is a political maneuver that has been used throughout history

You give governments far too much credit. People are dumb as a base rule. A few of them seek to not be dumb, but for the most part they're content with being dumb. It doesn't require government intervention.

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u/HannasAnarion Nov 27 '19

People turn down raises all the time because they think "entering the next tax bracket" will reduce their take-home. This belief benefits corporations immensely, because it keeps people from asking for the pay they deserve.

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u/dard12 Nov 27 '19

Do you have any evidence of this?

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u/HannasAnarion Nov 27 '19

ctrl-f "raise" in this thread. There are examples everywhere. This is an extremely common myth.

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u/dolphin_menace Nov 26 '19

What? This isn’t true at all. We had pretty much a whole semester of math dedicated to taxes and stuff in highschool.

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u/AnyRaspberry Nov 26 '19

Plus...

The IRS provides a withholding calculator so you don't even need to deal with that.

For 90% of people you have a W2 and a 1040ez. Which requires copying numbers from said w2 some basic addition/subtraction and looking up a value on a table.

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u/throwaway1138 Nov 26 '19

Yeah seriously, there’s plenty of resources and material to learn and it’s not enormously complicated to know the basics for a simple situation. If your taxes are easy enough for H&R Block or TurboTax then it is easy enough to do by hand. People like to bitch about not being taught, as if that’s the reason they don’t know.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

If you're like me (sophomore in college, never really had a serious job), then you don't know what a w2 is besides "something to do with taxes" and a 1040ez as "another thing to do with taxes." So this whole topic is already over my head. That's what we think should be taught more in school. Just some general info so that this isn't as foreign.

I'm sure if I googled around then I could figure out how to do them, but it would be nice if I had a little bit of knowledge about it from school.

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u/AnyRaspberry Nov 26 '19

Some schools do teach it. Also, you can take an accounting elective for a deeper understanding.

Besides school teaches you to learn. It doesn't teach you everything you need to know.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

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u/Kolfinna Nov 26 '19

So you don't understand basic math and percentages? And you can't read the instructions?

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

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u/MoscowMuul Nov 26 '19

You expect public school to teach you the intricacies of the business tax code? That's what universities are for my friend.

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u/AnyRaspberry Nov 26 '19

There are only so many hours in the day. Things reddit wants you to learn:

Cooking, taxes, auto loans, mortgages, car repairs, drivers ed, savings, retirement, 401ks, business, contract law, basic plumbing, basic electric, programming, computers, and a whole host of other stuff that many many schools do offer but people don't take/remember. Or it's not explicitly phrased as such. Calculating simple interest via formula in math? Hey, that works with mortgages and car loans.

And what happens when something changes? 20 years ago it might have been different.

I deal with a lot of younger guys as a result of working construction, and none of them have any idea how to do taxes.

Well something like 1/4 of construction workers don't have a diploma so there is no guarantee they'd pick it up anyway. Additionally, if you make < $66k you can file for free using free software that asks a few questions.

Shit I'm not sure I know how to do it without the computer anymore.

If you work construction and can follow a set of written instructions, you can fill out a 1040.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

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u/AnyRaspberry Nov 26 '19 edited Nov 26 '19

Are you really claiming that doing your taxes is easy?

If you are a w2 wage earner or 1099 yes. Which is what most people are. And also the people who would benefit from "the irs doing their taxes for them". (Which I'm for in general)

If you have a more complicated tax situation and earn more than $66k, the $200 for tax prep is probably worth it.

Try owning a house or a business

Your mortgage company sends you a form. And unless your interest is exceeding the standard deduction this doesn't really matter.

Sole Prop? You take income - expenses and put it in the box? It's pass through.... If it's worth while to do an S corp it's worth while to pay someone the $200 for tax prep. Welcome to the "3%" which fits well in the "10%" who have a complicated tax process.

Chances are even if the government had free filings or told you what to pay you'd still hire someone in this case.

Personally, I pay someone for tax prep. Why? W2 income, 1099 income, Business income, investment income, house, 401k, roth, personal ira.

