1. What are Taxes? (…and Why Do We Have to Pay Them?)

2. Nobody likes to pay taxes but they are important
Nobody likes to pay taxes but they are important. Governments need taxes to survive. And if no one paid taxes, governments would not have any money.

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Let’s talk a little bit about what taxes are and what governments use tax money for…

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There are things that everybody in a city or state or country needs but which are too expensive for any one person to build. For instance, we needs roads to drive on and bridges to go across our rivers.

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We need police officers to keep us safe and fire fighters to be there in case a fire breaks out. We need people to collect the trash and electricity in our homes.

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So we have a government that hires police officers, buys fire fighting equipment, builds roads, builds schools and hires teachers and does a lot of other things too. The only problem is all of those things are very EXPENSIVE!

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So where does the government get the money to pay for all the things that it does? From taxes!

8. Adults have to pay taxes to the government every year.
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Adults have to pay taxes to the government every year.

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There are many different types of taxes. There is a tax you pay on your income and tax you pay if you own a house. There is a tax on things you buy. This is called a sales tax.

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For instance, if you bought a hammer for $10, you might have to pay an extra 50 cents in taxes.  You would pay $10.50 to the store and the store would pass on the 50 extra cents to the government.

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But if you bought a hot tub for $1,000, you might have to pay $50 in sales tax!

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There is another type of tax called an INCOME TAX. When you make money from your job, you have to pay taxes to the government. For instance, if you made $75,000 dollars for working for the year, you might have to pay $20,000 of it to the government!

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Candidates running for office as senators, presidents, mayors and other positions tend to argue a lot about taxes. One question they argue about is, who should pay taxes and how much?

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Generally, rich people have to not only pay more money in taxes, but they to pay a bigger percentage as well.

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Some people think this is fair because rich people can afford to pay. Other people think it’s not fair because rich people earned that extra money. If you make very little money for the year, you may not have to pay any taxes at all.

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Every year, each adult sends their tax money to a government group called the Internal Revenue Service or IRS. They have to send it in by April 15th.

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If you don’t pay your taxes you can be in big trouble with the IRS. You might even go to jail!

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There is debate about what the government should use the tax money for.

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There are many questions: Should we spend more or less on paying for people’s health care? Should we spend more or less to build a big army and navy?

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Should we spend more money to build great schools for kids? Should we spend more to help out poor people or people without homes?

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Should we spend more for building parks or roads or bridges? What about police officers or fire fighters?

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We have some important decisions to make about how much we charge in taxes and how much each person has to pay.

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Remember that if your government doesn’t raise revenue from taxes, it will be hard to build anything.

24. But if you tax the people too much, they might get angry!
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But if you tax the people too much, they might get angry!