Teaching your kids about taxes

Childhood joy is overrated, start the cynicism early!

Many adults don’t understand taxes at all. This is bad, because taxes aren’t that complicated!

Just kidding, they are excessively complicated for no particular reason.

But you can give your kids a leg up in the world by teaching them how absurd and ridiculous is all is at an early age! Make sure break the charade they might have that adults are competent and the systems we have makes logical sense, so they can reach the appropriate level of cynicism before their 10th birthday.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do this:

1. Give them allowance, but only if they do chores. No work, no money!

2. At the end of the year, inform them that they have to give you a percentage of the money back. Give them a sheet of paper with a bunch of different percentages based on how much money they made in different brackets.

3. Give them an overly complicated form to fill out that supposedly tells them how much they owe you, even though you already know how much they should owe. If they get it wrong, take the money they owe you and then take extra money for them getting it wrong. Or send them to jail.

4. Take a little extra money because they didn’t return any money throughout the year.

5. Take a little extra money and give it to grandpa, but tell them they’re going to get some of that when they’re old too (wink wink).

6. Use the rest of the money for the following:

   1. Fireworks

   2. BB guns

   3. Paying interest on your credit cards

Teaching your kids early that earning $10 really means earning $5 will give them all the tools they need to feel detached and disillusioned before they have a chance to develop any optimism about becoming an adult.

If you really want to go the extra mile to prepare them for the world, charge them monthly for rent! Then raise their rent every year quite a bit, but don’t raise their allowance. Make sure to tell them how much easier they have it than you did while doing this.

Childhood joy is overrated. Get them cynical early. Prepare them for the world.