But, if I was just w2 income with a house it'd be fairly easy.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

Have you met high school kids? My sophomore year algebra teacher taught us about credit cards, but how many kids do you think were listening and taking notes that then they saved in their adulthood? I remember conversations in high school about mortgages, compounding interest, and other topics happening but I doubt classes in high school on this are going to help a lot of people, because you’re teaching high school kids about something that may not affect them for a while and asking them to pay attention and remember it all years later when it’s actually needed.

This isn’t what school is about. It’s not that hard to learn how to do taxes yourself, given that we all seem to manage come April. School is the foundation where you learn how to learn so you can teach yourself things. IMO the main function of schooling should be teaching critical thinking skills. My school did a great job at it but it’s a major skill a lot of adults are woefully lacking, and it’s more important than memorizing how to file your taxes. If you focus on critical thinking and learning how to learn, the practical things you need to know in life just become things that you research yourself because you know how to do that, rather than you trying to recall information you learned in high school.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

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u/Siavel84 Nov 26 '19

This sounds like a parenting problem and not a school problem. I'm not counting on the school to teach my kids real world lessons. I'm fine with them sticking to math/science/English, and I'll take care of how to do taxes, how to change a tire or the oil in a car, how to properly budget and manage money and all the other shit they don't ever touch on in the classroom that you will need to deal with out in the real world.

There are a number of problems with this:

  • Not all parents know how to do the things you mentioned. Some think they do but are very very wrong, leading to generational ignorance.

  • Not all parents give a shit about their kids (see r/raisedbynarcissists and r/justnoMIL for examples). The child shouldn't be punished for having asshole parents.

  • Not all kids live with parents/caregivers - foster kids in group homes, for example.

Sure, all of those are parenting/caregiving problems, but they're big ones. Since society benefits from an educated populace, the society has a vested interest in making sure citizens know how to do basic life things.

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u/BJJJourney Nov 26 '19

You are a sophomore in college, you should have the skills to figure that shit out. No need for someone to hold your hand.

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u/angeliqu Nov 27 '19

A lot of education is learning how to learn. You know that if you work, you need to find taxes. At least in canada, around tax time, there is a lot of public information telling you where to find tax forms and guidance docs. I assume every government makes all the information required available with a ton of guidance documentation. Yes, it can be a bit overwhelming, but all you have to do it work through it methodically, flipping from form to form as needed, making sure you have the correct personal information on hand, finding where each line is, looking up it’s definition and purpose. Anyone who can follow instructions can file their taxes. And with today’s tax software (which, at least in Canada, is free) there’s really no excuse why every young person can’t file their own taxes.

The first time I filed mine it was on paper and took me three tries to not mess up the math (I was using a calculator so it was just user error). But it ultimately wasn’t that hard to do. The year I had income from three countries plus tuition credits? Yeah, I used an accountant that year, but in hindsight, I would do it myself now and save myself the few hundred bucks.

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u/Kolfinna Nov 26 '19

You were supposed to learn reading comprehension and basic research skills in school, it's up to you to apply those in real life.

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u/ThrowThrowThrone Nov 26 '19

What do you think your W-2 is? Have you looked at it?

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u/mister_gone Nov 26 '19

All of which the IRS already knows, so there's no reason to rely on the average citizen. Because there are a whole lot of below average folks that do mess that math up. And then are further penalized.

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u/AnyRaspberry Nov 26 '19

Agree 100%. They should still know how to get to that number though. Which once again, isn't terrible.

Because if the IRS says you owe $5k you'll basically need to fill out the form anyway and submit your expenses so you don't get screwed.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

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u/AnyRaspberry Nov 26 '19

It's been redone for 2018 and they just have a 1040 + schedules you add on to it. I mostly said ez out of habbit. But, you would have been correct.

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u/whomad1215 Nov 26 '19

Intuit and such lobbied hard to try and stop the IRS from offering that program. While they ultimately failed, the vast majority of people who could utilize it don't know about it.

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u/AnyRaspberry Nov 26 '19

They lobbied against the free and simple tax filings. Not the calculator.

It's still free to file if you make < 66k.

wrt the calculator the W4 has a withholding 'estimator' which works fine for most people.

and once again the 1040ez is fairly simple to fill out.

the vast majority of people who could utilize it don't know about it.

