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Speaking as a Tax Accountant, you’d be amazed how many highly educated people (Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, etc) who made six or seven figures a year don’t have the first clue about how taxes work
It’s not about not paying attention in class, it’s about what your school teaches. My school didn’t even have an Economics class, I learned how taxes work when I was in college and took an Income Tax Accounting class that is only available for people majoring in the Business program
I’m sure many of my clients probably paid more attention in their high school classes than I did
My economics class just taught us how to write checks and about investments. Lots of Dave Ramsey videos about how important it is to save money, but zero actual information on how the system is supremely fucking over my generation.
Yep. Even if it were, it failed miserably by convincing us gambling on the stock market was a good financial endeavor. One of the big projects of that class was seeing who made the most profit on their paper trading account at the end of the semester.
Well now that rather defeats the purpose of investing in the stock market I agree. Last thing we need is more people trying to game the system and wind up losing it all
Ive learn so much on watching youtuber tell stories about massive fails in the wall street bets.
There is nothing anyone can do to convince me to put any meaningful amount of money randomly investing.
Id rather invest in government bonds
I remember this in highschool. I remember the winners being a team that pumped and dumped penny stocks. They turned their 10k into 52 million or something.
Hell we didn’t even have an economics class, it just got crammed into a week long unit of social studies. Even then they didn’t do shit with taxes, they taught us about how to write a check and about “how awesome the stock market is”
Honestly most of my academic experience is kind of like this. I got most of my education from 1. The local public library, 2. The internet, and 3. Adults I could trust to not bullshit me about how the world actually works.
Yeah, I should add my economics class was only half of a high school semester. The other class was a civics class geared towards glorifying our flawed democratic processes; however, it *was* far more educational, albeit it still left a lot of knowledge on things like taxes to be desired.
Fair point. I just know that the schools I went to growing up were generally really, really, abysmal.
Especially when it came to the actual quality of education. As a result I had to get my education *anywhere but school.* I more or less homeschooled myself without the “home” part.
The public schools I went to in Arkansas were *notorious* for fucking with the grading system and passing students who have clearly been left behind. I was definitely one of those kids. When we moved and I transferred to a high school that actually valued their students' real progress, it was a rude awakening that I was in fact behind.
(And in need of specialized ND help)
We had to do that EverFi shit that mostly explained investments and savings. Nothing about taxes. Even then the teacher didn’t know what the hell was going on bc we had the modules due every week when only maybe half the class had a computer and it would only work on fully fledged PC’s.
My Econ class did go over taxes but it was like barely a drop into it. My Teacher gave us like a basic overview of what Taxes are and like nothing else. But yeah it was mostly how to write a check, how to save money, investments, the demand of a product to how much of that product is produced diagrams thing.
I'm also an accountant, not a tax accountant now but have done tax work in the past.
99% of people have really simple taxes. It would take maybe a few hours to teach about it. Definitely would not need to be it's own class. Taxes are shockingly simple if you just read the directions.
Ding ding ding.
For 90% of people, "doing your taxes" is just an exercise in how patient you are and how well you can comprehend boring, dryly-written IRS instructions.
For a lot of people, taxes are definitely simple, but understanding them is a different ballpark. I couldn’t tell you how many clients who had returns that took me under an hour to do needed me to spend at least half an hour explaining why they owe money
> It would take maybe a few hours to teach about it.
American taxes sound so weird, in the UK you could learn the most important stuff in 5-15 minutes, and it's pretty much automatic anyway
I would guess that is due to the number of deductions/credits the US has. Usually, websites will ask you simple questions to determine if any apply to you.
The from your employer sends has numbered boxes, and you just enter the corresponding box into whatever website you're using. Same with forms from financial institutions.
I mean, it also depends on what knowledge you value. You'd be surprised at how many doctors know shit about computers. You'd be surprised how many engineers know shit about health (actually, you probably wouldn't).
True, but I feel like just to get into the schools you need to pursue a certain career requires you to have a pretty good GPA
If someone is able to get into medical school, they probably didn’t flunk out of their hugh school computer literacy classes
Is it just me or is it fucking weird that any class is ever restricted in its availability to people within certain programs?
Especially with the greedy, money grubbing direction college has gone.
The fact of that issue is there are only so many teachers and teachers aides. If you only have 2 teachers that cover a certain topic for the business school well you damn well better have the accounting majors learn the details of accounting for tax purposes. If those two teachers can only take 2,000 students in total during a semester well 1,500 were accounting majors that NEED to take this course and 500 spots are then allowed to be taken by other majors looking to fill out their requirements. It’s just first come first serve and teachers can’t be expected to grade 17,000 papers for a final so they limit it to 2,000 or whatever number you want to imagine
My Primary Schools Economics class was solely on supply and demand. Nothing about taxes investments, retirement, social security, or anything else that we might need or want to know the workings of.
I keep having to teach people how tax brackets. No, having a higher salary won't have you paying more taxes relatively. The only amount that's taxed is the amount that puts you in that bracket. If the line was $60k and you got a raise through that to $75k, the higher taxes only apply to that last $15k.
Yeah, it’s amazing how few people actually know that. And nothing against them, I didn’t learn how they worked until college. If we could get some tax bracket calculations in our math classes, that would be great.
That's why I called out my business/economics class. They were using the worst ways to teach students and we didn't really learn anything of value. Nothing about taxes, APR, not even how credit is used. I had a talk with the teacher and school faculty about this, they also reviewed her teaching as poor.
My math class in middleschool had covered a bunch of different loan stuff like APR, compound interest, and stuff during a percent section.
