Useful Life Skills [extra fabulous]
::: spoiler Transcript [An angry kid sits at his desk in school complaining]
Kid: Ugh why don’t you teach us about things we’ll actually need to know as adults?!
[An unamused teacher]
Teacher: Ok, I’m going to teach you how to do your taxes while also dealing the death of a loved one
[The teacher, wearing the same expression, holds a knife in one hand, and a hamster in the other]
Teacher: Please itemize your deductions while I deal with Mister Hamps, the class pet
[A class of shocked and crying kids look on in horror while trying to simultaneously do their taxes. The cries of the hamster off screen are cut off abruptly]
Hamster: SQWEEE- - :::
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Comments73
This life lesson definitely does come in handy the older you get. Nothing like receiving complicated tax forms that have to processed for your dead relative / spouse / or child to remind you of how cruel the world is.
The debt your grandmother had is now yours! If you don't resolve it she will haunt you.
Sorry for your loss!!!!!
Now fuck you pay me.
As I understand it, even in third world shitholes like the US, debt itself doesn't transfer... but you do have to deduct debt from inheritance before you get anything.
Pretty sure it depends on the state. In NY, my mom’s credit card debt disappeared when she died. I do not think that’s the same in other states. I assume it usually transfers to the spouse.
Spouses yes, but only because things are generally in both names. Children no. They'll try to lie and say it is, but it's not.
Again, I think it depends on the state.
Example: https://www.elderlawanswers.com/son-liable-for-moms-93000-nursing-home-bill-under-filial-responsibility-law-9873
There are states with laws regarding passing on debts to children, so not sure why I’m being downvoted.
Edit: In general, an adult child never inherits their parent’s debt, but there are exceptions for certain debts in certain states. Also, it’s worth noting that debts usually come out of the estate, but in Florida you can be held liable for your parent’s debt up to the value of the property you inherited - so not out of the estate, but out of what the estate gave you. Similar, but not the same.
There is no state where you can inherit debt from a parent. It passes through their estate.
I've not lived in many states, but when my dad died in Maryland, there was a period during which creditors had the opportunity to collect from his estate, then any debts were considered forfeit.
edit: Correct a word.
In which state can you inherit debt?
Spousal debt: Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Other debts: About 30 states have archaic, rarely enforced laws that can make adult children legally responsible for their parents' unpaid necessities, like medical or nursing home bills.
IANAL and this is a summary from Google, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of it. I can just tell you that in my experience, NY does not pass on debt to spouses.
What about grandmother's debt like we were discussing?
Like I’ve said, I do not know this stuff. A Google search says:
You do not automatically inherit your grandparent's debt in any U.S. state, including New York. Debts are the responsibility of the deceased person’s estate, not the heirs. However, you may become personally liable in any state if you co-signed a loan, jointly held accounts with the right of survivorship, or acted as a legal guarantor. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
While there are no states where grandchildren specifically inherit general debt, over 20 states have historical "filial responsibility" laws that can legally require adult children to pay for the unpaid medical or elder care expenses of their indigent parents. [6, 7, 8]
How Care-Related Debt Could Impact You
If you are dealing with debt collection for a deceased relative, you can review your rights in the FTC Consumer Advice on Debts and Deceased Relatives and use the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
to report unlawful or abusive collection practices.
AI responses may include mistakes.
[1] https://www.metlife.com/stories/legal/can-you-inherit-debt/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6zwsytrEddc
[3] https://www.viewridgelaw.com/2025/10/will-i-inherit-my-parents-debt/
[4] https://vicklaw.org/can-i-inherit-the-debt-of-a-loved-one/
[5] https://www.debt.org/advice/deceased-relatives/
[6] https://www.nationaldebtrelief.com/blog/financial-wellness/family-finances/can-you-inherit-debt-what-you-need-to-know-about-your-parents-debt-and-inherited-liabilities/
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws
[8] https://trustandwill.com/learn/filial-responsibility-law
[9] https://www.carolinafep.com/library/what-happens-to-debt-when-a-person-dies-.cfm
[10] https://www.ncsl.org/resources/map-monday-states-spell-out-when-adult-children-have-a-duty-to-care-for-parents
[11] https://cielitolindoseniorliving.com/filial-laws-in-the-21st-century-balancing-family-care-and-financial-burdens/
Depends on the debt, too. The feds changed things a few years ago so federal student loan debt can't be discharged in death.
