They make it obtuse on purpose, both to prop up the tax return industry, and to make it both possible to create loopholes for the rich to avoid taxes, and make it so that the rest of us can’t really benefit from those loopholes.
It’s Byzantine on purpose. They could simplify it any time they wanted to.
this. one of the forms they send has 4a and 4b or such while the 1040 has you put 4b into 4a on its sheet and 4a into 4b. This is quite obviously intentional.
What country uses British English (“maths I learnt”) and has a US-style nightmare of individual tax returns?
Plenty of people in Britain have to do a tax assessment. But not if you have a simple single employment, no meaningful savings or investments, etc.
Sure, but “22-year-old me” seemed unlikely to be in that uncommon situation in a meme that’s meant to be relatable.
Canada? The British slang at least wouldn’t be that out of place here
Saying maths is absolutely out of place here. Also taxes here aren’t nearly as complicated as the US and there are a number of free tools available to file by yourself.
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Thank you, northern neighbor. I suspected that was the answer but wasn’t sure.
Real countries simply tell you how much you get back or owe at the end of the year. They have waay more data on what you’ve done than you do. No reason they can’t do it other than the fact that it’s profitable for their friends if they don’t
The US could give you a potential number, but it’s not accurate for about 10% of people who actually itemize in their tax returns. Yes companies lobby to prevent that, but the concept that it’s hard to come up with that number is FUD. It would take the vast majority of people 15 minutes or less to prepare their taxes, if they could read and follow directions.
Ah yes, let’s create more work for 90% of people because of the 10% who have to do more work anyway.
No one ever accused the US of having a good system.
it would probably take most people 15 minutes to do their taxes if they were tax advisors. unfortunately for most people, the directions and wording of the forms is very confusing.
It’s really not confusing unless you struggle to read at a middle school level or the concept of adding or subtracting is intimidating.
Learning ‘academic’ math is more about learning a framework for better understanding and interrogating the world around you. It’s a lifelong skill that continues to build as you grow and become more experienced in life.
Learning how to do your taxes is, like, a YouTube search and 30 minutes away. Is it practical to be taught in high school? Sure, I guess. Maybe in a dedicated finance management course. Will that process change as you get older and shift careers, life situations, and potentially move? Most assuredly.
All that to say: I’ve never understood this line of thought. It’s like when people go to college expecting to learn the absolute most practical and directly applicable aspects of whatever career they’ve chosen. That’s, frankly, not a very good way to teach the future generation or to become more capable yourself. You want people who can adapt to challenges and new ideas within the profession; not people that only know how to do something a very specific way because “that’s how they were taught”.
It’s a simple alliance of dummies blaming their incompetence at basic math on their school and fascists actively spreading propaganda to sabotage public education to create a neoserf class.
You’re being downvoted but you’re absolutely correct.
I know the meme is “taxes bad taxes hard” but I’ve really never understood this for younger people. If all you’re responsible for is the W2, it’s literally as simple as clicking through the online form and following instructions lol. Put the numbers on the paper in the boxes on the computer. I’m not sure what specific math class was needed for this.
Just create a big corporation in a garage, become a billionaire and just don’t pay taxes
How is high school mathematics supposed to help with taxes? It’s just addition and subtraction. This meme makes as much sense as saying that high school history didn’t prepare you for taxes. Blame your personal finance courses, not math.
You don’t study algebra, interest, statistics, calculus, geometry,etc? Just addition and subtraction for all of primary, middle, and high school?
Is this American exceptionalism?
What? Is the European reading comprehension? I’m saying that tax work is just additon and subtraction, and yeah, a little bit of multiplication for things like interest. None of those things are introduced in high school curriculum.
In my US (public) high school, we had to do a sort of simulation computer game that included applying for loans, buying property, getting jobs, and filling yearly taxes manually. It was pretty fun actually, but maybe I’m just weird.
And you get to say “just like in the simulations” when you really do those things.
Actually, we can say that for everything in life becau- [REDACTED]
I can confirm, OP, it is possible to live more than a decade after your 22s and still not know how to do your own taxes
If it makes you feel any better I use high school math regularly and suck at doing taxes.
