Learning experience 1: How does tax relate to me?

Quiz

Ask each student to complete the printable quiz. When the students have completed this get them to discuss their answers. You may wish to store their results, ask them to do it again at the end of the section, or at the completion of the unit itself and compare the two sets of results.

Answers to the quiz questions are as follows:
1) C
2) B
3) D
4) False
5) True
6) D
7) D
8) D
9) C
10) C

What's tax for?

Show the students the What's tax for? animation. Tell them they are going to be finding out about tax and ask them to consider what they know, and what they have yet to find out.
This could be done as a class brainstorm, or in pairs or small groups. The Inland Revenue Timeline may be useful if any questions come up.

Note: The tax rebate for children was replaced on 1 April 2012 with an income exemption up to $2340 if this income is not taxed at source. The exemption does not apply to salary or wages, interest or dividends, because this is taxed at source.

Media analysis: cartoon

Show the students the What's tax? cartoon and/or the What's tax for? animation. Ask the students the following questions:

• What creative techniques are used to attract attention?
• How might different people understand the message differently?
• What values, lifestyles and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message?
• Why has this cartoon/animation been created?

Q&A

Give each student/pair a question card. Have them to find the answers to the questions on one or more of the the following websites and present their findings to the class:

• What's tax
• Sorted
• Inland Revenue
• Wikipedia

Card sort & concept map

This activity may be done by students as individuals, in pairs or in groups. Print and cut out the card sort sheet to make small cards. Give the students a set of cards and a large sheet of paper to stick them onto.

Ask the students to sort the cards into similar groups and consider the reasons for their decisions. Have the students paste their cards onto the large sheet of paper and link them with arrows to show how they are related. Have them write on the arrow lines their reasons for the relationships. Encourage them to add further concepts and detail where they think appropriate

What's in it for us?

Show the students the What's in it for us? cartoon. Ask the students, “Are these people right? What do you think?”.

As a class, brainstorm all of the things inside and outside the home that we don’t directly pay for. Then have them decide which of these things are paid for by the Government or the local council.

If you ever wondered how your own tax dollars are spent, there's a simple calculator that shows you just where your tax dollars go. Enter your income and the site instantly calculates what your tax dollars are spent on.

Tax facts

• Ask the students to look at the pie graph and discuss what each section means in practical terms: Why do you pay income tax?
• Discuss what the government does and does not pay for.
• Ask the students to create an informative leaflet explaining the terms in the pie graph in vocabulary the average person would understand. Get them to design an icon for each term.
• Ask the students to find out whether government spending is the same every year or if it changes. If so, how often? Government expenditure
•  Government Revenue
• Ask the students to consider why tax spending may change.

Using the news

Read these newspaper articles or find positive articles more relevant to your community and ask the students to discuss what effect paying tax has had on the outcome of these stories.

• Clashes over dairy farmers' fair share of tax - Business - NZ Herald News
• Leap in cases as IRD boosts war on tax evasion - National - NZ Herald News
• Take the money back, family tell Govt - National - NZ Herald News
• Govt to spend $8.5b on Christchurch rebuild - Business - NZ Herald News
• Student loan rebuild plan 'offensive' - National - NZ Herald News
• IRD more confident Serepisos will pay - Business - NZ Herald News
• Accountant fraudster gets 2-1/2 years jail - National - NZ Herald News
• Tax agent escapes jail in $45,000 fraud case - National - NZ Herald News
• Jail for vineyard contractor who owed $400,000 - National - NZ Herald News
• Samoan chief gets home detention over tax - Stuff.co.nz
• Pre-teens dream of kids and dole - National - Stuff.co.nz

Ranking values

Below is a list of things taxes are spent on. Discuss the meanings of the terms.

• Education
• Core government services
• Law and order including the police, the courts and justice systems, the defence force
• Transport and communications, public roads
• Economic and industrial services
• NZ Superannuation
• Working for Families Tax Credits
• Other social welfare including sickness and unemployment benefits
• Healthcare including medical and hospital services

Ask the students to consider which aspects of government spending affect young people. Have them place the terms in order from what they consider to be least important to most important and give reasons for their decisions.

Then, get the students to form groups of three or four and ask them to do the same again where they must come to an agreement as a group about the order of importance.

Have the students make a range of statements about what young people think about tax, based on their class data. Talk with your students about the validity of their statements: Does their data support their conclusion? What further information might they need?

Have the students take these cards home, and ask an adult to do the exercise. Discuss the responses back in class: “What are the differences in these responses? Why are there differences?” Have the students compare and contrast the differences on the Two sides of the fence worksheet.

• Go to Learning experience 2 – How does tax relate to the concept of economic decision-making?

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