r/personalfinance • u/zonination Wiki Contributor • Jan 31 '15

Reminder: Khan Academy still has basic explanations on taxes in the U.S. This should help you with understanding tax brackets, deductions, and other related information. Taxes

Basically a repost from last year, but I felt the need to remind people that this resource exists. There are some simple explanations of tax law in the U.S. over at Khan Academy. Here are a couple links:

And since retirement accounts tie into deductions:

Let me know if there's anything related I should add to this list. Happy filing!

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u/HomicideSS Jan 31 '15

It's annoying how they don't teach this in high school. It's okay though, we learned a bunch of irrelevant things

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '15

But they did teach basic reading skills, addition, subtraction and multiplication which is all you need to do your taxes. If you don't know how to do your taxes, you were failed somewhere else in your education career. Personal taxes are not that complicated, you fill in numbers from your w2 and follow the instructions. If you make enough money, have investments and deductions they get more complicated, but are doable.

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u/Indenturedsavant Jan 31 '15

Which is why it is insanely hard for CPAs to find jobs in the tax field. Seriously I was walking to work the other day and their was a guy holding a cardboard sign that read "will calculate AGI for food"

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u/DeadForTaxPurposes ​ Feb 01 '15

Ha, what? Tax CPA here, and it is not at all difficult to find a job in the tax field if you are even remotely competent. Especially with the CPA designation.

Personal and business taxes are both highly to extremely complex once you get beyond the H&R Block target clientele, hence the demand.

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u/Pzychotix Emeritus Moderator Feb 01 '15

I think he was just being sarcastic.

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u/HomicideSS Jan 31 '15

Yea my school never had good numbers. Granted I could have tried harder but we only focused on the content in the test.