Lol, go fuck yourself, bill collector! You get nothing! You lose! God day sir!
I had some slimeball try that shit with me after my mother died. I told him to take it to the courts so he can get laughed out of the room and pay court costs cuz my mother died pennyless and I'm not making that my problem.
Depends massively on where you are located.
Debts don't transfer when you die where I am from. Even if the estate can't pay off all the debts with remaining assets the debts do not go to the inheritors.
And then I’ll remind you that it’s well within most governments’ capabilities to do their citizens taxes for them. Also any for-profit service you use to do your taxes uses the money you give them to lobby the government to keep the tax system this way. Also your taxes are getting used for unfathomable crimes, and there’s no paper trail or audit done to them to prove your tax dollars are going where you’d like them to.
In the UK, unless you're self-employed, taxes are just kind of automatic. It just gets handled by your employer.
If you're self-employed, and especially so if you're VAT-registered, it can be a bit fiddly. For most people, however, it's just handled invisibly.
Fun fact: if you're self employed in the UK, you've been able to do your taxes online via a simple (ish) form on the HMRC website, but they're in the process of phasing it out in favour of third-party proprietary software, so some people aren't allowed to use the free web form anymore, and within two or three years, it'll become totally unavailable. Everyone always loves it when the government finds things that Americans complain about and copies it here so we get to complain about it, too.
Jesus Christ why
Same in Ukraine. Never had to bother with doing taxes manually since I'm salaried.
Those things tend to not all happen at the same place and time.
Specifically, places where bribery is done in the form of lobby usually have audits and paper trails showing where the money goes to.
I've been living in 5 different countries and I still have to find one place where doing your taxes is not an absolute nightmare.
They all have been slightly different nightmares, I will concede that point.
Takes me 5 minutes in the Netherlands
Depends entirely on how complicated your income/expenditure is. This year was the first time in 10 years or more that I needed to add to my pre-filled tax notice (major reno, deductions worth it). I may have missed out on a few hundred € of deductions in that time, but my simple life has always been listed immediately correct: Income from work done in the country, benefits, voluntary retirement insurance, stocks&funds wins, losses, dividends. Finland.
Switzlerand is a breeze. Digital, prompt led, explanations next to the form fields, import of previous year. Takes five minutes to upload a phone scan of a few documents, a bit longer for more complex data entry like trading dates.
As funny as this is, I really think an entire year if not a core course on taxes, tax law, rights, law, etc. would have really fucking helped life.
A whole year? The vast majority of people do not need to do much more than take the standard deduction and input their work income. The IRS offers free fillable forms with clear instructions.
Anyone who believes this either has a very complex tax situation or has just never actually tried to do more than let TurboTax scam them.
Filling your returns by hand is obnoxious by design. Importing your data digitally saves a ton of time and wrist strain.
It sucks that TurboTax has a functional monopoly on the IRS API, but you're really trading time (and annoyance) for money. Most people justifiably bite the bullet and file electronically.
Freetaxusa is free federal and cheaper state. They still try to upsell you (but not as aggressively), but the most I ever paid for standard deductions and nothing crazy is $15 for the state.
And the experience is the same as the other ones. Pretty simple
Haven't tried it in a minute, but I've got a Schedule B and D to file. It wasn't helpful for that.
A lot of schools do teach laws, rights and the like to students now.
Taxes, not so useful when filing laws regularly change.
The only way tax law has meaningfully changed in the last 30 years for most Americans is the brackets.
us is no the whole world
Lucky them, honestly.