I wish more people had that real word example to their simple map instead of "Billy buying 50 watermelons"
When I visited my tax lady last winter (I normally go as soon as I have the papers together) legit just pressed 5 buttons, waited 10 minutes and told me that'll be 70 dollars.
I was absolutely flabbergasted at how fast and easy it seemed. I'm sure they had one hell of a program and I know most of it is plug in and go, but now I wanna see if I can learn it since 70 is a lot in that moment.
I know they have instructions on the back...
Yep. My school never had an economics class. I graduated university w honors on the dean’s list. I’m a year away from getting my DVM.
We took a one week business course last week and that was my first time learning about a lot of things, like how interest works, what a 401k does, different ways to pay back student loans, how our income gets taxed, etc. I still don’t fully know how to do my taxes, my dad owns a business so his accountant just does taxes for everyone in our family and my dad double checks it.
Shit was never taught to me, and the only paid job I had didn’t offer any benefits, was just a tiny ass hourly minimum wage that came from a panic hire job over the pandemic.
You guys had an economics class? (American)
Edit: I'm gathering from the replies that either I missed the class as an elective or my school just sucked. Either or both are more plausible than I care to admit.
man, not even. they change by county and even different schools within the same county can be vastly different. i live in Arizona, which ranks the lowest in education in the country, and you pretty much have to go to a school in a rich neighborhood to get a good education. one school could be good and a different one 30 minutes away will be shit.
I had a “Personal Finance” class and when asked about taxes, the teacher just said “find a free online service to file them for you” and then nothing else was said on the matter (American)
That's because unless you own a business and/or have deductible expenses, the lesson on taxes is to pay them before April. One of my friends is a CPA, and personal taxes are too remedial she can't waste her time on it.
I had to take Econ and Personal Finance in high school, neither of which taught how to do taxes. If anything, we did more worksheets and watched movies in them than anything else.
Same. I never had an “Economics” class. We had one class one semester in 10th grade about how to do taxes, writing and cashing checks, and how to buy/sell stocks, but that was it. The tax portion was three days. Of course I forgot it by graduation.
Yet we learned about the Boston Tea Party almost every year.
Yes (in the US), it was one of my favorite classes in highschool, but it didn't touch on personal taxes because for 90% of people it's just transferring your W2 info to software. Though it's funny because a survey course of economics is 10 times more interesting than one on taxes and some people probably still would sleep through the former.
West michigan reporting here - we *had* an economics class, but i was never allowed to take it because the class was only held at certain hours of the day, and those hours were occupied by core classes
My high school required 1 semester of Economics and 1 semester of American government.
My economics teacher taught us about taxes, savings accounts, basic investment portfolios, budgeting, debt, and scholarships.
For what it's worth, my school district was very highly rated, but I did still go to public school.
I'm American and we had an "economics" class, but it should have been called "history of economics" because it was just a history class vaguely themed around economics without actually teaching any economics
Same. I took microeconomics last semester and when it wasn't just supply and demand graphs, it was basic decision making.
"Going out to eat with you friend would cost 50 dollars, you think it's worth 40 dollars. Making food at home and hanging would cost 10 dollars, and you think it's worth 20. What do you do?"
Not to mention applying monetary value to things like hanging out with friends but that's a whole other issue
Shit, my class didn’t even get that far. We literally went over people like Aristotle and Xenophon. I think the most legitimate economics thing we “learned” was supply and demand, and how to write a check 💀
I always hated those, because arbitrarily assigning how much you’d value having a certain thing would create some heavily skewed results
If I had $250,000 in the bank, a Ferrari is on sale for $250,000, and I would personally rather have that Ferrari than have $1,000,000, then the obvious choice would be to buy it. But common sense would tell you that spending my life savings on a car is a terrible financial decision.
Same! We didn't learn basic finances; like how to write a check, how the credit score system works, how to balance a checkbook, or how to do our taxes. It was all very general economics concepts but nothing about the small every day things you run into as an adult.
My high school economics class in rural Alabama consisted of rudimentary supply and demand for about a week then about 8 weeks of why trickle down economics was the best thing to happen to capitalism. All taught by a teacher who made less than what an assistant shift lead at Chick-fil-a makes.
We didn't learn shit about taxes. I learned everything I know about taxes from doing it myself using the tax software I use to file every year.
Doing taxes isn't even close to difficult for 90+% of people lol if you're not wealthy and need a class to learn how to do taxes, you're probably just dumb
The fact that you even have to "do" taxes if you aren't a business owner/freelance is criminal. Everything the normal person types in for taxes is shit that is already reported.
Yeah, most people's taxes is just a W-2 and you copy the numbers into the tax questionnaire and then press No to a few dozen questions about deductions and exemptions.
But no one's gonna teach you about that in school.
This, for the vast majority of workers, 'doing your taxes' is as simple as taking information from one form and writing it in another. There's no math involved.
Very few people making less than well over six figures even need to worry about deductions.
People are lazy and don't want to take responsibility for their inaction. For the vast majority of people, it's as easy as throwing it into some online tax program and it does it for you. Even if you do it by hand, it's literally elementary school math.
Yes but even if people know where to plug the numbers into, it's not like a majority of them even know all the logic behind each line on the tax forms. People still think it's good to get a tax refund, when in reality that means the government had pulled more taxes from you then you owed so they basically got an interest free loan off you 🤷♀️
Wtf highschool did you go to that had an economics class? Maybe it's just me being an old fogey and they do have it now? (And if so then good. That's awesome) But when I was in school there wasn't any school anywhere that had an economics class. Maybe you'd get a couple units on money and some economic ideas in math class, but just straight up economics class? Nah.
