Katya Schwenk: The Rich Are Pushing Right-Wing Tax Education in Schools
Let’s talk about indoctrination, specifically a new “tax education” program that pushes some right wing ideology about taxation. Journalist Katya Schwenk reports at Jacobin.
When students head back to school in the fall, some will get an unusual crash course in taxes and personal finance. In class lessons and explainer videos, they’ll be taught that workers are the ones “who bear the burden” of corporate income taxes, and that when big companies dodge taxes, it helps “protect employment and job creation.”
Through a new curriculum project called TaxEDU, corporations are pushing these pro-business messages in hundreds of high school and college classrooms across the country. The effort is being led by the Tax Foundation, a right-wing tax policy nonprofit that also helped shape Project 2025, the nine-hundred-page plan for a second Donald Trump presidency to dismantle the federal government.
As states have considered new policies like “mansion taxes” to levy on the wealthy and the IRS is beefing up its infrastructure and enforcement, TaxEDU has been expanding its reach, instructing more and more students that the last thing they want to do is make sure the rich and powerful pay their fair share.
The Tax Foundation is leading the effort, using backing from major corporate interests, including the billionaire-backed Koch network and other fossil fuel lobbying groups, to push for a corporate-friendly tax system.
The foundation’s influence is also evident in the pages of Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for a potential second Trump presidency that is being spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Project 2025’s section on tax policy, which cites the Tax Foundation several times, adopts policy positions that overlap significantly with TaxEDU’s framing and content.
Project 2025 proposes slashing marginal tax rates, a system that taxes high-income earners at a higher rate than low-income workers, citing the Tax Foundation’s analysis on the matter. In turn, TaxEDU instructs students that higher marginal tax rates leave workers “discouraged to work additional hours and earn higher incomes.”
And Project 2025, again citing the Tax Foundation’s analysis, advocates for the US tax code to be “simplified” — by effectively gutting corporate taxes like those on foreign income to US-controlled companies. The proposal is a common refrain in TaxEDU’s materials. “It pays to keep it simple,” one video tells listeners.