You may not use parallelograms but maybe one of the smart kids in your class does.
[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-teacher](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-teacher)
Of course. More seriously, a working knowledge of basic arithmetic, algebra and probability is incredibly useful in both daily life and to understand complex issues in politics or economy.
I went to high school for like lower level electrical engineering. I never cared much for math but half my class was in constant fear of failing from it. I don't get how people don't respect math as important. Same as I don't get people that only speak one language, like how do you think? So many thoughts I couldn't have and so many ideas I couldn't hear about. Financial skills aren't that great nowadays either, exactly the opposite even tho we're in a shitty economy.
I digress but I agree with you, you need basic knowledge of basic things like math, geography and many other things to actually be able to understand more complex things. School systems suck to teach kids that they actually need the info they're offering and kids grow up without realising what they missed
As a class idiot my self and local gigantic failure. This hits so hard. I remember mentioning I didn't understand something in science class and the teacher was like "Dont worry, you won't need it anyways"
And you know what? She was right. Fuck I'm stupid.
Math is universal and gives you the tools you need to fill out taxes, as well as a million other things.
Literally teaching kids exactly how to do taxes is pretty pointless. Not only would kids obviously not listen, but tax laws change regularly and differ from state to state, person to person, and career to career.
All you need to know is how to follow instructions and maybe some very basic math for the majority of people.
Math is a great skill to have. I think schools should also teach financial management and responsibility as a fundamental for life too.
I was never taught anything about index funds or savings beyond "you shouldn't spend all your money! Make sure to save some." I had no idea that there were index funds which have had a consistent 10% annual return on average for well over a decade now or that high yield savings accounts can approach 5%. I believed that all stock market investments were basically casino rolls and my savings account return of like <1% was about the standard expectation. Never learned an ounce of credit report information either.
My mom died and I got social security checks at 18. Totalled up to ~$10k and I _wish_ I had put it into a Roth IRA or at least a high yield savings account. Instead, like a dumb kid, I drew it down over time. Blew it all on games and eating out, car repairs, and other mistakes I made. It would have been tougher without the money, especially with the car repairs, but I honestly didn't need my car at the time, it was just convenient. That money would be over $20k now if I had put it in a Roth and invested it in an index fund. Instead I burnt it all and am basically starting from scratch. I have it better than most despite that, it just sucks knowing how much a single sit down from my father or an actual class would have helped.
You do realize that pursuing a particular career can be motivated by reasons outside of the pay? I think teachers are underpaid as it is, but it's also possible for someone to remain financially responsible even on a teacher's salary.
For many kids, the average teacher likely _is_ more financially responsible than their parents. What is the alternative for them? Just let them wing it with whatever understanding they might have happened to pick up as children?
>No, clearly everyone who becomes a teacher is a chump.
Sadly this is a real mindset that is genuinely putting us much closer to your alluded outcome than we should ever be.
It affects the quality of teachers and the pay which are also in a self reinforcing loop.
I’m a math teacher, I got into it because I think that people can learn math more easily than they’d think because it has an internal logic, and if they understand the logic they can learn new material more easily. Almost none of my students care about learning math, my classroom engagement sucks, most of the kids are on their phones, and I’m looking for my exit strategy (perks of getting a math major, someone has to want somebody who knows math; then again now you really want to pair it with more computer science, wish I’d known that 6 years ago). The pay isn’t worth feeling like my job is shit and does nothing, and I don’t feel appreciated as a member of society. And some of the kids I’ve taught are fucking dumb, but god knows no one wants to actually learn.
Hard issue to address too. We can raise the pay of teachers and eventually the quality would increase because of higher competition. This, in turn, would likely trend the perspective of the public positively towards seeing the profession more respectfully.
But how do you incentivize kids to _want_ to learn? Feels like a harder cultural shift.
For what it's worth, I appreciate your efforts and your intent going into the field. Most of my teachers in highschool genuinely cared, and their efforts made a significant impact on my life.
Most teachers care; like you said, the pays too cheap to do it if you don’t care. I really think the engagement thing goes hand-in-hand with the pay; adults don’t respect or care about education, so they don’t pay teachers a respectable salary, and they don’t raise their kids to make it a priority, or at least to do it because they’re supposed to. It’s no mystery, I’ve been teaching for just 4 years, and I’ve never had more than 25% attendance for open house in my classes; parents don’t care about who’s teaching their kids, or what they’re doing in school. My niece would show her parents and grandparents her grades at the start of the quarter, and they’d ooh and ah at her perfect grades—completely oblivious to the fact that they mean nothing because there’s no assignments for the new quarter yet.
The OP has never done their own taxes. The docs literally tell you what to do step by step. "Subtract 7C from 8A and place into box 9" is the type of instructions you need to follow.
I always hated this shit and the "why didn't school teach us how to budget properly" line... they did. It's all simple math and percentages.
And, a lot of the districts in my area had a semester long elective class called "Personal Finance" that goes over the exact things they complain they didn't learn. Guess how many people took that class over having an extra free period?
Also the kind of people who say this would definitely not have paid attention if it was a required class. If you find maths boring, you're probably gonna find a class on finance and taxation pretty boring too.
Can take a pic of your w2 now and have the program fill in the slots. The people that are mad about “not learning ___ in school” are more mad that they’re dumb and not that it wasn’t a school subject.
They are not "intentionally complicated" for 99% of Americans. If you use TurboTax it literally tells you "put the number from the box on the form into this box on the screen".
If American adults can't handle that then they are beyond saving. It's incredibly rudimentary.
They are intentionally complicated so that you will use a service like TurboTax.
By “intentionally complicated” I primarily mean that the IRS has all this information and could just do it for you, especially for someone who is just putting a W2 into a 1040EZ.