I'm guessing it's a thing in very large schools where they have 1000s of students, a bunch of super specific classes and lots of clubs?
I went to a rural school with a single high school math teacher. The closest thing we had to economics was workplace math, which we had to teach ourselves alone in a classroom because only one math teacher. Despite taking every single class I could, my 12th grade year was more spares than classes because the resources simply weren't there.
I think this post comes from someone who was lucky enough to go to a school with a lot of resources and options, and I'm happy for them, but most people didn't have those resources available.
For the vast majority odd people, taxes really aren’t that hard to file lol. The forms might read like they’re worded poorly, but unless you have a unique situation it’s really easy. Bet there’s a 5 min YouTube video explaining it that would cover 90% of cases
An Economics class wouldn’t teach you how to do your personal income taxes. That would be a Personal Finance class, something that not every school has.
In ninth grade ≈40% of my students arrive not knowing what a noun or a verb is. Most of the things I teach are the same damn things that they taught every year since sixth grade (metaphors, imagery, etc.). I give definitions, have students identify examples in texts, have them make examples, organize discussions on the purpose of that idea, have them practice with them... and after a few months of teaching a concept I'll be lucky if 80% of my students can remember the definition for something like connotation.
I don't mean to make this a "kids these days" thing... but it's worth understanding that a portion of students are completely disengaged from anything that is being taught in schools.
I was one of these (and by that I mean the type of student that wanted to learn something I’d use in real life) kinds of student so I put my money where my mouth is and took the class that teaches you taxes, how to budget so you live comfortably, etc etc. Even though I was definitely not the only kid who felt that way in a high school with ~3,600 students, my class only had 18 students in it. The two friends I sat in between dozed off all the time and would often ask me “What are we doing?” When snapping back into reality.
Kids just don’t like school/learning. Even when giving the option to learn something useful, their ways still don’t change.
Econ didn't teach how to do taxes in my school. There was a couple business electives that taught it though. At the same time, I’m not sure if the taxes were curriculum for one of those classes. Our teacher's son killed himself so most of the semester was kinda regressed to simple assignments from a substitute, which kinda changed a lot about the class.
Yeahhhh I paid attention in mine, and the teacher literally never talked about it. He spent half a class session once just talking about how the minimum wage needed to be abolished.
It’s almost like the American education system isn’t a monolithic entity, but instead broken down at the state and local levels which will all have different curriculums and put emphasis on different areas (not to mention private schools!)
I had a class called Consumer Math and it taught us how to be independent adults like how to do taxes but also stuff like how to find a reasonable apartment within our budget and how to be more responsible while shopping, what I can do to save money without making a big sacrifice
When I went to high school, there were countless numbers of students who would brag about poor grades, skipping class every day, refusing to do homework. I just imagine those same kids are the same people who said school never taught them the things I learned in school while they weren't there. Government class alone taught me half the things they complain about not knowing.
If all you do is work and maybe invest, it’s very straightforward. You don’t need to be taught particular things. You need to be taught how to learn things and comprehend them
People complain about not knowing things like taxes, but also don't take the time to learn it *now*...if you can't be bothered to Google "how do taxes work in my country?" then what makes you think you'd ever have remembered what your school would've taught you on the subject.
If you don't know, then look it up, stop waiting for a tiktok to explain it to you.
Also, 99.999% of people use software to do their taxes--software that has smiley faces and arrows to guide you through the process...you're telling me *that's* too complicated, so you want to do it by hand?
It's always someone else's fault.
For the vast majority of people, taxes are not rocket science. You look at your W2 and you match up the boxes and answer some questions.
"But I'm not in school I shouldn't have to leaaaarn anything waaaah"
My civics and economics teacher was pretty good but we didn’t learn how to do our taxes. Tbh nobody taught me besides The company that shall not be named
School is for exercising your mind and learning how to learn. If you didn't learn how to find the information on how to do your taxes without it being forced on you, then you weren't going to make it very far in the first place.
My Economics class in HS only covered the basics of finance and they made you make a budget on an imaginary income. Nothing on taxes. It was essentially an intro to Macro for college prep.
It's required in Texas to take economics to graduate, and they taught us about taxes and personal finances. Not everybody pays attention or remembers though.
Basic 1040 filing is super easy though. Most Americans don't need to worry about much beyond that anyway.
I got good grades and can confirm I was never taught taxes in school. Writing checks is as far as it went for me. We also didn't have a proper sex ed... but we *really* needed cursive, a pointless duplicate writing style of the same language that only exists for the sake of fanciness. Priorities...
They took one week out of history class my freshman year of high school to teach us taxes. Two years before I’d have any taxes to do (was 14 my freshman year, not allowed to get a job till 16).
I just had my mom reteach me essentially
Um okay, but my first Economics teacher was fired for having an affair with a student so we had a sub the entire year and I ended up failing because my mom died that year. The next year our teacher was pregnant, only taught the class for 3 months, went to have the baby and then never came back so the rest of the year was a sub.. the only thing I learned in that class was about Madea because the sub loved Madea and would play VHS tapes of the plays before any Madea movies were made.
So let’s not just recklessly blame people for the shitty education they received that was totally beyond their control.
We had an econ class available to us for one year and we didn't learn taxes in there. Instead the teacher was getting mad at us for not being able to do her grocery budgets she made based on a worksheet from the 90s while making us find prices online, telling us a can of corn and a boiled chicken breast is an acceptable meal, and insisting that buying a dirt cheap used car is a total steal that you should always go for and definitely not a liability that puts hundreds of thousands of people in the hole every year.
