What Are Taxes?

What they’ll learn

Three things they’ll come away with.

• That tax is money everybody puts into one big shared pot, and the pot pays for the big things most people could never pay for alone.
• What the tax pot pays for: roads, schools, streetlights, fire engines, hospitals and parks.
• Three of the ways money gets into the pot: from the salary grown-ups earn, from the things we buy, and from the interest on savings. And how a tax wrapper keeps savings interest out of the pot's reach.
• That grown-ups do not all agree about how much tax there should be, and that there is no right or wrong answer.

Talk about it

Open questions that work.

• “If you were in charge of the tax pot, what would you spend it on first?”
• “What is something the tax pot pays for that you used this week?”
• “Lily's grandma still pays for schools, though she does not go to school any more. Why do you think that is?”

Try one thing this week

Pick one small thing.

Take the walk Lily took. Go down your own street together and count how many things you can spot that the tax pot pays for: the road, the streetlights, the school, maybe a fire station or a park. Then, next time you get a receipt, look at the bottom together. In some countries the tax is printed on its own line; in others it is already tucked inside the price.