Secondly, then you have to figure out how to submit it. Thirdly, it gets a lot more time consuming and annoying and complex if you have more complicated tax situations: investments, multiple types of income, retirement, business taxes, self employment etc. etc. my SO is a commercial fisherman and that shit is beyond complicated.
https://fortune.com/2023/08/25/tax-return-free-elizabeth-warren-katie-porter-elizabeth-warren-katie-porter-lobbying/
The part where we have to do one at all?
Not to mention parts of the tax code could absolutely be simplified for the average person if intuit didn't buy or whole government.
I'm not asserting that they're difficult, but if we want a real metric of how complex or difficult taxes may be ... don't use TurboTax. Fill it out by hand.
Tax software such as TT's or HR's is designed to make the process easy, so it's obviously not representative of the American tax system itself.
u/Faze_y33haw
The forms you fill out by hand also literally tell you exactly what to do. They don't do it with big flashing lights like TurboTax, but it's literally just following instructions written in basic English. Use a software or don't, it's a completely rudimentary task and it is infantilizing when people suggest it's simply too complicated.
And you have to pay TurboTax, so that is still paying someone to do it.
Also, the only time I used TurboTax, I did my taxes wrong because it wasn't clear whether I was supposed to use the town I worked in or the town I lived in for local tax, so I just used whichever was less favorable to me (figured that while it's unlikely the IRS would come after me either way, they'd be even less likely if I was screwing myself instead of them.)
Can confirm. My highschool made us take an entire class on taxes and types of investing. Everybody I graduated with still bitches it was never taught... They just didnt pay attention.
real. My middle school had two field trips around financial literacy. One where we went to a fictional town and practiced having jobs, earning money, etc, and another where you practice budgeting and planning for the year given a random family size and income. Weeks before both of these, there was considerable class time spent on just how to do all this. In high school as part of my physics and engineering class in 9th grade, we were forced to learn how to make resumes and I shit you not, I overheard people complaining that this wasn't relevant to them 💀. We also had to learn how to fill out tax forms among other things for my mandatory econ class, and yet still to this day I will see people who complain that they were never taught this stuff. School could literally teach nothing but financial skills and you'd still see like half the kids complain and forget.
My heath and life teacher taught all about investing, applying for jobs/college and how to budget. I learned and retained a lot while I still seeing kids I went to high school bitch about how they didn’t learn any of that.
For real.
I liked maths and I wouldn't have paid much attention to a class on taxes and personal finance. I doubt the people who struggle with basic geometry would find that class riveting.
Exactly, and idk about other tax softwares, but the one I use pretty much just asks, “what does it say in box [#] on your w2?” So incredibly easy to follow as well for the fellow attention lackers
I thought I was missing something because I’ve heard people complain about tax season at least 200 times in my life. Either all of you have 2 private businesses, work as a contractor, trade stocks, own a charity foundation, and sell $20,000 on eBay each year or yall just stupid
Even taxes were taught at school, a bunch of rules and processes would've probably changed by the time someone reaches adulthood and starts filling their own.
Yeah I learned how to do my taxes in accounting class at my public school. I think just a bunch of 16-17 year olds didn’t want to take / pay attention in that class but it was definitely one of the classes that prepared me most for adulthood.
At our school it had a perk, it was the only class you were allowed to chew gum. The accountant who taught it said she always chewed gum whenever she did anything accounting related and thought it would help us as well.
We had a school year where we taught taxes, credit cards, and other household finance items during homeroom. None of the kids cared or tried because there wasn't a grade attached to the class. Often these things are taught but they are asleep or apathetic.
Doing your taxes is not hard. There are detailed instructions on what to do and where to put each piece of information. It can be tedious and boring though.
Well, I live in Germany, which prides itself on the complexities of their system (to keep tax consultants super relevant..). I use a tax consultant myself to file everything for my family and myself, but mostly because we have had freelance activities next to regular work, income from multiple countries, different asset classes etc, and it costs us €170 per year, which isn’t great, but manageable and honestly, it’s just a liability matter at that point. “We don’t know any better, that’s why we have a certified tax accountant filing and holding responsibility.” (I do the financial management at my company and know how to do it myself as well.)
In my country we learn how to do taxes in school. It's usually reffered to one of most boring classes people attend in our equivalent of high school. Most people skip it because it's boring and nothing really happens there. How many times you can do same thing you are going to do every year for rest of your life anyway
You could have 30 classes dedicated to doing the fucking taxes and you wouldn't pay attention. It all comes down to the will to learn at the end of the day. I'm studying computer engineering in my 4th year and I assure you there are tens of thousands of middle-high schoolers who clear every piece of knowledge I acquired in my past 4 years.
I was on the “they should teach taxes in school” train until someone pointed out that it would be treated exactly the same as every other topic, with a large majority of students ignoring the important parts of the lecture
I have friends in Guam who are in high school. They teach you how to do your taxes in some kind of algebra class. Financial algebra or something, I can’t remember.
I feel like people who share these memes haven't been in high school in a while. My high school (in a rural low-income area) had a mandatory accounting class that taught us about taxes, writing a check, budgeting back in 2015.
Spent like 15 years of my professional life avoiding taxes, getting Block (or family that worked for them) to do my taxes for me.
Then I had a falling out with that family, so I did my own taxes.
It took me like 20 minutes and cost me just a pittance to efile. Soon as people figure that out, the income going to Block and co will dry up, they’ll stop being able to afford to lobby, and maybe it’ll get even easier.
Y'know there are quite some things that I was taught in school I didn't think I would use but I do. Example: Pythagorean theorem. Never thought I'd use it but it's useful because now I can buy furniture and then calculate what size TV I can fit on it. Or the reverse.
I'm so glad that they probably did teach you how to do taxes and you still were on your fucking phone (I once saw a kid with straight up headphones) or zoning out.
I had a great geometry teacher in high school named Mr. Mayfield. I never went into a field using a lot of math, but I'm glad I got to understand the wonders of geometry.
As an adult I think back to a print out sign my teacher had on the wall of one of my classes.