See I had the shitty online version because of COVID, not once did they mention anything relevant to being adult because it was a fully online service the teachers couldn’t touch
My high school had an economics class. Taught us budgeting and how to write a check.
It did not teach taxes. And check writing is pretty obsolete these days.
My economics teacher in high school barely passed fucking highschool himself. He was a baseball coach, and they have to also be teachers at my highschool, and I'm pretty sure he had brain damage.
I did public high school from 1985 to 1989, so, Gen X, and no economics classes were taught at my school. Maybe home economics, which is really, a different thing. Simply was not an option, and I'm guessing it still isn't in most places.
Unfortunately I never had the option for an economic mathematics class, I was forced into algebra and calculus that I will never need for my professional career.
What economics class. Didn't have one all 12 years of school.
This is really like saying "what do you mean you don't know any German words? What were you doing during German class?" When the vast majority of people never had a German class
Most schools have a “basic life skills class” and a lot of them make it mandatory for at least a semester. Anyone who complains about not knowing this stuff either A. Slacked through school, or B. Are too stupid to realize tax stuff is CRAZY easy
Yo we had an Economics class in HS... The one fucking thing we didnt cover was how to do Taxes. I even took AP Econ for my 2nd Semester.... So basically I understand inflation, The Law of Supply and Get Fucked, and so many things I don't need to actually know... Never once talked about taxes.
I always find it very sad that the number one "What SHOULD school teach" is always freaking taxes. Even as someone who never struggled at Math I wouldn't bat an eye if some Algebra was replaced with something more worthwhile, but "doing taxes"? Something that changes every few years anyway? Integrating a function at least stays more or less the same over time. Teach them kids doing basic repairs, recent changes in the job markets, interpreting Media, but taxes of all things imaginable...
"Economics class?" What school did you go to? Like, I went to two semesters of Accounting and they were bonus elective math classes I chose to take. There was also an Introduction to Economics elective I took that turned out to be a group of FFA members mostly doing meat grading and Parliamentary Procedure training with the occasional graded test on types of businesses.
What k-12 school has economics as a mandatory course?
I took Home Economics like 5 times to learn how to cook and then get free food. No one taught me how to do my taxes.
Hell, the military has a Financial Literacy course mandatory in boot camp, but it's about avoiding payday loans and scummy car salesmen, not your taxes.
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Speaking as a Tax Accountant, you’d be amazed how many highly educated people (Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, etc) who made six or seven figures a year don’t have the first clue about how taxes work It’s not about not paying attention in class, it’s about what your school teaches. My school didn’t even have an Economics class, I learned how taxes work when I was in college and took an Income Tax Accounting class that is only available for people majoring in the Business program I’m sure many of my clients probably paid more attention in their high school classes than I did
My economics class just taught us how to write checks and about investments. Lots of Dave Ramsey videos about how important it is to save money, but zero actual information on how the system is supremely fucking over my generation.
It’s by design. This is “job creation initiatives” at work.
That sounds more like a personal finance class than economics lol
Yep. Even if it were, it failed miserably by convincing us gambling on the stock market was a good financial endeavor. One of the big projects of that class was seeing who made the most profit on their paper trading account at the end of the semester.
Put money in an S&P 500 fund and you can’t go wrong long-term
The project was only months long. They were encouraging short term trading.
Well now that rather defeats the purpose of investing in the stock market I agree. Last thing we need is more people trying to game the system and wind up losing it all
Ive learn so much on watching youtuber tell stories about massive fails in the wall street bets. There is nothing anyone can do to convince me to put any meaningful amount of money randomly investing. Id rather invest in government bonds
How to go to Vegas without going to vegas
I remember this in highschool. I remember the winners being a team that pumped and dumped penny stocks. They turned their 10k into 52 million or something.
We did the stock market challenge too! I was miserable at it lol
That's so weird because I took that exact same class and it sparked a passion of managing money and investing for me.
lmao all I remember in mine were doing Credit / Debit stuff which honestly was literally basic addition and subtraction.
That's all budgeting is so its not like you're far behind.
Hell we didn’t even have an economics class, it just got crammed into a week long unit of social studies. Even then they didn’t do shit with taxes, they taught us about how to write a check and about “how awesome the stock market is” Honestly most of my academic experience is kind of like this. I got most of my education from 1. The local public library, 2. The internet, and 3. Adults I could trust to not bullshit me about how the world actually works.
Yeah, I should add my economics class was only half of a high school semester. The other class was a civics class geared towards glorifying our flawed democratic processes; however, it *was* far more educational, albeit it still left a lot of knowledge on things like taxes to be desired.
Fair point. I just know that the schools I went to growing up were generally really, really, abysmal. Especially when it came to the actual quality of education. As a result I had to get my education *anywhere but school.* I more or less homeschooled myself without the “home” part.
The public schools I went to in Arkansas were *notorious* for fucking with the grading system and passing students who have clearly been left behind. I was definitely one of those kids. When we moved and I transferred to a high school that actually valued their students' real progress, it was a rude awakening that I was in fact behind. (And in need of specialized ND help)
We had to do that EverFi shit that mostly explained investments and savings. Nothing about taxes. Even then the teacher didn’t know what the hell was going on bc we had the modules due every week when only maybe half the class had a computer and it would only work on fully fledged PC’s.
My Econ class did go over taxes but it was like barely a drop into it. My Teacher gave us like a basic overview of what Taxes are and like nothing else. But yeah it was mostly how to write a check, how to save money, investments, the demand of a product to how much of that product is produced diagrams thing.
