We Teach Algebra, But Not How to File Taxes—Why?

The fact is—at one point—we’ve all solved for X...(I apologize for any trauma this might bring up). We’ve all labelled the parts of a cell, memorized the causes of the Industrial Revolution, and traced rivers on blank maps. Say “mitochondria” in any room, and chances are someone will reflexively say, “It’s the powerhouse of the cell.” These lessons stick with us—not just because they’re drilled in, but because they help us make sense of the world around us.

And rightfully so.

Understanding basic math, science, history, and geography helps us become informed citizens. It gives us context. It builds foundational awareness of the world we live in.

But somewhere along the way, we stopped teaching something equally essential: how to manage money.

• We don’t teach enough kids how to budget.

• We don’t teach them how credit works.

• We definitely don’t teach them how to file a basic tax return.

And the idea of understanding investing—how to make your money work for you? That’s not even in the curriculum.

Which is kind of ironic, isn’t it?

For over a century, education has been designed to prepare students for the workforce—to land a job—to earn an income. We spend years training for that. But when it comes to managing that income—making sense of a payslip, avoiding debt traps, building savings—we expect people to just figure it out.

Financial literacy should be a core high school skill.

As fundamental as reading, writing, or arithmetic. Because personal finance is not a niche topic, it’s survival. It's the basics.

A few years after I finished college, I found myself working, at that point, with a startup called Dharma Life Sciences.

Like many early-stage ventures, we ran on very lean budgets and great ambition. We couldn’t always hire experienced industry talent. So for many roles, we brought in sharp, brilliant, fresh graduates right out of university.

A couple of the people I hired for my team were these amazing young women—top of their class graduates from some of India’s most respected institutions. They were brilliant, quick thinkers, and exceptionally good at what they did—at least when it came to what they had studied in university.

They hit the ground running. They were confident, capable, and fun to work with. 

Then came tax season.

Around May—India’s financial year-end is in April—they casually asked me,

“How do we file our taxes?”

I smiled, assuming they meant this year’s forms or how to create an account on the Income Tax portal for the first time. I had recently filed my taxes, so I started walking them through changes, talking about deductions, taxable income, and documentation—building on the basics—except that they looked at me blankly. I was speaking Greek or something. 

The fact was they didn’t know what I was talking about. 

They didn’t know any of it. Not names of the forms. The categories. Not what a taxable deduction was or what their “taxable income” even referred to. 

That’s the thing: I had studied it, way back in high school, income tax was part of our maths subject. Not the filing part per se—after all, we didn’t have jobs back then—but the calculation part. We were taught how to break down income structures. What gross income looked like. How House Rent Allowance (HRA) worked. What deductions under various sections mean. How do you calculate taxable income without a calculator? Honestly it was one of the easier sections.

Sure, neither I nor any of my classmates fully grasped what it all meant in real-life terms at the time. I don’t think any of us had a part-time job back then, during school. But when I started earning, it wasn’t entirely foreign. I had a framework, a bit faded in my memory but still a framework to build on. We had the vocabulary. We finally could apply the concepts we had learnt.

And the realization hit me—They hadn’t been introduced to income tax in school. It had never come up in their curriculum—and it showed.

They eventually found help and filed their taxes. 

Over the next few weeks, in quieter moments, I started asking more questions, listening more closely. And what I realized was this: The curriculum had changed—but not for the better.

We’d updated textbooks. Added technology. Refreshed syllabi. But the fundamentals—what we actually consider “core” learning—hadn’t caught up with the real world.

We’re still more obsessed with producing high scorers than building capable, self-sufficient adults.

This isn’t just an India problem. This is global.

And it’s long overdue for a fix.

I’ll make a small confession. I don’t have kids. And I’m fully aware that in some parts of the world, personal finance might be included—at least in some form—in high school, hopefully.

But over the last few years, I’ve had the chance to speak with dozens of startup founders building products and platforms aimed at teaching financial literacy to children. And the one thing they all seem to agree on? We’re still not doing enough.

It’s not that the need isn’t there. If anything, today’s parents—especially those raising school-age children—are more vocal than ever about wanting early exposure to money management for their kids.

And yet… Most of them still feel that schools just aren’t prioritizing it.

That gap? It’s troubling. And a bit sad.

Because if education is meant to prepare people for living their life—and we’re so focused on getting them into the workforce—aren’t we doing them a massive disservice by not giving them the tools to manage what they earn?

We’re living in a chaotic world. Inflation, layoffs, rising interest rates, economic uncertainty. Scroll through social media, and you’ll see young people joking—darkly—about how they’ll never afford homes, never build the kind of lives their parents or grandparents had.

And maybe, just maybe, that dark humour is a reflection of something real:

That we’ve systematically undervalued financial knowledge.

That only a privileged few—those in elite schools or specific programs—are getting exposed to it.

And as someone seeing it from the outside, this is what I’m noticing.

Maybe your experience is different—and if it is, I’d genuinely love to hear from you.

Are things changing in your part of the world?

Or are we, collectively, setting up our children to struggle, by not teaching them how to navigate the very system we’re preparing them to enter?

We should be teaching kids, how to track their spending, to budget for rent, groceries, and life. What credit is, and how it can either work for or against them. How taxes work, and so on early in life

Not when they’re 30 and stressed. But when they’re 16 and curious.

Financial literacy isn’t a luxury. It’s infrastructure.

So let’s stop treating it like a side quest and make it a core mission.