Understanding your taxes for teachers and students

Site offers online lesson plans, interactive activities, simulations and more.

Are you confused about tax terms and forms, and how to file your tax return? Are you a student who will soon join the work force? Perhaps you’re an educator looking for ways to integrate tax education into the high school or community college classroom.

If you answered yes to any of these questions, help is available on IRS.gov. Understanding Taxes is a great resource for middle schools, high schools, community colleges, and the general public for learning about taxes in the United States. It includes a site for teachers and a site for students.

If you’re a teacher, every Understanding Taxes lesson supports both national and state educational standards that make it simple to integrate into your classroom curriculum. Additionally, the IRS partnered with education professionals to produce the Understanding Taxes Teacher site. Educators can take advantage of all the great educational content found in the online version, including detailed lesson plans, activities, simulations, teacher lesson plan downloads, fact sheets and more. There are also links to state and national educational standards.

If you’re a student, or simply interested in learning more about taxes, the Understanding Taxes Student site provides activities, tax tutorials, word puzzles, tax trivia questions, simulations and assessments to help you understand the real world of taxes. Tax tutorials guide you through the basics of tax preparation including how to file your return electronically. The site also explains the how and why of taxes — how to apply tax principles, while explaining tax history and theory behind America’s tax system.

Whether you’re teaching or learning about taxes, take advantage of the tools found at the Understanding Taxes website. Taxes have been a part of American history since the colonists fought for independence from Great Britain. Make it part of your history now by teaching or learning how to file an accurate and timely tax return.

Understanding taxes is an educational application that contains lessons and practice problems based on 2014 tax law.
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