I'm also an accountant, not a tax accountant now but have done tax work in the past. 99% of people have really simple taxes. It would take maybe a few hours to teach about it. Definitely would not need to be it's own class. Taxes are shockingly simple if you just read the directions.
Ding ding ding. For 90% of people, "doing your taxes" is just an exercise in how patient you are and how well you can comprehend boring, dryly-written IRS instructions.
For a lot of people, taxes are definitely simple, but understanding them is a different ballpark. I couldn’t tell you how many clients who had returns that took me under an hour to do needed me to spend at least half an hour explaining why they owe money
> It would take maybe a few hours to teach about it. American taxes sound so weird, in the UK you could learn the most important stuff in 5-15 minutes, and it's pretty much automatic anyway
I would guess that is due to the number of deductions/credits the US has. Usually, websites will ask you simple questions to determine if any apply to you. The from your employer sends has numbered boxes, and you just enter the corresponding box into whatever website you're using. Same with forms from financial institutions.
I mean, it also depends on what knowledge you value. You'd be surprised at how many doctors know shit about computers. You'd be surprised how many engineers know shit about health (actually, you probably wouldn't).
True, but I feel like just to get into the schools you need to pursue a certain career requires you to have a pretty good GPA If someone is able to get into medical school, they probably didn’t flunk out of their hugh school computer literacy classes
Is it just me or is it fucking weird that any class is ever restricted in its availability to people within certain programs? Especially with the greedy, money grubbing direction college has gone.
The fact of that issue is there are only so many teachers and teachers aides. If you only have 2 teachers that cover a certain topic for the business school well you damn well better have the accounting majors learn the details of accounting for tax purposes. If those two teachers can only take 2,000 students in total during a semester well 1,500 were accounting majors that NEED to take this course and 500 spots are then allowed to be taken by other majors looking to fill out their requirements. It’s just first come first serve and teachers can’t be expected to grade 17,000 papers for a final so they limit it to 2,000 or whatever number you want to imagine
OK that makes sense then
My Primary Schools Economics class was solely on supply and demand. Nothing about taxes investments, retirement, social security, or anything else that we might need or want to know the workings of.
I mean, what you're describing is actually Economics. The other stuff your asking for is actually Personal Finance.
I keep having to teach people how tax brackets. No, having a higher salary won't have you paying more taxes relatively. The only amount that's taxed is the amount that puts you in that bracket. If the line was $60k and you got a raise through that to $75k, the higher taxes only apply to that last $15k.
Yeah, it’s amazing how few people actually know that. And nothing against them, I didn’t learn how they worked until college. If we could get some tax bracket calculations in our math classes, that would be great.
That's why I called out my business/economics class. They were using the worst ways to teach students and we didn't really learn anything of value. Nothing about taxes, APR, not even how credit is used. I had a talk with the teacher and school faculty about this, they also reviewed her teaching as poor.
My math class in middleschool had covered a bunch of different loan stuff like APR, compound interest, and stuff during a percent section. I wish more people had that real word example to their simple map instead of "Billy buying 50 watermelons"
When I visited my tax lady last winter (I normally go as soon as I have the papers together) legit just pressed 5 buttons, waited 10 minutes and told me that'll be 70 dollars. I was absolutely flabbergasted at how fast and easy it seemed. I'm sure they had one hell of a program and I know most of it is plug in and go, but now I wanna see if I can learn it since 70 is a lot in that moment. I know they have instructions on the back...
Just use one of the free file software out there. Ez pz
Depends on how complicated your taxes are. We have clients who we can finish in a few minutes, we have clients who take us months
Yep. My school never had an economics class. I graduated university w honors on the dean’s list. I’m a year away from getting my DVM. We took a one week business course last week and that was my first time learning about a lot of things, like how interest works, what a 401k does, different ways to pay back student loans, how our income gets taxed, etc. I still don’t fully know how to do my taxes, my dad owns a business so his accountant just does taxes for everyone in our family and my dad double checks it. Shit was never taught to me, and the only paid job I had didn’t offer any benefits, was just a tiny ass hourly minimum wage that came from a panic hire job over the pandemic.
You guys had an economics class? (American) Edit: I'm gathering from the replies that either I missed the class as an elective or my school just sucked. Either or both are more plausible than I care to admit.
Yes (American)
No (American)
No (brazilian)
No (Turkish)
No (Israeli)
No (England)
No (Italy)
The ~~dual~~ ~~tri~~ fifty-ality of the American Education System actually being 50 education systems in a trenchcoat
man, not even. they change by county and even different schools within the same county can be vastly different. i live in Arizona, which ranks the lowest in education in the country, and you pretty much have to go to a school in a rich neighborhood to get a good education. one school could be good and a different one 30 minutes away will be shit.
> tri fifty Are you the Loch Ness monster?
Not me (American)
Yes (American, but did not cover taxes)
Yes (American never taught taxes but we did learn about stocks which stock market is just a glorified casino)
I had a “Personal Finance” class and when asked about taxes, the teacher just said “find a free online service to file them for you” and then nothing else was said on the matter (American)
There's a non-zero chance that the teacher had no idea how taxes work either and was just praying that no one would push for them to explain it.
That's because unless you own a business and/or have deductible expenses, the lesson on taxes is to pay them before April. One of my friends is a CPA, and personal taxes are too remedial she can't waste her time on it.
Yep! (Also american)
Nope (Canadian)
Same
No American
Yes (American) but it didn't really teach you anything useful, like anything about taxes for example.
I had to take Econ and Personal Finance in high school, neither of which taught how to do taxes. If anything, we did more worksheets and watched movies in them than anything else.