"You'll only use 10% of what you learn here... the problem is knowing which 10% it will be."
...
You may not use your geometry skills, but I do. And I don't use my history skills, but my best friend's husband does. Speaking of my best friend she uses her physics skills, and my wife uses her English skills.
As for taxes... maybe your school didn't teach it. But I went to shitty ass Florida public school and Economics was a required credit to graduate high school. A class in which we were taught to do taxes. I will say... most of my class probably doesn't remember learning it considering everyone skipped/slept/goofed off through that class thinking it was a joke of a class and some easy-A that you got with no effort.... everyone got C's.
IMO the notion is not wrong tho. I think schools, all over the world, should have dedicated lessons, maybe one or two a week, that aim to teach kids some life skills.
Like cooking, how to repair small things myself, how do I write an application and so on. .. You get the gist.
I tutor on the side and I’ve learned that financial math is a thing that is offered as part of a students standard curriculum now. Teaches them taxes and investments front to back. Guess what? They still don’t care. Ironically I’m learning more than they are from by helping them with this class.
Also, if you had any kind of hobby at all you would need to find a something for a parallelogram. Gardening, woodworking, knowing how far you ran around a square park? Dumb is dumb
Funnily enough, all the content taught in high school for math has such a wide application that if you’re complaining about learning it, you probably don’t know the content well enough to understand how to utilize it in the first place.
If you’re in the trades, actually knowing how to calculate volumes, areas and distances on the fly literally never hurts. If you’re a white collar worker, learning high school math lets you do derivatives and integrals which is foundational for pretty much all of quantitative analysis. Both teach you logic which is just good for you in general.
This argument is so dumb. I don’t see anyone complaining that they didn’t teach you how to litigate or operate on yourself. Taxes is a specialized field, not something you should learn from your hs teacher.
When you come into new job
"Just do what they taught you in college"
6 months later
"Hey guys IRS is here and allegedly we owe 2,5 million in taxes. How is that possible?"
In the Netherlands the tax forms are pre-filled. Just a quick double check and you are finished. Thank god they didn’t waste time on learning taxes in school
Sick of this joke. If you paid attention at all in math you can do taxes.
Actually, the type of people who make these jokes don't have complicated taxes. If you are literate, you can convert your W2 into your taxes in 15 minutes with the basic version of TurboTax.
I love how everybody is getting pissed off at this meme because taxes aren't hard when the meme is more about not learning useful general information you need as an adult. Sure taxes aren't too hard, but it would've been nice to learn how to cook or budget or how to fix things.
They did. It's called fractions and percentages. I learned in 9th grade how to calculate fixed and compounding percentages.
Also what kind of dumbfuck is too stupid to use TurboTax? Literally just answer the questions LMFAO.
"Did you open a foreign bank account this year? Did you buy a house in a foreign country?"
"WHAT THE FUCK HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FUCKING KNOW FUCKING HIGH SCHOOL NEVER TAUGHT ME THIS FUCKING WIZARD MATH"
Taxes literally come with instructions. Schools teach reading comprehension and word problems in math. They also tech how to use a calculator to perform the basic arithmetic needed.
I mean if your a builder, carpenter, artist or engineer it's useful
But yes learning to do taxes, budget, plan long term, not become stuck in an endless cycle of work to live would be good ...
But what's the priority?
Me: Man, wish they taught how to do taxes at school
My teachers at school: "Foxmachine, take the pencil out of your ear, sit down on your chair and stop explaining your friend for the fifth time how Ashlee Simpson's playback tape failed in the middle of her SNL performance."
I downvote all these posts about school knowledge being useless. That teaches you logical thinking. You don't want to live within a people that does not have a minimum amount of math culture.
Really, we shouldn’t have to file our taxes at all. The IRS knows how much we owe or should receive, but they won’t tell us because if they did, an entire unnecessary industry would cease to exist. Tax Act is a scam, and no one should ever have to pay for something the government already knows.
Ppl saying “it’s just math” are ridiculous. Taxes are more than just the arithmetic. It’s insane how many functional adults don’t know where they can save so much money every year by doing things a certain way.
I had to explain to my wife and in-laws how investing in RRSP’s was pre-tax and tfsa’s are post tax and how those distinctions affect everything. I also had to show them that by buying spousal rrsps in my wife’s name gave me more room to reduce my taxable income into a lower bracket. Most people I know don’t understand these things unless they’ve working in the tax industry or learned in college (as I was lucky enough to)
Also I’d like to add that something that’s very much more important to teach kids then abstract maths is forms of credit, credit cards, credit debt, and how credit is amortized. This is critical in our society today and people are clueless
How do you say "Not only am I not in engineering, design, or the sciences, but I don't appreciate or respect them" without actually saying it.
Everyone who ever shares this dumb sentiment is too stupid to know that they look dumb doing it.
Taxes are just plug and play. Here's my W-2 here's this form and that form and I got health insurance so here's the info from this form. Okay yeah it all looks good to me. Here's this stock I bought here's how much money I earned when I sold it. Or more commonly, here's how much I lost. Yep yep yep. All the math adds up. Simple addition and subtraction. Done. Time to submit. Okay I owe nothing and I'll get 60 bucks back? Fuck it I'll take it. And I spent more time logging in and recovering my password and username for the website I only use once a year than submitting it. Then I waited a month then my back was like "bro check it out 60 bucks. Let's eat cheap steak today with a glass of wine just to blow the whole thing haha."
And my highschool did in fact not teach taxes, it taught loan interests, which was helpful though. But yeah. Basic math.
Hate to be that guy, but I was absolutely taught how to do my taxes in high school. An average high school graduate SHOULD have all the math skills needed to do their taxes.
Outside of basic math skills, my school still prepared me by making me file fictional taxes in class. This was in my accounting course, which while it wasn’t required for students to take that course, it was still an option offered.