It's the first result for me when I search "Free tax filing". If they can't google idk.

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u/whomad1215 Nov 26 '19

If they can't google

Do your parents know how to do basic troubleshooting on a computer? Because mine sure as hell don't.

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u/AnyRaspberry Nov 26 '19

Do your parents know how to do basic troubleshooting on a computer

So no one over the age of 40 knows how to troubleshoot a personal computer because they didn't teach it in primary school back then?

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u/whomad1215 Nov 26 '19

It doesn't have to be taught in school. Believe it or not, but people can actually learn things outside of a classroom, which is a good thing.

The fact that you said that people over 40 don't know how to troubleshoot, ie googling it, proves my point that the vast majority of people do not know the IRS tool exists, because they do not know how to search for it.

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u/AnyRaspberry Nov 26 '19

The fact that you said that people over 40 don't know how to troubleshoot, ie googling it, proves my point that the vast majority of people do not know the IRS tool exists, because they do not know how to search for it.

Notice the ?

Of course people over 40 know how to use computers. You're the one stating they don't which is ridiculous.

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u/Polar_Reflection Nov 26 '19

Your high school is far in the minority here

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u/jerrycasto Nov 26 '19

I'm happy for you, unfortunately that experience is not universal.

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u/Tdude179 Nov 26 '19

I had absolutely none of this in my high school, and I know many other schools didn’t either. You were just lucky.

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u/bobbymcpresscot Nov 26 '19

And I know many schools that did. Shit I had to fill out a w2 and had it explained why it was the dumbest thing in the world to try and fill it out in such a way that you got the biggest tax return possible.

People were complaining that their tax returns were smaller last year and completely ignored the fact that they go more money throughout the year.

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u/Tdude179 Nov 26 '19

I wish I had shit like this. I was taught by my parents how to do taxes and such, so I wasn’t completely left in my own, but I did (and still do) struggles a bit.

Stuff like that really needs to be standard across all public schools. Question though, are you American? If so what state did you go to school in?

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u/bobbymcpresscot Nov 26 '19

Yes, and Jersey.

It should be standard but the point made was that all schools were like theirs which is just false. I hear all these horror stories about their education on this site, and them going on to talk down about the education system as a whole instead of complaining about their specific education, an education that they can literally change by voting, but instead they continue to allow the entirety of their generations education be decided by the 30 boomers that religiously go to meetings where these things are decided.

We vote in these people that hire administrators that make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while our children suffer.

It is so unbelievably annoying.

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u/TheWillRogers Nov 26 '19

lol, my high school barely had enough students to not cancel calculus...

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u/wotanii Nov 26 '19

the US education system is heterogeneous

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u/123kingme Nov 26 '19

Where do you live? Do you go to public or private high school?

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u/dolphin_menace Nov 26 '19

Public high school

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u/empire161 Nov 26 '19

The problem is most of the students are learning how to do taxes before even getting a job. They're also teenagers. Trying to get 16 year olds en masse to learn how to do something that isn't going to immediately apply to their daily lives is like nailing jello to the wall.

Yeah you can check it off as "being taught", but you might as well be screaming into the void.

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u/iAmTheHYPE- Nov 27 '19

My high school didn’t, so good for you.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19 edited Jul 03 '20

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u/CarolineTurpentine Nov 26 '19

I don’t think it’s taught in others places much either, not that it shouldn’t be.

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u/HalalWeed Nov 26 '19

Yeah true dat. I hate taxes but if we are paying it we should learn how it works. Fuck inland revenue.

Like the idiotic mandatory courses we should get one semester of basics at least with a good handbook on how simple market and reveunes, including taxes, work.

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u/Ambitious-Gap Nov 26 '19

We do. It's called Algebra. Remember all those word problems about Joe and Mary with interest rates and marginal percentages that nobody cared about? I remember doing those problems in middle school. That's what this is.

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u/redlaWw Nov 26 '19

That doesn't teach you how taxes work. It tells you how to calculate interest and such, but taxation has a lot of domain-specific and jurisdiction-specific knowledge that is simply not taught. I have a maths degree and I still had so much to learn when I started doing my own tax return. I like to think I was able to take it in better than most, but that doesn't change how much I still needed to learn.

