Taxes are a necessary evil in our financial lives. We must pay taxes, unfortunately, no matter how annoying or expensive or time-consuming they are. There are severe penalties for not paying taxes, too, but we won’t get into those today.
Instead, in this blog, we want to speak to you and your child about some things we’ve learned when it comes to filing taxes that we wish, in hindsight, someone told us about a very long time ago.
In other words, our passion and focus here at Explorer Hop is youth financial literacy and in line with that goal, we want to take time today to give your child some of the foresight we did not have with regard to filing and paying taxes.
Here we go.
1. You Don’t Need To Panic
Yes, deadlines and accuracy are important when you are doing your taxes but panicking can be just about the worst thing for you to do when things are starting to go a little bit off course. Moments of panic are typically when we as humans make our worst decisions, so it is important to realize that there are paths and resources available to manage an upcoming deadline or inaccuracy in your tax filings. Request an extension, get some help, pay what you can for the time being and figure out what else you can do to ease tax-related stress but you do not need to panic about your taxes.
2. You Don’t Need To Pay Your Taxes All At Once
Much like credit cards and other payments have installment plans or incremental payback options, arrangements such as these can also be made with tax bodies such as the IRS in the US or CRA in Canada. It can be quite daunting to have to think about paying your taxes all at once during “tax season” on an annual basis. For people that want to lighten that load and pay taxes progressively due to income constraints and other factors, it is worth noting that this is also an option you can explore if it suits you better and this could make it easier for you to manage your taxes over time.
3. You Don’t Need To Do Taxes Yourself
For some reason, humans tend to try to believe that there is some kind of advantage or reason we should be handling our finances by ourselves. Contrary to that idea, however, we wish that it was better articulated to us that resources exist that can help us handle our taxes instead of feeling alone during tax season. Experts in this field such as financial advisors and tax professionals are much better suited to handle and understand the intricacies of tax season, so we want to emphasize the reality that taxes are not something anyone should feel that they need to deal with on their own.
4. You Can File Your Taxes Early
A similar stress mitigation technique as the previous points above, we want to end this blog by honing in on the idea that there is no reason anyone must wait to file their taxes at the end of the year, otherwise known as “tax season”. If it makes it easier for you, always consider that there are ways you can arrange to pay your taxes earlier in the year so as to avoid stress piling up later down the road.
Now that we’ve given out our tips, we don’t want to leave you figuring out for yourself where else to go to help your child boost their financial literacy skills even further because we have that answer for you.
If you’d like to see your child improve their financial literacy in nationally and internationally-acclaimed courses and classes that span 11 countries and 4 continents, look no further than the personal finance programs we have here at Explorer Hop.
To aid you in helping your child grow, we’ve got nationally and internationally-acclaimed personal finance programs for children in grades one all the way to twelve, covering topics ranging from the basics and history of money to the stock market, global finance and more.
Please check out our courses and classes online now and sign your child up today! We look forward to seeing you soon!