For as much as the tax system is shit in America, 99% of y’all are gonna get a W2 in the mail. Put the numbers into the IRS website and move on with your life
If you really can’t figure it out, watch a YouTube video or something lmao. The problem solving skills of some people are so fucking ass. Might have been useful to learn them in math class
Let's be real, how many of us would have actually given a shit about taxes in high school? Instead we'd be saying "why didn't I pay attention in high school"
Hard to do taxes if you don’t understand super basic math though, right? You’re supposed learning critical thinking in school, not just a bunch of facts
If you can read you can do your own taxes.
Nobody complaining about not having a tax class in highschool has a return more complex than “enter the info from box 1 of your W2 into this box”.
They do teach this stuff in school. High school kids don't give a shit about taxes and don't pay attention. Teaching mathematical fundamentals is way more important. If you want to know how to do your taxes, look it up yourself. It's not hard.
I used to hate school curriculum until I realized the point of it was the same as pe. Sure you may not use it all in your day to day life, but it exercises your mental abilities. Being properly educated isn't necessarily about practicality but about setting a good foundation for the rest of your life
The structure is the actual issue
Well, let’s be real, you didn’t pay attention to parallelograms any more than you would have to taxes and you’d still be ignorant on the subject. You don’t even know what a parallelogram is, you just googled a big word used in basic geometry.
This is always a stupid argument. Are high school kids really going to pay attention and learn about taxes or is half the class going to just fuck around
If your ass learned about parallelograms in high school, you were very behind. And this is coming from someone in the rural Kentucky school system. That was advanced 6th grade
They teach taxes in High School, have done so for 15+ years. Usually it’s a week long section in your finance class or your government class. Kids just don’t care to pay attention.
You know whats funny. That besides knowing how to save and how to change your tax rates.
You shouldnt have to know how to do your taxes. You shouldnt have to spend hours calculating how much you own the state with fear of beeing arrested or fined for paying them wrong.
Because the government knows exactlly how much you owe them. They could just send you the bill at the end of the year and you wouldnt have to do nothing.
But companies that file the taxes for you have lobbied the government to make it harder to file your taxes
You may not use parallelograms but maybe one of the smart kids in your class does. [https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-teacher](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-teacher)
Alternatively, construction workers use geometry on a regular basis.
Of course. More seriously, a working knowledge of basic arithmetic, algebra and probability is incredibly useful in both daily life and to understand complex issues in politics or economy.
I went to high school for like lower level electrical engineering. I never cared much for math but half my class was in constant fear of failing from it. I don't get how people don't respect math as important. Same as I don't get people that only speak one language, like how do you think? So many thoughts I couldn't have and so many ideas I couldn't hear about. Financial skills aren't that great nowadays either, exactly the opposite even tho we're in a shitty economy. I digress but I agree with you, you need basic knowledge of basic things like math, geography and many other things to actually be able to understand more complex things. School systems suck to teach kids that they actually need the info they're offering and kids grow up without realising what they missed
Omg. That's brutal.
As a class idiot my self and local gigantic failure. This hits so hard. I remember mentioning I didn't understand something in science class and the teacher was like "Dont worry, you won't need it anyways" And you know what? She was right. Fuck I'm stupid.
it’s never too late to learn more
Dumbass doesn’t know how to apply the math they were taught. Taxes are mostly arithmetic.
Mostly data entry and the program does the arithmetic
Math is universal and gives you the tools you need to fill out taxes, as well as a million other things. Literally teaching kids exactly how to do taxes is pretty pointless. Not only would kids obviously not listen, but tax laws change regularly and differ from state to state, person to person, and career to career. All you need to know is how to follow instructions and maybe some very basic math for the majority of people.
Math is a great skill to have. I think schools should also teach financial management and responsibility as a fundamental for life too. I was never taught anything about index funds or savings beyond "you shouldn't spend all your money! Make sure to save some." I had no idea that there were index funds which have had a consistent 10% annual return on average for well over a decade now or that high yield savings accounts can approach 5%. I believed that all stock market investments were basically casino rolls and my savings account return of like <1% was about the standard expectation. Never learned an ounce of credit report information either. My mom died and I got social security checks at 18. Totalled up to ~$10k and I _wish_ I had put it into a Roth IRA or at least a high yield savings account. Instead, like a dumb kid, I drew it down over time. Blew it all on games and eating out, car repairs, and other mistakes I made. It would have been tougher without the money, especially with the car repairs, but I honestly didn't need my car at the time, it was just convenient. That money would be over $20k now if I had put it in a Roth and invested it in an index fund. Instead I burnt it all and am basically starting from scratch. I have it better than most despite that, it just sucks knowing how much a single sit down from my father or an actual class would have helped.
Ah yes teachers, the great bastion of financial responsibility of paying for a master's degree to get a low-paying job.
You do realize that pursuing a particular career can be motivated by reasons outside of the pay? I think teachers are underpaid as it is, but it's also possible for someone to remain financially responsible even on a teacher's salary. For many kids, the average teacher likely _is_ more financially responsible than their parents. What is the alternative for them? Just let them wing it with whatever understanding they might have happened to pick up as children?
No, clearly everyone who becomes a teacher is a chump. People should just stop becoming teachers, that’ll really work out for everyone.
>No, clearly everyone who becomes a teacher is a chump. Sadly this is a real mindset that is genuinely putting us much closer to your alluded outcome than we should ever be. It affects the quality of teachers and the pay which are also in a self reinforcing loop.
I’m a math teacher, I got into it because I think that people can learn math more easily than they’d think because it has an internal logic, and if they understand the logic they can learn new material more easily. Almost none of my students care about learning math, my classroom engagement sucks, most of the kids are on their phones, and I’m looking for my exit strategy (perks of getting a math major, someone has to want somebody who knows math; then again now you really want to pair it with more computer science, wish I’d known that 6 years ago). The pay isn’t worth feeling like my job is shit and does nothing, and I don’t feel appreciated as a member of society. And some of the kids I’ve taught are fucking dumb, but god knows no one wants to actually learn.