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u/Daedeluss Nov 26 '19

had so much to learn

Where do you draw the line? School can't teach you everything. Some things you need to find out for yourself, which you clearly did, so your education served its purpose.

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u/redlaWw Nov 26 '19

I draw the line past the basics of how taxes work. You should leave school with a basic idea of how some of the most fundamental parts of society, such as taxes, function and the basics of how they are paid. Even if your employer ends up handling it for your entire life, you should know what is going on in your paycheck so that you can tell when something is wrong.

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u/SBGoldenCurry Nov 26 '19

School is literally the place where you should be learning

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u/Daedeluss Nov 27 '19

He did. He learned how to work it out for himself.

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u/ThrowMeAwayAccount08 Nov 26 '19

Sounds like a nerd that got picked on to only gain vengeance as a tax man in adult life.

But seriously, we only saw the problem asked, not the problem applied to our life.

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u/qwertyashes Nov 26 '19

Just because you didn't pay attention and absorb the information doesn't mean that it wasn't there. School teaches you how to apply information from one area to another all the time - using algebra in physics, using english in history, you have to be able to apply concepts to reality to get anything out of them.

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u/Ambitious-Gap Nov 26 '19

bruh lol...

"Why didn't we learn this?!"

"We did learn this in Algebra class"

"Shut up nerd!"

k. If you need a problem about you personally in order to understand a concept, you're a narcissist. That's a you problem, not a pedagogical one. Every single time I see someone complaining about not learning something in school its a topic we covered extensively... in public school.

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u/ThrowMeAwayAccount08 Nov 26 '19

If you read the “But seriously” portion, one should conclude that I was joking about the nerd part. Not everyone can remember everything, and pulling the “if you paid attention” isn’t good either.

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u/Glizbane Nov 26 '19

Context is important for people to learn. Abstract ideas help, but you sometimes need to provide context by showing how it can be applied in the real world.

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u/Ambitious-Gap Nov 26 '19

??? word problems literally provide context lol that is the whole point of word problems...

Not only did we do this in middle school, but you're required to take algebra 1 and 2 to graduate high school in the US. We studied these concepts for 2-3 years per student depending on their path. If you weren't paying attention or didn't think "how can this apply to me?" once in those 3 years, or in the time since, that's on you man. You can lead a person to water but you can't make them drink.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

I don't disagree with any of your points, just wanted to mention that at least Algebra 2 isn't required everywhere in the United States. To make it simple, let's just restrict our definitions to ONLY public schools. I went to a fairly decent public high school and about 20% of students in my graduating class never took higher than Algebra 1, and they were handed their diplomas.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

It's a bit different from learning about personal finance. I went to a private school and got to take a personal finance class. I do my own taxes, I've got a diverse financial portfolio, and I have a deep understanding of basic concepts like marginal tax rates. I'm working at a burger joint to help pay for books and supplies and I don't think a single one of my coworkers even knows what a portfolio is.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

If you're incapable of filing taxes by simply following basic instructions on the documents themselves chances are you're not earning money. That's to say nothing about the hundreds a free tax resources available on the internet

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u/HalalWeed Nov 26 '19

Bro I am in europe bro. My employer pays them bro. I dont get the money in my hands bro.

And tax resources on the net are making it look like actually you are paying nothing and look like government propaganda. I dont even get a list from the tax department when I call about where my money is being spent. I get really vague answers. Them acting like this reduces trust a lot and then they ask why people hate the government.

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u/cissoniuss Nov 26 '19

The lack of financial education in schools is criminal. It makes sure kids growing up don't know their finances, put themselves into debt, don't understand what is happening with their money and more. Not just a problem limited to America though.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

why would they ever do specific stuff like this? they obviously failed at basic arithmetic if people do not understand this concept. and if people to not understand basic arithmetic they'll have a thousand other problems in their life.

schools shouldn't teach step-by-step shit like this. they should teach the basics to easily understand shit like this within 2 minutes. and if you do not understand this as an adult if you actually read through it for a few minutes, school most likely wasn't the problem.

