Tax classes absent at JHS, but why?

According to Forbes, Americans spent 8.9 billion hours preparing taxes during 2016 — costing the American economy about $409 billion due to the time commitment.

These startling statistics show that taxes are an important and time-consuming part of every American life. It also raises the question over whether taxes should be taught in school.

Some students certainly think so. Chase Copeland said there is “an ignorance about taxes,” and he believes most students should know where their taxes are going.

Business teacher Rhonda Mashburn echoed his thought stating that “the more that you know, the better off you will be.”

In her opinion, without proper introduction to taxes and finances, most students will be unable to tell if they are being cheated or be able to understand the specifics of their paychecks.

Student Allie Santos said she isn’t “taught basic things like taxes or establishing a 401(k).”

Mashburn did disclose that some of these principles are taught in certain business classes (such as Accounting 2) but that there wasn’t a mandatory course that helped with finances outside of school. Both Copeland and Santos were confused as to why there wasn’t a class already, believing that the reason a course isn’t offered could be due to a possible lack of qualified teachers for the subject.

A wider argument on the necessity of doing your own taxes might explain  the absent tax class.

“We have the worst tax code in the industrialized world, bar none,” U.S. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said in a recent PBS transcript, while over 30 years earlier then-President Ronald Regan said America’s tax system is  “complicated, unfair, cluttered with gobbledygook and loopholes.”

H&R Block and Inuit spent $5 million in lobbying to block the Tax Filing Simplification Act of 2016, according to news reports. NBC News reported that the legislation would have allowed the IRS to file taxes for citizens, sparing the average American the $200 and 13 hours that they pay tax companies. While this amount of spending might seem large by our standards, it pales in comparison to the $10 billion in revenue that H&R Block obtains each year, according to PBS.

In 1955, the tax code was 400,000 words long, but by 2016 it had increased to more than 2.4 million words based on statistics from Forbes.

Many other countries have simplified tax processes.

For instance, New Zealand made every product taxable, which in addition to eliminating the hassle of deductibles, lowers the overall tax rate. New Zealand, Japan and the Netherlands have also adopted a model where the nation’s tax agency does taxes for the citizens and sends them an email or letter where people can verify the information.

They are able to implement this system since employers must submit a form to the government on the credentials and taxable rate of employees. The information is then sent to the tax agency so it can determine the amount of taxes owed for each citizen. Interestingly enough, the U.S. has the same system as shown by the money that is deducted from paychecks yet tax filing is still a mess.

One possible explanation for this is the number of accountants in the country. The Bureau of Labor states that accountants receive an average annual wage of $45,000 and there are 70,000 within the U.S. The profession is projected to grow at 2.8 percent as well, meaning that if tax simplification occurred, many could be laid off or forced to accept lower wages.