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.

Real countries simply tell you how much you get back or owe at the end of the year. They have waay more data on what you've done than you do. No reason they can't do it other than the fact that it's profitable for their friends if they don't

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".

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.

Just create a big corporation in a garage, become a billionaire and just don't pay 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.

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.

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

If it makes you feel any better I use high school math regularly and suck at doing taxes.

I think the way we explain the importance of high school level math to students is wrong. In engineering school the retired engineers taught us that we aren’t being taught calculus because we’re going to use it all the time, we’re taught it so we can understand why the calculator is spitting out the number it’s spitting out and so that we can understand when that number is clearly wrong. I don’t sit down with a pencil and paper to calculate a derivative or integral practically ever, but I do use the relationship between position, velocity, and acceleration sometimes on the fly.

If we explain to high schoolers that algebra is so you understand the relationships between numbers so you can tell at a glance if you’re being cheated by someone’s math or that you entered the wrong number in the calculator. The goal of trig is to leave you with a better understanding of how physical space works and the basics in preparation for physics.

The goal of a general education is to leave you with a broad base of knowledge. You don’t need to perfectly remember everything but rather have a surface level understanding on a variety of topics with an ability to delve deeper if needed

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.

Math*

"A good understanding of tax law is worth 34% of your income"

At least in the US, prob more in EU.

Fr though. I hate that schools don’t really teach real life formal work. I wish that too was included in the syllabus.