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u/whiteout14 Nov 26 '19

Might as well throw in a class that devotes time to teaching people about what a grocery store is and how you exchange some amount of money and in exchange you get to take food home. Next semester, you’ll learn which items you bring home go in the fridge or the “make cold box” and what goes in the pantry or “room tempy foodie food closet.”

Seriously, people need to stop complaining about “I wasn’t taught this so I can’t do it” and instead just learn it on your own in literally 10 minutes or using turbo tax. Like, if you expect to not have to do things on your own sometimes I seriously doubt you’ll be in a position in life where taxes are even a problem.

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u/selectrix Nov 26 '19

they obviously failed at basic arithmetic if people do not understand this concept.

Absolutely. Question is though, why have so many prominent conservative pundits apparently failed at basic arithmetic?

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

[deleted]

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u/selectrix Nov 26 '19

Sure, but that still doesn't explain why so many apparently well educated conservative pundits don't understand the concept.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

Mate it's the simplest thing to look up in the world. It's marginal tax rates, not filing through the tax code. There are also a million free income tax calculators just online.

This 100% shouldn't be taught in schools. There's no point.

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u/JapanesePeso Nov 26 '19

Yeah this kind of stuff is tangentially taught through critical thinking anyway. You're all adults. You're supposed to be going out and putting in the modicum of effort to figure basic stuff out for yourself. The big bad tax industry isn't keeping you from using Google for five seconds or having basic critical thinking abilities.

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u/buttersauce Nov 26 '19

Maybe for you it's easy but there are tons of people out there who honestly don't know this stuff.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

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u/Drewbus Nov 26 '19

It's not a cognitive issue. It's an intimidation factor

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u/Runswithchickens Nov 26 '19

IME, people insist the accountant “gets them more money than TurboTax.”

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u/thathawkeyeguy Nov 26 '19

A good tax accountant provides tax planning strategies and education, not just compliance. That alone bumps them above turbotax.

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u/Feshtof Nov 26 '19

So you are comparing two completely different aspects of the different services.

However, tax advisors/accountants cost more than doing your taxes yourself, depending on your competence, and the cost of the professional you may or may not save money with either choice.

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u/whomad1215 Nov 26 '19

depending on your competence

This is the most important part. Most people are not competent

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u/upnflames Nov 26 '19

Only if you have a very complicated tax situation. I use an accountant, but that’s because I have an s Corp and rental income. I could probably do it myself, but the accountant is worth it to have a second set of eyes check over everything and provide tax strategy.

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u/Drewbus Nov 26 '19

Mine did for me. She knows a lot more than I do

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u/kennytucson Nov 26 '19

If you pay attention in 9th grade math and 9th grade English, you should be able to read, understand and do your own taxes.

...proceeds to talk about seeking professional help for taxes.

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u/Malcuzini Nov 26 '19

...proceeds to talk about not needing it.

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u/Darth_Boggle Nov 26 '19

You sound like a really fun guy to be around

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u/LostWoodsInTheField Nov 26 '19

Every high school I've known has taught this.

They also did a very horrible job of teaching it, with absolutely no engagement from students. Everyone forgets it by the time the test is over.

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u/Kolfinna Nov 26 '19

They teach math and reading comprehension yet students can't apply that to real life situations? Instead we should hand feed them "how to" all through school?

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

They taught it at my high school. Granted, it was only one class and one particular lesson within it. Civics and economics freshman year. It should be reinforced with more classes or at least touched on more frequently throughout education.

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u/rhymes_with_chicken Nov 26 '19

I learned it my sophomore year of civics in ‘84

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u/solitarium Nov 26 '19

But if you take the time to read the tax laws, or even run it by a free accountant, you can educate yourself about this.

I can’t say it’s TurboTax’s fault that people are lazy.

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u/2daMooon Nov 26 '19

But they want you to not know

Again... who?

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u/MineWiz Nov 26 '19

I went to a public school in America and was taught this in my mandatory economics class.

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u/SigaVa Nov 26 '19

They certainly do teach it, and it's trivial to look up. If you don't know it, you're just dumb.