I think the way we explain the importance of high school level math to students is wrong. In engineering school the retired engineers taught us that we aren’t being taught calculus because we’re going to use it all the time, we’re taught it so we can understand why the calculator is spitting out the number it’s spitting out and so that we can understand when that number is clearly wrong. I don’t sit down with a pencil and paper to calculate a derivative or integral practically ever, but I do use the relationship between position, velocity, and acceleration sometimes on the fly.
If we explain to high schoolers that algebra is so you understand the relationships between numbers so you can tell at a glance if you’re being cheated by someone’s math or that you entered the wrong number in the calculator. The goal of trig is to leave you with a better understanding of how physical space works and the basics in preparation for physics.
The goal of a general education is to leave you with a broad base of knowledge. You don’t need to perfectly remember everything but rather have a surface level understanding on a variety of topics with an ability to delve deeper if needed
A great point. Learning math doesn’t automatically make you equipped to deal with other things that have math in it. At least no more so than learning a language equips you to do poetry.
Taxes are a whole different system that needs to be learned, on top of learning math. At best you can say that learning math equips you to take a tax course.
Exactly. The hard part of taxes is government policy, not math. If you didn’t learn the math necessary to do taxes your high school wasn’t the stage of the education system that failed you, it was elementary school. High school math provides you with skills that will aid you in other fundamental civic functions such as teaching you the logical thinking you’ll need should you ever be called upon to serve your country as as a juror or to understand graphs, charts, and statistics so that you can understand the issues facing the country when you go to vote.
Math isn’t pointless, it just has for a long time been taught very poorly by people who don’t like it or understand how it plays a role throughout your life. It’s a punching bag subject.
And if none of that convinces you then just think of it as easier to teach everyone it than to sort out every kid that might try to become a scientist or engineer. Maintaining an elite force of scientists and engineers is a matter of national and economic security in the eyes of the United States government.
So you are telling me that high school math is the equivalent of unlocking the other buttons on a calculator.
Basically yeah. But it’s also the process of learning how to estimate the world in numeric values. Algebra is a form of logic puzzle. It teaches that numbers follow logic and when taught right enforces the fact that math isn’t a rote process.
High school math is how you learn what 30% off means you pay. High school math is how you learn what 30 degrees is and how far away you missed if you’re 30 degrees off. And high school science should be teaching you significant figures which you combine with math to understand that you’re usually looking not in specifics but in approximates. All of these subjects do interact at points.
I was raised to be an engineer so I never asked when I’ll use math, but I think the question is bad. It’s not when you’ll use it, it’s how is it changing how you think. Math teaches you to think logically. Science teaches you to think empirically. Literature classes which I never thought I’d use taught me how to think critically. The arts teach you to think creatively. History and social studies teach you to think of the world’s relationships and causes and effects (all while trying to sneak in a basic understanding of how to operate the government that you’re going to be an equal shareholder of). High school is trying to make you into a good member of the democratic population with a variety of mental tools and frameworks at your disposal. The common person had to fight for their children to have this education. It’s valuable and all commoners benefit from all of us having it.
That’s because you weren’t in dumb kid math. As a kid I was a seen as a trouble maker and put in dumb kid math. That was the best math class I ever took. They taught us how to balance a check book, how our taxes worked, interest rates and apr for loans and credit cards. I don’t know why this wouldn’t be a mandatory class for everyone. And maybe some of the skills like balancing a check book are outdated and that’s fine. Update them with something more relevant now like how to read a contract or something.
I took an Accounting 101 elective in high school, and it was basically this. Completely separate from the other math classes though.
Math*
Mathematics*
Mathematics*
“A good understanding of tax law is worth 34% of your income”
At least in the US, prob more in EU.
Fr though. I hate that schools don’t really teach real life formal work. I wish that too was included in the syllabus.
See, schools exist to make you useful and integrated in society. If we were taught how to start our own businesses and to work tax loopholes we wouldnt be the useful-idiot-worker-bees we are.
I just use TurboTax, which asks you questions in order to generate your return, and automatically integrates with most online accounts. There are free alternatives, too.
Companies like TurboTax lobby government to make taxes more difficult, so that they can profit off of a terrible system designed to make people seek out their systems.
Plus companies like them, if they mess up your taxes, they’ll make it extremely difficult to get it fixed
