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   Jesse 🇫🇷 (jessew@mk.cpluspatch.com)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Aug-2025 02:45:25 JST Jesse 🇫🇷

   "why does school teach us maths instead of taxes" man what do you think math is used for

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     Jesse 🇫🇷 (jessew@mk.cpluspatch.com)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Aug-2025 02:49:27 JST Jesse 🇫🇷

     in reply to

     taxes are easy as shit
     
     also they change every year anyway so everything you get taught will be outdatef immediately

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     ARGVMI~1.PIF (argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Aug-2025 07:09:10 JST ARGVMI~1.PIF

     in reply to

     @jessew

     You kid, but it's actually true. One of the earliest recorded uses of non-trivial math was when the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians used it for financial calculations, including taxes.

     They did, however, also use math for construction and astronomy.

     Needless to say, math is still heavily used for all of these things.

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics#Ancient

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     lori (lori@cambrian.social)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Aug-2025 09:22:27 JST lori

     in reply to
     @jessew Taxes is pretty advanced math. If you have tax brackets, then tax is a piecewise linear function of income. Lots of perverse little optimization problems in the neighborhoods of those corner cases.
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     Jesse 🇫🇷 (jessew@mk.cpluspatch.com)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Aug-2025 03:06:59 JST Jesse 🇫🇷

     in reply to

     • kimapr

     @kimapr@ublog.kimapr.net actually there's a reason for that (and the same reason why you still need to do it in Europe and other countries)
     
     there are a lot of various tax exemptions and rules and strategies you can use to reduce the amount of taxes you pay, but the government doesn't know about your life so you have to be the one to claim them (e.g. maybe you have a girlfriend that you live with, maybe you have a small business, maybe you are in a special situation, etc)
     
     "doing taxes" is basically just solving mathematical optimization problems to give the least amount of money possible

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     kimapr (kimapr@ublog.kimapr.net)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Aug-2025 03:07:00 JST kimapr

     in reply to

     @jessew the fact that you need to “do taxes” in america is so stupid imo like the government certainly knows how much money you need to pay why can’t they just tell you