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.

[u/zonination]

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:

• Introduction to Tax Brackets
• Introduction to Deductions
• A link to all lessons in the Tax Portal

And since retirement accounts tie into deductions:

• Link to the Retirement Accounts lessons

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

[u/HomicideSS]

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

[u/scottfarrar → u/HomicideSS]

I'm a high school math teacher, I can shed some light on why these kinds of courses are not often given, and why even the content is not often taught.

The main reason is: the concepts are simple, the details are "hard".

Secondarily: it lacks direct relevance to high school students as they do not typically have jobs at all, and even fewer have jobs that pay enough to justify anything other than the AMT standard deduction.

More about the details: difficult taxes are due to personal situations which are too numerous to explain didactically, and really only relevant to a person in that exact situation. Can you imagine a more boring class than learning about how to complete the various combinations of tax forms?

What are the conceptual skills required behind "doing" taxes? Arithmetic and technical reading, with some organization skills to tie it together. I would argue those skills are taught in schools-- they're the kind of thing you do every day. As for the philosophy of government regarding taxes, public high school students take a Government/Economics class their senior year.

Look at Khan Academy's listings of topics. The total length of the videos is about 1 hour, and that's at Khan's slow pace of talking. Now lets say you designed a course that went into 1000% more detail-- even that would be 10 hours, or two weeks in a normal high school course pace. Too small for a semester or even a quarter length course.

Now there do exist personal finance courses that would cover these kinds of things, along with other money management topics, like managing credit card debt. But what is the "bang for the buck" for the school or the student? They courses I'm aware of would not be rigorous enough to be accredited as college prep math or social studies. And the school would need to assign a teacher and budget for it-- many schools face budget cuts and need to cut Art, Music, even Language courses.

And...who actually can't do their taxes? Yes I know many people don't: they go to H&R Block or something-- but would a brief series of direct lessons years in the past have any effect on this? If someone told you about deductions 10 years ago, would you know how to do it without looking it up?

Finally, its because tax information is already freely available to anyone who wants to learn it: now on Khan Academy for example, but states like California have free services to help you do taxes, and of course you can read the IRS instructions for yourself.

Ideally, schools teach all of the relevant foundation concepts (like arithmetic reading, and social studies) that give students the mental tools to adapt to a variety of future events. Schools cannot teach every specific procedure for all possible future events for all possible students.

[u/almostsharona → u/scottfarrar]

It seems like government and econ classes could simply build in a unit or two on this. They are seniors, so they aren't trying that hard anyway. This may actually entice then.

[u/BloodandRank → u/almostsharona]

Thats a common misconception. My senior year in highschool was my toughest year. 4 ap classes and 2 dual enrollment (community college+highschool credit) made every night full of homework (apart from club responsibilities). Ap classes require a test to receive college credit so every minute of class lectures is important. Definitely can not devote units to non course material until after testing, and even then not all students will pass the test so you are preparing them for their college courses. While there are obviously different kinds of students, it is honestly insulting to many college bound students to suggest seniors slack. The requirements to even be considered to top schools is immense, as are those to be accepted to upper midrange schools. Learning how to do your taxes does nothing to help you get into harvard law school and does less to prepare you for your engineering internship out of a top school. It isnt too far of a stretch to assume students who put in the effort to attend a prestigious or mid level college can also put in the effort to learn how to do their government mandated taxes, or pay someone to do it for them.

[u/lovestruckluna → u/BloodandRank]

That doesn't mean it can't be done. There is typically a period of time after college exams, in my AP Econ class, we used that to learn the basics of tax forms.

[u/almostsharona → u/BloodandRank]

You're right, and I apologize because I should/do know better, especially since I was that AP student as well. Now, as an AP teacher, I see that must of my AP students remain focused and hard-working, and over half of my CP students do. This means that the misconception is based on maybe 30% of the average set of students at my school, most of whom weren't setting the world on fire in previous years either. Most of my colleagues agree, yet we all perpetuate this myth.