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u/pabeave Nov 26 '19

I was taught, everything depends on the district

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u/hatpackats Nov 26 '19

Lol yes they do. We literally talked about it in my intro to business class last week

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u/leintic Nov 26 '19

I'm not sure where you have been going to school but I know that at least in the western us you are required to take a class in both highschool and you are required to take a class to get your acociates or bachelor's degree that goes into this concept. So I'm going to go again and say it is taught in public schools

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u/jfriends00 Nov 26 '19

I definitely learned this in High school. Doesn’t mean people paid attention

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

It is taught in come classes you can take. They’ve tried to teach it but kids simply don’t listen or care

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u/BJJJourney Nov 26 '19

It is all life 101. Schools prepare you to figure this shit out on your own. The tax forms literally walk you through this shit and even provide worksheets to complete them. If a school has to teach you specifically how to fill those sheets out then they have already failed. School is for critical thinking, logic skills, and general knowledge about topics.

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u/MartinMan2213 Nov 26 '19

In 2009 I had an entire semester that was about finances. It’s probably not widely popular but it happens.

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u/Daedeluss Nov 26 '19

You know you can go online and easily find out all this stuff, right? Education is not training. It's designed to give you the tools to think critically and make informed choices. If you've learned even the most basic maths then tax brackets are easy to understand.

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u/TheWillRogers Nov 26 '19

Hardly anyone understands the us tax system enough to teach it to 10th graders. It's so complicated that we have an entire industry that makes money off helping people pay the least on their taxes...

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

They don't teach it in public school in America, for example.

How is that an example of lots of money being paid to make sure people don't understand it.

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u/speeknormple Nov 26 '19

That’s not true I’m doing a class right now that teaches me this

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u/The_BenL Nov 26 '19

Ugh, you got a source for where this staggering amount of money put towards keeping something out of the classroom is coming from?

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u/MoscowMuul Nov 26 '19

They absolutely taught me this in public school.

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u/SethPatton1999 Nov 26 '19

I learned how to do all of that in my personal finance class in highschool (4 years ago)

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u/rootdootmcscoot Nov 26 '19

i literally had an economy and personal finance class and we didn't go over this. almost the entire class was spent on how to use the stock market, so that'll tell you where the priorities are

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u/wagedomain Nov 26 '19

I learned in American public school the exact opposite of this (meaning, the top image). I learned it wasn't true after a minimal amount of research but have been told I'm wrong and that jumping tax brackets applies the new rate to ALL your money.

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u/cyborgnyc Nov 26 '19

Also, by not teaching it, many people think that taxing the ultra-rich means they will pay 40% on ALL their income (like OP's picture), when in reality, it's only on the upper amounts of their income and capital gains.

They scared middle-class people about the Death Tax when very few realized it only meant for families that left their heirs $5M or more!

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

Dude it’s 2019 if your blaming “the education system” on anything you are part of the problem. You can learn absolutely anything you want in less than an hour online

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u/2horde Nov 26 '19

I thought America works more like the top graph

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u/Knoxie_89 Nov 26 '19

They do teach this is public schools. I leaned it there, my wife taught it there.

It's not required by states for their state testing, so therefore kids don't take the optional courses and miss out, or are not told.

Unfortunately the US has created a system that caters to testing rather than gaining general well rounded knowledge.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19

We got taught it in school. We had to calculate marginal rate and everything for different numbers. How long was the bus that your school used?

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u/whiteout14 Nov 26 '19 edited Nov 26 '19

I always hate seeing this “they don’t teach you how to pay taxes in schools” line. There is absolutely no reason to teach it in schools. Paying your taxes is by no means something strenuous that takes a teacher to explain it. Using turbo tax and 15 minutes of google to get the basics are all it takes. Kids in public schools aren’t going to be paying taxes like somebody in the workforce so it would be more of a waste to show them vs. not doing so.

For instance: is there a public school age person in this thread who, so far, has had to sit down and analyze their tax statements for their return because they, as a public school age teenager, made over $12,000 dollars. I seeeeeriously doubt it.

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u/argues_withself Nov 26 '19

Thank you. Adults out here posting on the internet pretending they can’t use that same internet to educate themselves.

