Did your child learn about how important and critical the IRS is in school today?
In light of the reports that the agency was targeting conservative groups for “additional review,” the IRS could use all the public relations help it can get.
Enter government schools.
The IRS provides a series of lesson plans for students on its website, detailing taxes, the history of taxes, how to account and calculate your taxes, student’s roles as taxpayers, and even tax heroes of yesteryear.
One of the lesson plans includes an “info sheet” on how to lobby politicians – presumably to raise taxes for one’s pet project. It’s simply an effort to drum up more business, we suppose.
In the “Understanding the IRS” lesson, students complete a worksheet with the following questions:
· How would the United States have fared in the two world wars without revenues from taxes?· How would life be different for low-income, disabled, and retired Americans without Social Security and the other services that taxes fund?
· Do you think the United States would have been able to attain and hold its position in the world today without the support of taxes paying for defense?
· Would the American lifestyle, as we know it, have evolved without income taxes?
The lesson then reads, “Answers will vary but should imply that much of what we take for granted is provided for by revenue from income taxes.” That, incidentally, is the preferred response to every question above.
In other words, the IRS wants to make sure school children believe that America wouldn’t be America without the IRS.
That’s probably true – America would be much different – but would that necessarily be a bad thing?