Why don't people find out more about their tax situation in the US?

There is another interesting situation. IRS gives Earned Income Credit, Child Tax Credit, Additional Child Tax Credit... to help people you actually need it. And a large number of these people, due to their ignorance and not realizing what they are doing, make some errors in the returns and end up in levy and liens with IRS.

And many end up in the situation because they never represented themselves or replied to IRS notice (due to lack of understanding the gravity of the situation or poor knowledge) or could not afford to do get professional help. Probably, in most of the cases, the administrative expenses must be much more than the amount IRS will get.

There are many people around who did not file their return because they don't know if they are required to file or not, they meet the filing requirement or not. They what to file, but they are afraid to file their first return because they are afraid the IRS will be after them for all the previous years.

I agree with your statements,with the exception that my children did learn in their senior year in high school how to file a Federal Tax Retun and how to fill out the W-4 form.

What gets me is doesn't anyone take the time to look thru the yahoo questions before asking the question. Most of the tax question are repetitive.

I agree that the schools should have a course that teaches basic financial living skills, including taxes but also things like applying for a job, credit, credit scores and budgeting. Parents of course should also take a hand in this.

Every day I'm amazed at the lack of knowledge of some of the people asking questions here. People end up really messing up their lives through not knowing how to cope.

I am a tax professional and agree that the knowledge level is not what it should be but I have surfed other categories in Yahoo answers and find a higher level of hair-brained questions elsewhere. Except for ones here where people are asking us to compute their take-home pay, most are pretty good. Spell checker use needs to be improved.

Quite simply, people have been trained that taxes are too complicated. Therefore, instead of learning the basics about taxes, they just hand it off to someone else. One of the reasons for the existence of Yahoo Answers.

Personally, I think that everyone should learn about their own tax situation for each stage of their life.