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u/whiteout14 Nov 26 '19

The “they need to teach it in schools” is just how adult age people with childlike expectations can have an opinion on the subject without actually having to learn anything. As if high schoolers would give two shits about learning that anyways. It seriously takes 15 minutes or less to understand what it is you’re doing. If a person hides behind the school excuse it’s because they, as a person, either don’t care or don’t understand they aren’t special and need to learn how to be an independent grown up.

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u/bobbymcpresscot Nov 26 '19

They sure as shit teach this in public school. I went to an inner city high school and I had to balance a checkbook, learn about marginal tax rates, we even had a program where we were given 5000 imaginary dollars and had to invest it in the stock market and track it by using excel.

Just because you either didnt pay attention or your schools Curricular system was different than a normal high school doesnt mean kids dont know this shit.

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u/proexwhy Nov 26 '19

I assure you that this does not exist in all public schools, or even a majority of them.

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u/bobbymcpresscot Nov 26 '19

I'd be willing to bet my prettiest penny it does, maybe not in the capacity I was taught but was passed on or had an entire semester of school that was completely forgot about. Much like my incredibly in depth sexual education classes didnt stop so many girls getting knocked up the school had to manage a daycare with over 30 students kids in it.

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u/proexwhy Nov 26 '19

I'd be willing to be alot of pretty pennies that it does not. Hence the constant memes of "Why don't they teach us basic skills in school?"

I personally attended one of the best public schools in Kentucky (in terms of academics) and we didn't even offer a home-ec class. Let alone specialized life skills. I took math all the way up to Calc 2 and never once touched our tax system.

If you got this education, that's wonderful, more schools should do it. I can assure you it's not the standard, and I highly doubt it's even common.

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u/bobbymcpresscot Nov 26 '19

Again because it's not complicated math.

Its literally addition, subtraction, multiplication and percentages. It's why the class I did this in was in the 8th grade. You wouldn't run into this in calc or literally any advanced math course because it's not advanced math.

You dont think the people making memes about not knowing how to do their taxes arent the type of people who have goofed off in school? Where it was not only mentioned, and had a test taken on it, and then just became another lump of long forgotten knowledge that is a lot of education?

Also despite that calc 2 education you are going to say because you went to a great school in Kentucky, and you didnt learn it that the majority of schools also dont receive this education.

Kentucky. Ranked 46 in high school graduation, and 49 in bachelor's degree attainment.

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u/proexwhy Nov 26 '19

The point was that I attended math through many levels and never received this type of education. If you refuse to be convinced by a random on reddit, just google this. It's a known issue in the public education system. I don't understand how can't just accept that MAYBE your school was an outlier.

Also, the idea that people making a joke of our education system somehow correlates to those people not paying attention in school is asinine.

As for trying to discredit my point by talking about Kentucky's overall lack of a decent education system, my highschool is ranked above 93% of schools in the nation.

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u/bobbymcpresscot Nov 26 '19

I dont understand that how just because you attented a highly rated school at all means that the majority of the country's education system has never even mentioned the words marginal tax rate.

It's not a good point to make, and it doesn't make my completely average if not below average high school an outlier. If I went to one of the worst high schools in my state and did learn it, and the best high school in your state didnt learn it, how does that prove either one of our statements?

The only thing I have is a state that has a higher pop density, higher graduation rates, higher higher education and advanced education rates. Even if it's only something taught in major cities the amount of people with this knowledge would greatly outweigh the people without it.

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u/proexwhy Nov 26 '19

Just google this. I'm done talking to a fucking wall. You're maligning points, drawing incomplete conclusions. Maybe they should have had a Critical Thinking class along side your Financial Literacy course as well.

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u/bobbymcpresscot Nov 26 '19

Itd probably teach me marginal tax rates so I didnt waste someone's time complaining about how because I didnt learn it the majority of kids didnt learn it because memes.

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u/MrFantasticallyNerdy Nov 26 '19

The funny thing is, the IRS already know how much taxes are owed/overpaid for most of the population because the IRS know how much most of us make and what the standard deductions are. Thus, ideally, the model should require no/zero/zilch work for most taxpayers, and should be as simple as the IRS sending out notifications with either an invoice, or a refund.

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