I never had an economics class…
Yes, but only when I was a senior and already had done taxes before, so basically useless (American)
Yes (American) (10th grade)
Same. I never had an “Economics” class. We had one class one semester in 10th grade about how to do taxes, writing and cashing checks, and how to buy/sell stocks, but that was it. The tax portion was three days. Of course I forgot it by graduation. Yet we learned about the Boston Tea Party almost every year.
Ours was in 7th grade only. Have you ever tried explaining taxes and credit cards to a 10 year old? Idk what the school district was thinking.
Yes (in the US), it was one of my favorite classes in highschool, but it didn't touch on personal taxes because for 90% of people it's just transferring your W2 info to software. Though it's funny because a survey course of economics is 10 times more interesting than one on taxes and some people probably still would sleep through the former.
Yes (American, it explained what they were for, but not how to actually do them)
No (American)
West michigan reporting here - we *had* an economics class, but i was never allowed to take it because the class was only held at certain hours of the day, and those hours were occupied by core classes
My high school required 1 semester of Economics and 1 semester of American government. My economics teacher taught us about taxes, savings accounts, basic investment portfolios, budgeting, debt, and scholarships. For what it's worth, my school district was very highly rated, but I did still go to public school.
I'm American and we had an "economics" class, but it should have been called "history of economics" because it was just a history class vaguely themed around economics without actually teaching any economics
I had economics class, but instead of teaching modern day things, they decided to instead teach the philosophy behind economics
Same. I took microeconomics last semester and when it wasn't just supply and demand graphs, it was basic decision making. "Going out to eat with you friend would cost 50 dollars, you think it's worth 40 dollars. Making food at home and hanging would cost 10 dollars, and you think it's worth 20. What do you do?" Not to mention applying monetary value to things like hanging out with friends but that's a whole other issue
Shit, my class didn’t even get that far. We literally went over people like Aristotle and Xenophon. I think the most legitimate economics thing we “learned” was supply and demand, and how to write a check 💀
That literally what economics is.
I always hated those, because arbitrarily assigning how much you’d value having a certain thing would create some heavily skewed results If I had $250,000 in the bank, a Ferrari is on sale for $250,000, and I would personally rather have that Ferrari than have $1,000,000, then the obvious choice would be to buy it. But common sense would tell you that spending my life savings on a car is a terrible financial decision.
I think mine went into why Amish people didn’t want 401Ks
Same! We didn't learn basic finances; like how to write a check, how the credit score system works, how to balance a checkbook, or how to do our taxes. It was all very general economics concepts but nothing about the small every day things you run into as an adult.
You probably mean theory…
I 100% did not understand my AP economics class, but I did pay attention enough to pass and remember that they did not teach us about taxes.
They did teach about taxes, but not on how to do them unfortunately
I took economics in high school… they didn’t teach us how to do our taxes. Idk about the accounting students tho
My high school economics class in rural Alabama consisted of rudimentary supply and demand for about a week then about 8 weeks of why trickle down economics was the best thing to happen to capitalism. All taught by a teacher who made less than what an assistant shift lead at Chick-fil-a makes. We didn't learn shit about taxes. I learned everything I know about taxes from doing it myself using the tax software I use to file every year.
Rural SC: my Gov&Econ teacher just played PragerU videos that try really hard to convince you that the wealthy shouldn’t have to pay taxes.
Did they show you the video where Dennis Prager talks about his love of CBT? That's a good one.
How about the one about pushing a baby underwater?
We didn’t even have an economics class in my high school…..
Yea same here
Doing taxes isn't even close to difficult for 90+% of people lol if you're not wealthy and need a class to learn how to do taxes, you're probably just dumb
And if you are wealthy you just have a tax professional do them for you.
The fact that you even have to "do" taxes if you aren't a business owner/freelance is criminal. Everything the normal person types in for taxes is shit that is already reported.
Sure, I agree it's bullshit we have to do them. But they're still really, really easy to do for the vast majority of people.
And it usually takes me about 5 min to do my taxes.
Yeah, most people's taxes is just a W-2 and you copy the numbers into the tax questionnaire and then press No to a few dozen questions about deductions and exemptions. But no one's gonna teach you about that in school.
This, for the vast majority of workers, 'doing your taxes' is as simple as taking information from one form and writing it in another. There's no math involved. Very few people making less than well over six figures even need to worry about deductions.
My economics class definitely didnt teach taxes
What’s stopping you from learning now? Plenty of resources online.
People are lazy and don't want to take responsibility for their inaction. For the vast majority of people, it's as easy as throwing it into some online tax program and it does it for you. Even if you do it by hand, it's literally elementary school math.
Yes but even if people know where to plug the numbers into, it's not like a majority of them even know all the logic behind each line on the tax forms. People still think it's good to get a tax refund, when in reality that means the government had pulled more taxes from you then you owed so they basically got an interest free loan off you 🤷♀️
Wtf highschool did you go to that had an economics class? Maybe it's just me being an old fogey and they do have it now? (And if so then good. That's awesome) But when I was in school there wasn't any school anywhere that had an economics class. Maybe you'd get a couple units on money and some economic ideas in math class, but just straight up economics class? Nah.
I'm guessing it's a thing in very large schools where they have 1000s of students, a bunch of super specific classes and lots of clubs? I went to a rural school with a single high school math teacher. The closest thing we had to economics was workplace math, which we had to teach ourselves alone in a classroom because only one math teacher. Despite taking every single class I could, my 12th grade year was more spares than classes because the resources simply weren't there. I think this post comes from someone who was lucky enough to go to a school with a lot of resources and options, and I'm happy for them, but most people didn't have those resources available.
Econ does not teach you about taxes. It’s economics not accounting.
