EDIT: A lot of you are reading into the tweet while still somehow agreeing with the overall message. No one is saying we should eliminate music programs or that we should teach toddlers about healthcare plans. The tweet is making this thing called a --checks notes-- joke, that also conveys the message that schools could teach more practical skills that young adults will need going forward.
Schools teach mathematics, reading comprehension, and how to follow instructions. With those 3 skills people can do their taxes. We used to do it with a paper form and a paper book full of instructions. Now there are programs that do pretty much everything for you, all you need to do is answer questions. If you can’t figure out how to do taxes then you have a bigger problem than the schools not directly teaching you how. As far as understanding all of the intricacies of US tax law, that is a much larger, more complex issue than they would or could reach in general education. There are entire university programs for that education.
Or we could just do it like every other civilized country in the world where they give you a number of what you owe and you say “looks good” or “I don’t think so”.
Thanks to the magic of lobbying we have the privilege of having to endure smart comments like yours!
I’m not defending our tax system, I’m saying that with a remedial education you can figure out how to file your taxes. I agree that our system is overly complex to benefit the wealthy. It would be great if they just told us what we owe and we confirm it. But given the system we have, you can figure out how to file your taxes. It’s not that difficult for an average person, in an average situation.
Let’s say I’m married filing separately with a mortgage, student loans, on my wife’s insurance but with my own job where I pay for a Flexible spending account for diabetes supplies. My wife also has student loans, some federal, some private. Let’s say we have a kid and pay for daycare but wife missed open enrollment for dependent care spending account. Maybe we even have our employer cover part of daycare in this scenario, let’s say 25%, but it didn’t kick in until 4 months into the year. Just for fun maybe one of us cashed out an old retirement.
How confident are you that you could handle that situation if you had only gotten a “remedial” education? This is not a super unique scenario even.
Pretty confident, because there are instructions for everything, and there are free web based filing systems that will ask you those questions, and put the values in the correct spots. Free Tax Act is one such application. But what you described is far from an average person, filing an average claim. Many of those circumstances are unique.
Oop! Free Tax USA is the one I was thinking of too.
Just want to sneak in I admire your faith in people’s ability, whether I agree with it or not.
Hehe. Thanks (I think). I have been accused of over-estimating people’s competence on more than one occasion, so I concede that it’s entirely possible that I’m wrong about this subject.
Schools teach mathematics, reading comprehension, and how to follow instructions. With those 3 skills people can do their taxes.
Sure, and since laws are just writing you don’t need lawyers at all, everyone can just represent themselves. In fact, why do specialties exist at all? Programming is just typing, and everyone can type, so everyone can program. Surgery is just cutting things, so if you can use a knife, you can be a surgeon.
I mean, how could someone not easily know what to do when given such clear instructions as:
And none of those examples that you gave are taught in elementary school or highschool. They’re taught as college careers because there’s a breadth of knowledge required to specialize in those fields. We also have tax attorneys, and accountants who specialize in personal tax filing. They learned those skills in college.
Never ever replace arts, its why most kids enjoy school. but instead, create a semester long class called life that is required every year.
year 9, we pay bills, get paid work for the 45min classes to earn wages.
year 10, you’re now paying bills AND trying to buy a house.
Year 11, yeah, shit gets real: we OWN a fuckin house! and shits breaks, but you also have kids and your dumbass never went to college… oh and you somehow decide randomly you belong in WSB.
Year 12, Retirement, learning how to live on a measly $3000 a month for $5000 of bills.
clearly, we’d reward kids for taking college levels, but also trades. but you’d learn how to buy a house, trade stocks, pay bills with what you have…
It’s meant to be absurd. Buried in the absurdity is a grain of truth.
The problem is, neither the arts nor home economics are valued in the education sphere and we don’t base education policies on science.
As an example, an elementary music teacher I know said “in a school year I will have seen each child for 24 hours. That’s not enough time to reach them some music theory or how to play an instrument.”
To be fair, at the time you’re learning the recorder, you’re doing basic arithmetic. You gotta wait to get into advanced arithmetic before learning to do your taxes.
Over a decade ago in our high school we had a personal finance class in 1st year; we learned about tracking stocks, limited budgeting, how to fill out a check and that was really it. However, nobody cared and why should we? We couldn’t even work until 16 years old and we were 14 and you can’t get stocks until 18. If it were at around 3rd year then it would have been more relevant.
Most of this stuff is now obsolete due to technology anyway. I rarely cash in checks but all I do is just take it to cash checking. No name signing, just give them the check, get photo taken, and get the money.
Taxes is the only thing that isn’t obsolete and should be taught at some point somewhere. Sure, some of it is just copying numbers but then there’s tax deductibles and running a business that requires quarterly taxes when over $1k.
We had pretty much the same thing but at the last year of highschool and no one cared either because most of us didn’t work and those who did just spent the money on their scooter or other random shit…
Truth is, it’s better to use that time to make sure people understand the basic curriculum instead of trying to add more stuff on the pile.
When I was in school, that was just the first song they’d teach us on the recorder so I assume it’s meant to be the teacher pushing on with the lesson instead of listening to the student.
School also doesn’t teach you how to get dressed or wipe your ass but you still learned how to do those things.
Some things are supposed to be taught to you by your parents. There was nothing stopping any of us from sitting down with our parents and learning how to do taxes which is exactly how I learned about it.
Ingorance of what? Not writing perfectly 100% of the time?
And it doesn’t “fit”. They’re taking a grammatical issue and inflating it to dismiss their point and insult them. Regardless of what mistakes they did or didn’t make, everyone knew what they meant. Making it a “gotcha” doesn’t accomplish anything useful.
There’s genuinely nothing wrong with pointing out grammar in a normal context, it is obviously awful when you dismiss someone’s point over it though which they don’t do here.
3/4ths is definitely house poor living. There is some benefit to going as big as you can afford though since moving is a huge pain, buying a bigger better house up front can save a lot of headache and possibly money, but even then staying under 40% seems like a good idea.
The IRS gives you a 100 page step-by-step manual, and only requires addition, subtraction, multiplication and (rarely) division. For someone who just has a W-2, you fill out one field for income and do the math for the tax bracket.
I think the bigger issue is that too many of the non-poor are willing to vote against their own interests. Europeans don’t hate paying taxes, but they want it to be simple. Americans hate paying taxes, and too many of them can be conned into thinking that it’s bad if the government makes it easier.
“Theirs not to make reply / Theirs not to reason why / Theirs but to do.” (you don’t learn the last two words of that poem until later, long after you are done with school)
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