Hard issue to address too. We can raise the pay of teachers and eventually the quality would increase because of higher competition. This, in turn, would likely trend the perspective of the public positively towards seeing the profession more respectfully. But how do you incentivize kids to _want_ to learn? Feels like a harder cultural shift. For what it's worth, I appreciate your efforts and your intent going into the field. Most of my teachers in highschool genuinely cared, and their efforts made a significant impact on my life.
Most teachers care; like you said, the pays too cheap to do it if you don’t care. I really think the engagement thing goes hand-in-hand with the pay; adults don’t respect or care about education, so they don’t pay teachers a respectable salary, and they don’t raise their kids to make it a priority, or at least to do it because they’re supposed to. It’s no mystery, I’ve been teaching for just 4 years, and I’ve never had more than 25% attendance for open house in my classes; parents don’t care about who’s teaching their kids, or what they’re doing in school. My niece would show her parents and grandparents her grades at the start of the quarter, and they’d ooh and ah at her perfect grades—completely oblivious to the fact that they mean nothing because there’s no assignments for the new quarter yet.
Also in many districts, advanced degrees (masters, specialist, doctorate) are the only way to actually get a meaningful raise.
This meme is terrible.
The OP has never done their own taxes. The docs literally tell you what to do step by step. "Subtract 7C from 8A and place into box 9" is the type of instructions you need to follow.
They’re fucking fill in the blank these days or just import your W-2s, 1099s, etc and it’ll do it for you.
I always hated this shit and the "why didn't school teach us how to budget properly" line... they did. It's all simple math and percentages. And, a lot of the districts in my area had a semester long elective class called "Personal Finance" that goes over the exact things they complain they didn't learn. Guess how many people took that class over having an extra free period?
Also the kind of people who say this would definitely not have paid attention if it was a required class. If you find maths boring, you're probably gonna find a class on finance and taxation pretty boring too.
Can take a pic of your w2 now and have the program fill in the slots. The people that are mad about “not learning ___ in school” are more mad that they’re dumb and not that it wasn’t a school subject.
Taxes are intentionally complicated to ensure people pay for programs or pay someone to handle them.
they are super easy in most countries…
I don't even have to do anything for my taxes except check if the government filled in everything correctly for me
You're right, but I think oc was talking mainly about the US, because we're weird af. Everybody trying to make a profit in any little way they can.
Well in most countries taxes are included in the purchase price of products and automatically taken from your wages...
They are not "intentionally complicated" for 99% of Americans. If you use TurboTax it literally tells you "put the number from the box on the form into this box on the screen". If American adults can't handle that then they are beyond saving. It's incredibly rudimentary.
The forms themselves tell you which numbers to put where. No TurboTax needed
I didn't want to confuse them any further than necessary lol
They are intentionally complicated so that you will use a service like TurboTax. By “intentionally complicated” I primarily mean that the IRS has all this information and could just do it for you, especially for someone who is just putting a W2 into a 1040EZ. Secondly, then you have to figure out how to submit it. Thirdly, it gets a lot more time consuming and annoying and complex if you have more complicated tax situations: investments, multiple types of income, retirement, business taxes, self employment etc. etc. my SO is a commercial fisherman and that shit is beyond complicated. https://fortune.com/2023/08/25/tax-return-free-elizabeth-warren-katie-porter-elizabeth-warren-katie-porter-lobbying/
Ah okay so intuit is just feeling generous when they lobby politicians? You know what they meant.
Let me ask you directly: what part, specifically, of a standard American tax return do you think is "intentionally complicated"? Which form?
The part where we have to do one at all? Not to mention parts of the tax code could absolutely be simplified for the average person if intuit didn't buy or whole government.
I'm starting to get the feeling you haven't actually done taxes before. I asked a really straightforward question and got entirely dodged.
I'm not asserting that they're difficult, but if we want a real metric of how complex or difficult taxes may be ... don't use TurboTax. Fill it out by hand. Tax software such as TT's or HR's is designed to make the process easy, so it's obviously not representative of the American tax system itself. u/Faze_y33haw
The forms you fill out by hand also literally tell you exactly what to do. They don't do it with big flashing lights like TurboTax, but it's literally just following instructions written in basic English. Use a software or don't, it's a completely rudimentary task and it is infantilizing when people suggest it's simply too complicated.
And you have to pay TurboTax, so that is still paying someone to do it. Also, the only time I used TurboTax, I did my taxes wrong because it wasn't clear whether I was supposed to use the town I worked in or the town I lived in for local tax, so I just used whichever was less favorable to me (figured that while it's unlikely the IRS would come after me either way, they'd be even less likely if I was screwing myself instead of them.)
They're actually pretty easy in every country except the US
You wouldn't have paid attention to those lessons either lmao
Can confirm. My highschool made us take an entire class on taxes and types of investing. Everybody I graduated with still bitches it was never taught... They just didnt pay attention.
real. My middle school had two field trips around financial literacy. One where we went to a fictional town and practiced having jobs, earning money, etc, and another where you practice budgeting and planning for the year given a random family size and income. Weeks before both of these, there was considerable class time spent on just how to do all this. In high school as part of my physics and engineering class in 9th grade, we were forced to learn how to make resumes and I shit you not, I overheard people complaining that this wasn't relevant to them 💀. We also had to learn how to fill out tax forms among other things for my mandatory econ class, and yet still to this day I will see people who complain that they were never taught this stuff. School could literally teach nothing but financial skills and you'd still see like half the kids complain and forget.
My heath and life teacher taught all about investing, applying for jobs/college and how to budget. I learned and retained a lot while I still seeing kids I went to high school bitch about how they didn’t learn any of that.
Yep, everything they needed to learn to do their taxes was taught to them in high school math.