I am confused many people feel filing tax is a useful skill, I have never once used itemized deduction.
I had to learn all these things in school. They were actually covered in both junior high and then again when I was in high school. Also how to do job applications and interviews, budgeting, bank accounts, loans, interest, stocks, all that stuff. We even spent weeks doing a fake stock market where we "invested" and tracked the stocks we picked to see how we did.
Damn, which school did you attend?
Regular old public school.
Which state & city? Because I guarantee you most regular old public schools do not provide education to the extent you described. In which state & city did you attend a regular old public school?
I'll say it was a small town in the midwest. Not getting more specific than that.
in HS I took a class for small business. we learned things like how to use spreadsheets(the paper kind) as well as balancing accounts. we had a whole section based on pricing with supply and demand.
I think we even covered things like different investment options for money.
out of all my friends in my youth, I was the only one who knew how to create a budget and balance my accounts.
wealth intelligence is important to ensure you can not only grow your savings, but protect it as well.
most people don't even know what a fiduciary is and why it's important, let alone why a CD might be better than a savings account.
Most people don't need an education on how to do their taxes. They simply need maths and reading comprehension. It's not that hard.
If we get to wish for a public policy to change, then I'd rather we get 100% of our taxes from the rich, calculated by the government. Henry George was right.
I'll say it as much as I can. Tax business, on profit not individuals on their salary. Salary comes from a business paying you, they have accountants, they can pay taxes.
And when you tax profits, they have the incentive to reinvest in the company, either by hiring more people, or building things, or spending money on research. Instead of giving record profits to shareholders.
Of course you can have small businesses below certain employee numbers exempt or something like that to help new businesses.
This of course means you can't hand out "government help" by just taking less taxes from people already making money, and have to install give real help to people in need irrespective of their salary.
And of course there might be some details that should be added to make it good.
If you did that, every single person would be a contractor, with their company paying them everything, with no "profits" at all.
Making functional tax systems is really hard!
Wouldn't that mean the worker is getting paid the full value of their labor?
These are precisely the things our government does not want you to know.
Incorrect. TurboTax and H&R Block don't want you to know these things. And they lobby to keep the IRS crippled.
This week we will be learning how to apply for a marriage certificate, how to find reputable marriage counselling, how to file for divorce, how to pay alimony, and how to skip bail and move to Venezuela
First lesson: don't become president of Venezuela
Oh, goddamn it, now you tell me!
What a concerning meme from a concerning username.
It could be worse.
It could be an unsexy animal fucker.
Or one of Satan's worse bodily fluids
Atleast the username checks out.
I like your name
It's a little ambiguous
If they know how much I owe, why don't they send me a bill?
In USA they tax toilet paper and water, you can't even shit for free.
Also, our labor party is anti-labor, and our smaller government party is pro big government.
Why do we even bother with words? Just do what you want you win
Because TurboTax and HR Block lobbied to make it like that
The last time I read about this, it was said that they don't actually know. They do statistical analysis and audit you if you are an outlier and didn't pay what people in your similar position payed. I don't know which metrics they look at though. Theoretically, this means if everyone decided to pay a fixed sum less, the data would work out and they wouldn't know who didn't pay enough. Don't take my word for it though.
They know what's reported to them including your payroll and bank account income. For the vast majority of people that's everything you need. They don't if there's any special deductions that you want to take. The IRS could take the information they have, send you a form that you either accept as is or add your additional income and deductions.
Itemizing is a totally waste of your time. Just take the standard deduction.
And that hamster bit me, so stab away, I'll feel nothing but schadenfreude.
In my country I just open the government website, quickly glance if they got my income for my job correct, and click "submit".
Hope to spot manipulation would be a good one
I mean it's not like my parents were gonna teach me anything useful either, so why not
Paying for a CPA to do your taxes (a person, not HR block) usually works out to a net positive financially
Easier than trying to learn the tax code yourself and they can usually maximize your return or minimize your amount owed
Edit; I can do nothing to help the hamster