Just create a big corporation in a garage, become a billionaire and just don’t pay taxes
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.
What country uses British English (“maths I learnt”) and has a US-style nightmare of individual tax returns?
Canada? The British slang at least wouldn’t be that out of place here
here
Thank you, northern neighbor. I suspected that was the answer but wasn’t sure.
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.
Oh yeah, you simultaneously live everywhere in Canada at the same time? How much time do you spend with Canadian-Caribbean people?
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.
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.
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.
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 And maybe some of the skills like balancing a check book are outdated and that’s fine.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.
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]
Math*
Mathematics*
Mathematics*
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
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.
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.
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.