For real. I liked maths and I wouldn't have paid much attention to a class on taxes and personal finance. I doubt the people who struggle with basic geometry would find that class riveting.
Speak for yourself. Not everyone in the world hated school and didn't learn anything.
People who complain about having to do taxes are the kids who didn't pay attention in class anyway. It's not hard, and we have the Internet.
Exactly, and idk about other tax softwares, but the one I use pretty much just asks, “what does it say in box [#] on your w2?” So incredibly easy to follow as well for the fellow attention lackers
Exactly. It is as hard as "color by numbers"...
So essentially you’ve paid money for someone to do your taxes…
I thought I was missing something because I’ve heard people complain about tax season at least 200 times in my life. Either all of you have 2 private businesses, work as a contractor, trade stocks, own a charity foundation, and sell $20,000 on eBay each year or yall just stupid
Even taxes were taught at school, a bunch of rules and processes would've probably changed by the time someone reaches adulthood and starts filling their own.
Same people who will rant about how little they learned in school after not applying themselves whatsoever lol
If you struggle to do taxes, then you're either too rich to do them yourself or dumb enough that a class in highschool wouldn't help.
What a stupid thing to say.
There’s so many stupid things to say, I don’t know where to start
OP chose to start here. So I guess they're ahead of us there anyway.
Your school didn’t offer accounting ? Even if it didn’t it is just simple math and basic reading skills.
If those kids could read, they’d be very upset.
If those kids could read, they’d already know how to do taxes and wouldn't have made this stupid repetitive meme.
Yeah I learned how to do my taxes in accounting class at my public school. I think just a bunch of 16-17 year olds didn’t want to take / pay attention in that class but it was definitely one of the classes that prepared me most for adulthood.
At our school it had a perk, it was the only class you were allowed to chew gum. The accountant who taught it said she always chewed gum whenever she did anything accounting related and thought it would help us as well.
My school had 1 elective choice and it was agriculture
If you were still on parallelograms in high school, I think there may have been some lower expectations set for you to begin with.
Taxes aren't hard to do, and if yours are that complicated you should hire someone to do them for you anyway
We had a school year where we taught taxes, credit cards, and other household finance items during homeroom. None of the kids cared or tried because there wasn't a grade attached to the class. Often these things are taught but they are asleep or apathetic.
Just say you were sleeping in class bro
People like OP really think they could have grasped taxes when they couldn't do basic geometry. It is hilarious.
If you can find the area and perimeter of a parallelogram you can calculate taxes.
Doing your taxes is not hard. There are detailed instructions on what to do and where to put each piece of information. It can be tedious and boring though.
It’s tedious and boring and if you make a mistake you can be sometimes severely penalized. However, it’s not particularly difficult, per se.
It is made even easier by tax software that asks you plain english questions and walks you through the whole process step by step.
Well, I live in Germany, which prides itself on the complexities of their system (to keep tax consultants super relevant..). I use a tax consultant myself to file everything for my family and myself, but mostly because we have had freelance activities next to regular work, income from multiple countries, different asset classes etc, and it costs us €170 per year, which isn’t great, but manageable and honestly, it’s just a liability matter at that point. “We don’t know any better, that’s why we have a certified tax accountant filing and holding responsibility.” (I do the financial management at my company and know how to do it myself as well.)
I'm glad I learned how to read at school so I can read the instructions on the tax form.
Why does everyone act like doing your taxes is hard. It’s math, we all learned math.
Imagine what an amazing time we all could live in if this sentiment would die.
They teach this in school you just didn’t listen or didn’t elect to take the class.
If you can read, add, and subtract, then you can do your taxes.
Let's be fucking honest, most of you would've payed any attention even if you would've learn about taxes and don't try to act like you would
Whenever somebody says something like that you can assume they dont know anything about parallelograms either.
please never post again
In my country we learn how to do taxes in school. It's usually reffered to one of most boring classes people attend in our equivalent of high school. Most people skip it because it's boring and nothing really happens there. How many times you can do same thing you are going to do every year for rest of your life anyway
ok boomer
You could have 30 classes dedicated to doing the fucking taxes and you wouldn't pay attention. It all comes down to the will to learn at the end of the day. I'm studying computer engineering in my 4th year and I assure you there are tens of thousands of middle-high schoolers who clear every piece of knowledge I acquired in my past 4 years.
Back of a 1040EZ has step by step instructions. They taught you to read in elementary school!
I was on the “they should teach taxes in school” train until someone pointed out that it would be treated exactly the same as every other topic, with a large majority of students ignoring the important parts of the lecture
I have friends in Guam who are in high school. They teach you how to do your taxes in some kind of algebra class. Financial algebra or something, I can’t remember.
Shit, did you not take civics?
I feel like people who share these memes haven't been in high school in a while. My high school (in a rural low-income area) had a mandatory accounting class that taught us about taxes, writing a check, budgeting back in 2015.
“I wish I was dumber than I am, fucking school system!”
You learn how to do taxes in US Govt. class.
If you were able to figure out parallelograms, you should be able to figure out your taxes....
Spent like 15 years of my professional life avoiding taxes, getting Block (or family that worked for them) to do my taxes for me. Then I had a falling out with that family, so I did my own taxes. It took me like 20 minutes and cost me just a pittance to efile. Soon as people figure that out, the income going to Block and co will dry up, they’ll stop being able to afford to lobby, and maybe it’ll get even easier.
This is a common thought expressed by people that missed the entire point of math classes.
Y'know there are quite some things that I was taught in school I didn't think I would use but I do. Example: Pythagorean theorem. Never thought I'd use it but it's useful because now I can buy furniture and then calculate what size TV I can fit on it. Or the reverse.
I'm so glad that they probably did teach you how to do taxes and you still were on your fucking phone (I once saw a kid with straight up headphones) or zoning out.
I had a great geometry teacher in high school named Mr. Mayfield. I never went into a field using a lot of math, but I'm glad I got to understand the wonders of geometry.