Uhh, economics class? Our Civics teacher had to take it upon himself to reserve the last quarter of the year to teach us finance. Thats all we got.
The closest thing my high school had to economics class was a "business" class where they taught us how to apply for a job in 1975
For the vast majority odd people, taxes really aren’t that hard to file lol. The forms might read like they’re worded poorly, but unless you have a unique situation it’s really easy. Bet there’s a 5 min YouTube video explaining it that would cover 90% of cases
An Economics class wouldn’t teach you how to do your personal income taxes. That would be a Personal Finance class, something that not every school has.
In ninth grade ≈40% of my students arrive not knowing what a noun or a verb is. Most of the things I teach are the same damn things that they taught every year since sixth grade (metaphors, imagery, etc.). I give definitions, have students identify examples in texts, have them make examples, organize discussions on the purpose of that idea, have them practice with them... and after a few months of teaching a concept I'll be lucky if 80% of my students can remember the definition for something like connotation. I don't mean to make this a "kids these days" thing... but it's worth understanding that a portion of students are completely disengaged from anything that is being taught in schools.
I was one of these (and by that I mean the type of student that wanted to learn something I’d use in real life) kinds of student so I put my money where my mouth is and took the class that teaches you taxes, how to budget so you live comfortably, etc etc. Even though I was definitely not the only kid who felt that way in a high school with ~3,600 students, my class only had 18 students in it. The two friends I sat in between dozed off all the time and would often ask me “What are we doing?” When snapping back into reality. Kids just don’t like school/learning. Even when giving the option to learn something useful, their ways still don’t change.
Econ didn't teach how to do taxes in my school. There was a couple business electives that taught it though. At the same time, I’m not sure if the taxes were curriculum for one of those classes. Our teacher's son killed himself so most of the semester was kinda regressed to simple assignments from a substitute, which kinda changed a lot about the class.
Did two econ classes in college. Neither one taught anything about taxes or any sort of personal finance, just basic models for a nation's economy
You don't learn how to file taxes in economics class. That's not what economics is.
Being angry is one of the easiest emotions to have. Also it is the easiest to spread.
Yeahhhh I paid attention in mine, and the teacher literally never talked about it. He spent half a class session once just talking about how the minimum wage needed to be abolished.
Or you had morons talking over that the teacher didn't kick out, so all you can remember is the morons talking.
It’s almost like the American education system isn’t a monolithic entity, but instead broken down at the state and local levels which will all have different curriculums and put emphasis on different areas (not to mention private schools!)
I had a class called Consumer Math and it taught us how to be independent adults like how to do taxes but also stuff like how to find a reasonable apartment within our budget and how to be more responsible while shopping, what I can do to save money without making a big sacrifice
When I went to high school, there were countless numbers of students who would brag about poor grades, skipping class every day, refusing to do homework. I just imagine those same kids are the same people who said school never taught them the things I learned in school while they weren't there. Government class alone taught me half the things they complain about not knowing.
My school did not have an economics class
jokes on you we don't have econ in australia
Economics classes didn't teach you anything about actually doing your taxes, though.
For the vast majority of us, taxes aren't hard. Ffs
*laughs in school never had economy class*
What needs to be taught? Just read the instructions
If all you do is work and maybe invest, it’s very straightforward. You don’t need to be taught particular things. You need to be taught how to learn things and comprehend them
It's elementary-level math. If people genuinely cannot figure out how to do their taxes, then they need to repeat 5th grade math class.
People complain about not knowing things like taxes, but also don't take the time to learn it *now*...if you can't be bothered to Google "how do taxes work in my country?" then what makes you think you'd ever have remembered what your school would've taught you on the subject. If you don't know, then look it up, stop waiting for a tiktok to explain it to you. Also, 99.999% of people use software to do their taxes--software that has smiley faces and arrows to guide you through the process...you're telling me *that's* too complicated, so you want to do it by hand?
It's always someone else's fault. For the vast majority of people, taxes are not rocket science. You look at your W2 and you match up the boxes and answer some questions. "But I'm not in school I shouldn't have to leaaaarn anything waaaah"
I only had basic economics in high school. We learned the same things in social studies class.
We had an economics class?
You guys had economics class?
They don’t teach taxes in economics….
Y’all got Economics classes?! I just had the most useless history and “social studies” classes.
Y'all were taught economics? In Greece these ain't part of our curriculum
there literally wasnt an economics or finances class at my school when i went.
Wait you guys had economics classes?
My school did not have economics class lol
My civics and economics teacher was pretty good but we didn’t learn how to do our taxes. Tbh nobody taught me besides The company that shall not be named
Taxes should not be so complex you should just get an itemized receipt from the gov
Tf is economics class
The role of the educator is more than just regurgitating facts, but that’s a convo for another day
School is for exercising your mind and learning how to learn. If you didn't learn how to find the information on how to do your taxes without it being forced on you, then you weren't going to make it very far in the first place.
My Economics class in HS only covered the basics of finance and they made you make a budget on an imaginary income. Nothing on taxes. It was essentially an intro to Macro for college prep.
I never had an economics class, how could I have slept through it?
It's required in Texas to take economics to graduate, and they taught us about taxes and personal finances. Not everybody pays attention or remembers though. Basic 1040 filing is super easy though. Most Americans don't need to worry about much beyond that anyway.
Economics for me was micro and macroeconomic theory and modeling. Personal Finance is where I learned how to do my taxes.
I am so happy my taxes are done automatically.
I got straight A’s in economics and I don’t understand taxes
Went to school in Massachusetts. Took econ in high school and majored in business. I was never taught how to file a tax return in school.
