The entire purpose of high school is to prepare students for the real world. Required classes include English to learn writing, history to learn about the world, science to understand how the world works and math to learn problem solving. While these core classes teach students skills they’ll need for the future, none of them go into teaching students how to do their taxes, which is arguably one of the most important skills for an adult to have.
Hebron does provide classes that delve into teaching students about finances, such as economics and money matters class. However, these classes cover the business side of making money, but not specifically how to do your taxes. When I took economics last year, we barely skimmed through the portion about doing taxes, only giving us a formula for a certain assignment we had to do. This left me clueless about how to do taxes, as I was learning more about how to plug in certain values to get the value of my taxes.
My main issue with schools not teaching students how to properly do taxes is that it’s unique material compared to other classes, and without the right teachers, it isn’t taught properly. It’s not like math class, where you have to memorize formulas and plug in numbers; there are so many other things that complicate how to do taxes. One needs to have a basic understanding of math to calculate your income, but also have money management skills, know how to keep track of both one’s income and spending and what forms and taxes one needs to pay.
The economics class and money management classes cover some of these aspects, but they don’t extend teaching to how to do taxes. While there are different kinds of taxes and forms an individual will need to fill out when they’re an adult, such as the child tax or self-employment income, it’s still vital to teach current teenagers, as many of them already work while in school and will need to learn how to do taxes regardless.
If you’re someone who needs help with starting how to do taxes, here are some resources:
Why you don’t learn how to do taxes in school- and how to actually get started