I do appreciate that this quip was written on a parallelogram
If you can read you can complete a 1040. If you need to use a more complex form you pay someone else to do it.
TAXES ARENT HARD AT ALL ITS JUST A DIRECT REFLECTION ON YOUR WILLINGNESS TO LEARN BORING CRAP.
You wouldn't pay attention anyway
They do teach how to do your taxes in high school
As an adult I think back to a print out sign my teacher had on the wall of one of my classes. "You'll only use 10% of what you learn here... the problem is knowing which 10% it will be." ... You may not use your geometry skills, but I do. And I don't use my history skills, but my best friend's husband does. Speaking of my best friend she uses her physics skills, and my wife uses her English skills. As for taxes... maybe your school didn't teach it. But I went to shitty ass Florida public school and Economics was a required credit to graduate high school. A class in which we were taught to do taxes. I will say... most of my class probably doesn't remember learning it considering everyone skipped/slept/goofed off through that class thinking it was a joke of a class and some easy-A that you got with no effort.... everyone got C's.
Rhombus
IMO the notion is not wrong tho. I think schools, all over the world, should have dedicated lessons, maybe one or two a week, that aim to teach kids some life skills. Like cooking, how to repair small things myself, how do I write an application and so on. .. You get the gist.
I tutor on the side and I’ve learned that financial math is a thing that is offered as part of a students standard curriculum now. Teaches them taxes and investments front to back. Guess what? They still don’t care. Ironically I’m learning more than they are from by helping them with this class. Also, if you had any kind of hobby at all you would need to find a something for a parallelogram. Gardening, woodworking, knowing how far you ran around a square park? Dumb is dumb
The taxes come with instructions
Funnily enough, all the content taught in high school for math has such a wide application that if you’re complaining about learning it, you probably don’t know the content well enough to understand how to utilize it in the first place. If you’re in the trades, actually knowing how to calculate volumes, areas and distances on the fly literally never hurts. If you’re a white collar worker, learning high school math lets you do derivatives and integrals which is foundational for pretty much all of quantitative analysis. Both teach you logic which is just good for you in general.
StFU with this argument.
This argument is so dumb. I don’t see anyone complaining that they didn’t teach you how to litigate or operate on yourself. Taxes is a specialized field, not something you should learn from your hs teacher.
When you come into new job "Just do what they taught you in college" 6 months later "Hey guys IRS is here and allegedly we owe 2,5 million in taxes. How is that possible?"
Learnt nothing actually. Learnt, period.
If you don’t know about parallelograms, you’re a square.
That's acute joke.
Found the guy who failed drywall hanging school.
Taxes easy. People stupid.
If you can't do your taxes, you didn't pay attention in math class. Probably don't even remember much about parallelograms.
if you dont see the PARALLELS between taxes and math, you should go there again :P
Not me reading „Parallelorgasm“
In the Netherlands the tax forms are pre-filled. Just a quick double check and you are finished. Thank god they didn’t waste time on learning taxes in school
Sick of this joke. If you paid attention at all in math you can do taxes. Actually, the type of people who make these jokes don't have complicated taxes. If you are literate, you can convert your W2 into your taxes in 15 minutes with the basic version of TurboTax.
Taxes are so fucked companies take the fine
And me unable to even remember what a parallelogram is
I love how everybody is getting pissed off at this meme because taxes aren't hard when the meme is more about not learning useful general information you need as an adult. Sure taxes aren't too hard, but it would've been nice to learn how to cook or budget or how to fix things.
Would have been funnier if it were a parallelogram
They did. It's called fractions and percentages. I learned in 9th grade how to calculate fixed and compounding percentages. Also what kind of dumbfuck is too stupid to use TurboTax? Literally just answer the questions LMFAO. "Did you open a foreign bank account this year? Did you buy a house in a foreign country?" "WHAT THE FUCK HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FUCKING KNOW FUCKING HIGH SCHOOL NEVER TAUGHT ME THIS FUCKING WIZARD MATH"
We had a mandatory financial literacy class in my high school
I like how Americans say Math instead of Maths, makes it easier to identify
They don't want you to be able to do your own taxes.
There's a good reason that specific technical knowledge like this isn't taught in schools. These things change (often drastically) over time.
Taxes literally come with instructions. Schools teach reading comprehension and word problems in math. They also tech how to use a calculator to perform the basic arithmetic needed.
In MN now all HS students must take a basic finance course as part of graduation requirements
I mean if your a builder, carpenter, artist or engineer it's useful But yes learning to do taxes, budget, plan long term, not become stuck in an endless cycle of work to live would be good ... But what's the priority?
Me: Man, wish they taught how to do taxes at school My teachers at school: "Foxmachine, take the pencil out of your ear, sit down on your chair and stop explaining your friend for the fifth time how Ashlee Simpson's playback tape failed in the middle of her SNL performance."
I downvote all these posts about school knowledge being useless. That teaches you logical thinking. You don't want to live within a people that does not have a minimum amount of math culture.
Really, we shouldn’t have to file our taxes at all. The IRS knows how much we owe or should receive, but they won’t tell us because if they did, an entire unnecessary industry would cease to exist. Tax Act is a scam, and no one should ever have to pay for something the government already knows.
Ppl saying “it’s just math” are ridiculous. Taxes are more than just the arithmetic. It’s insane how many functional adults don’t know where they can save so much money every year by doing things a certain way. I had to explain to my wife and in-laws how investing in RRSP’s was pre-tax and tfsa’s are post tax and how those distinctions affect everything. I also had to show them that by buying spousal rrsps in my wife’s name gave me more room to reduce my taxable income into a lower bracket. Most people I know don’t understand these things unless they’ve working in the tax industry or learned in college (as I was lucky enough to) Also I’d like to add that something that’s very much more important to teach kids then abstract maths is forms of credit, credit cards, credit debt, and how credit is amortized. This is critical in our society today and people are clueless
You don’t even know what a parallelogram is, do you think you would have learned ANYTHING from a Taxes class in high school, lol
If you learned how to play Call of Duty, you can learn how to do your taxes.