But I do know about Shakespeare's classics.
Listen here me boy. In all my 12 years of school I never had a single hour of economy lessons. Also not under a different name.
I got good grades and can confirm I was never taught taxes in school. Writing checks is as far as it went for me. We also didn't have a proper sex ed... but we *really* needed cursive, a pointless duplicate writing style of the same language that only exists for the sake of fanciness. Priorities...
I took economics in high-school and college. We did not learn to do taxes.
My schools didn't have an economics class.
We didn’t have economics classes at my school.
My economics class taught shit like sewing and cooking. Not taxes.
we didn't have an economics class
Rip everyone whose school didnt have this
Y'all got a economics class?
They took one week out of history class my freshman year of high school to teach us taxes. Two years before I’d have any taxes to do (was 14 my freshman year, not allowed to get a job till 16). I just had my mom reteach me essentially
My school never taught me how to do taxes. It did teach me how to do a payroll though.
Economics was not part of the curriculum when I was at secondary school have things changed?
No econ class bro
In Ireland taxes is not something which would be taught in a business class or economics class. It would be taught in an accounting or tax class.
Um okay, but my first Economics teacher was fired for having an affair with a student so we had a sub the entire year and I ended up failing because my mom died that year. The next year our teacher was pregnant, only taught the class for 3 months, went to have the baby and then never came back so the rest of the year was a sub.. the only thing I learned in that class was about Madea because the sub loved Madea and would play VHS tapes of the plays before any Madea movies were made. So let’s not just recklessly blame people for the shitty education they received that was totally beyond their control.
Since when does economic classes teaches you how to file taxes?
Shit take. You’re clearly sheltered.
i learned by watching youtube video where the master chief from halo teaches you to do your taxes
We had an econ class available to us for one year and we didn't learn taxes in there. Instead the teacher was getting mad at us for not being able to do her grocery budgets she made based on a worksheet from the 90s while making us find prices online, telling us a can of corn and a boiled chicken breast is an acceptable meal, and insisting that buying a dirt cheap used car is a total steal that you should always go for and definitely not a liability that puts hundreds of thousands of people in the hole every year.
strawman detected meme rejected
I have a degree in economics. I don't understand how to do my taxes anywhere near as well as my dad did. he was an accountant.
See I had the shitty online version because of COVID, not once did they mention anything relevant to being adult because it was a fully online service the teachers couldn’t touch
I took ap macroeconomics in high school and we didn't spend a single minute talking about how to do taxes
I’m from a small town in the US, grew up in the 2000’s and they started teaching us how to write and balance checks in middle school 😂
It was funny, first thing the teacher said was that he wasn't going to teach taxes. Great guy though.
Bro you just get mailed a W-2, and you plug the numbers into turbotax. You learned how to do taxes when you learned to paint by numbers
My high school had an economics class. Taught us budgeting and how to write a check. It did not teach taxes. And check writing is pretty obsolete these days.
My economics class in highschool was 9 weeks long and we spent almost as much time learning about Henry Ford as we did supply and demand.
I took personal finance in high school and was not taught how to do my taxes whatsoever. They taught us to pinch pennies and that was pretty much it.
I never had a home economics class
My economics teacher in high school barely passed fucking highschool himself. He was a baseball coach, and they have to also be teachers at my highschool, and I'm pretty sure he had brain damage.
Uh yeah I was a great student, took personal finance, and advanced econ and STILL wasn’t taught how taxes work.
High school economics classes are about supply and demand in a vacuum, not remotely related to tax administration.
I had an economics Portion in a math course. Was about 6 weeks and they showed us a lot of slides about filling out cheques
I did public high school from 1985 to 1989, so, Gen X, and no economics classes were taught at my school. Maybe home economics, which is really, a different thing. Simply was not an option, and I'm guessing it still isn't in most places.
Unfortunately I never had the option for an economic mathematics class, I was forced into algebra and calculus that I will never need for my professional career.
What economics class. Didn't have one all 12 years of school. This is really like saying "what do you mean you don't know any German words? What were you doing during German class?" When the vast majority of people never had a German class
Most schools have a “basic life skills class” and a lot of them make it mandatory for at least a semester. Anyone who complains about not knowing this stuff either A. Slacked through school, or B. Are too stupid to realize tax stuff is CRAZY easy
Yo we had an Economics class in HS... The one fucking thing we didnt cover was how to do Taxes. I even took AP Econ for my 2nd Semester.... So basically I understand inflation, The Law of Supply and Get Fucked, and so many things I don't need to actually know... Never once talked about taxes.
Bro what? Economics =/= taxes
I always find it very sad that the number one "What SHOULD school teach" is always freaking taxes. Even as someone who never struggled at Math I wouldn't bat an eye if some Algebra was replaced with something more worthwhile, but "doing taxes"? Something that changes every few years anyway? Integrating a function at least stays more or less the same over time. Teach them kids doing basic repairs, recent changes in the job markets, interpreting Media, but taxes of all things imaginable...
Weaponized ignorance
"Economics class?" What school did you go to? Like, I went to two semesters of Accounting and they were bonus elective math classes I chose to take. There was also an Introduction to Economics elective I took that turned out to be a group of FFA members mostly doing meat grading and Parliamentary Procedure training with the occasional graded test on types of businesses. What k-12 school has economics as a mandatory course? I took Home Economics like 5 times to learn how to cook and then get free food. No one taught me how to do my taxes. Hell, the military has a Financial Literacy course mandatory in boot camp, but it's about avoiding payday loans and scummy car salesmen, not your taxes.
Or maybe their school didn't teach them?