Lesson 36 · Written for kid, teen, and little
Taxes: The Big Shared Pot
Taxes are money collected from lots of people to pay for things everybody uses.
Taxes are money that people and businesses pay to the government. All of it goes into one big shared pot that pays for things a whole community uses together, like roads, schools, libraries and fire stations. In most places, some tax comes out of a worker's pay before the worker ever sees it, and some tax gets added when you buy things. Nobody gets to pick exactly what their own tax dollars buy, because it is shared. 🏫
Words to know
5Tax
Money people pay to the government so a whole community can share things. Roads, libraries and fire trucks are paid for this way.
Government
The group of people who run a town, a state, or a country. They decide what the tax money gets spent on.
Income tax
Tax taken out of the money someone earns at a job. Earn $1,000 and a slice of it goes before you ever see it.
Public service
Something taxes pay for that anyone can use, like a library or a fire truck.
Paycheck
The money a worker gets for the work they did. It arrives smaller than what was earned, because tax came out first.
True or false? Swipe each card about taxes.
Taxes help pay for roads, schools and fire trucks.
Swipe the card — or tap.
In the full lesson
- 1True or false
- 2Put it in order
- 3Make the call
Vine has 107 lessons like this one, each written three ways so a 7-year-old and a 17-year-old both get a version that fits.
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