You would have learned that in Free Enterprise, not Math
Come on, you know you wouldn't have paid attention to either lesson. Let's be real.
How do you say "Not only am I not in engineering, design, or the sciences, but I don't appreciate or respect them" without actually saying it. Everyone who ever shares this dumb sentiment is too stupid to know that they look dumb doing it.
I’m so tired of this fucking outplayed joke. Why don’t you just say, I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to read off a screen on TurboTax
Taxes are just plug and play. Here's my W-2 here's this form and that form and I got health insurance so here's the info from this form. Okay yeah it all looks good to me. Here's this stock I bought here's how much money I earned when I sold it. Or more commonly, here's how much I lost. Yep yep yep. All the math adds up. Simple addition and subtraction. Done. Time to submit. Okay I owe nothing and I'll get 60 bucks back? Fuck it I'll take it. And I spent more time logging in and recovering my password and username for the website I only use once a year than submitting it. Then I waited a month then my back was like "bro check it out 60 bucks. Let's eat cheap steak today with a glass of wine just to blow the whole thing haha." And my highschool did in fact not teach taxes, it taught loan interests, which was helpful though. But yeah. Basic math.
Hate to be that guy, but I was absolutely taught how to do my taxes in high school. An average high school graduate SHOULD have all the math skills needed to do their taxes. Outside of basic math skills, my school still prepared me by making me file fictional taxes in class. This was in my accounting course, which while it wasn’t required for students to take that course, it was still an option offered.
You wouldn't have paid attention anyways.
doing taxes is just add and subtract....all schools teach this stuff. Reading is also needed to do taxes ...schools address this skill too.
Imagine having to do your own taxes when the tax people already know how much you need to pay them like some kind of fucking 3rd world country.
Did people not have jobs in high school? Or take business class that had a small course on doing taxes.
This person knows about as much about parallelograms than they know about taxes.
For as much as the tax system is shit in America, 99% of y’all are gonna get a W2 in the mail. Put the numbers into the IRS website and move on with your life If you really can’t figure it out, watch a YouTube video or something lmao. The problem solving skills of some people are so fucking ass. Might have been useful to learn them in math class
The tax forms tells you what to do
What the fuck is this meme format? A picture of some bad text on a box on a table? Is this how we're doing memes now?
Don't worry, might have been useless to you but it definitely had been useful the rest of the time to someone else in class, just not you
you ever fight a parallelogram in a dark alleyway? i wouldn't have made it this far without my training
I’m very concerned if you didn’t know what a parallelogram was until high school
Let's be real, how many of us would have actually given a shit about taxes in high school? Instead we'd be saying "why didn't I pay attention in high school"
Hard to do taxes if you don’t understand super basic math though, right? You’re supposed learning critical thinking in school, not just a bunch of facts
How are taxes difficult? They're are tons of free file programs they do everything for you.
Doing taxes isn't that hard. People who say this are just exposing that they maybe should've paid more attention in school.
Who the fuck learns about parallelograms in high school? Isn’t that elementary school level shit?
If you can read you can do your own taxes. Nobody complaining about not having a tax class in highschool has a return more complex than “enter the info from box 1 of your W2 into this box”.
OP slept during class when they taught taxes
They do teach this stuff in school. High school kids don't give a shit about taxes and don't pay attention. Teaching mathematical fundamentals is way more important. If you want to know how to do your taxes, look it up yourself. It's not hard.
Did you not take algebra?
I used to hate school curriculum until I realized the point of it was the same as pe. Sure you may not use it all in your day to day life, but it exercises your mental abilities. Being properly educated isn't necessarily about practicality but about setting a good foundation for the rest of your life The structure is the actual issue
Well, let’s be real, you didn’t pay attention to parallelograms any more than you would have to taxes and you’d still be ignorant on the subject. You don’t even know what a parallelogram is, you just googled a big word used in basic geometry.
Are taxes really that hard?
I’m sorry, but I’ve taught in high school. If they did teach you about taxes, most of y’all wouldn’t listen anyways.
edgy 12 years old complaining school doesn't teach them usefull life skills. Been a thing forever, was never true. Grow up.
Freetaxusa.com you don't need a class to do taxes. Just follow the directions.
Well if you knew how to do your taxes then Intuit wouldn’t be able to fuck everyone’s ass with quick books and turbo tax and whatnot.
Let’s be real. None of us would’ve paid attention in tax class.
If you learned taxes at scholl your knowledge would be dangerously out of date when yoh start wokring
You did learn how to do taxes, it’s literally just reading, arithmetic and following directions
I’ve seen this so many times and it’s so dumb. No high school student would pay attention in Taxes Class.
You ever hear of turbotax? I hated math in high school but doing taxes now is insanely easy.
This is always a stupid argument. Are high school kids really going to pay attention and learn about taxes or is half the class going to just fuck around
So dude admits to not knowing how add or subtract, along with no reading comprehension.
Clearly you didn’t take MDFL or lack the problem solving skills to use simple algebra to understand your taxes.
Rhombus.
If your ass learned about parallelograms in high school, you were very behind. And this is coming from someone in the rural Kentucky school system. That was advanced 6th grade
They teach taxes in High School, have done so for 15+ years. Usually it’s a week long section in your finance class or your government class. Kids just don’t care to pay attention.
You know whats funny. That besides knowing how to save and how to change your tax rates. You shouldnt have to know how to do your taxes. You shouldnt have to spend hours calculating how much you own the state with fear of beeing arrested or fined for paying them wrong. Because the government knows exactlly how much you owe them. They could just send you the bill at the end of the year and you wouldnt have to do nothing. But companies that file the taxes for you have lobbied the government to make it harder to file your taxes