Understanding Taxes (UT) is a web-based tax education program sponsored by the IRS’ Stakeholder Partnerships, Education, and Communication (SPEC) Office. This interactive tax education program was developed for high school and community college students and is a significant component of SPEC’s suite of Internet-based education and outreach products for customers and stakeholders.
The Learning & Performance Group (LPS) was awarded the task order for Understanding Taxes Web site maintenance based on the success of another project on the IRS public portal—Link and Learn Taxes. The Understanding Taxes Web site is also available on the IRS public portal (www.irs.gov).
The academic community uses Understanding Taxes as a tool for teaching current and future taxpayers the hows and whys of taxes. Understanding Taxes is an important marketing tool directed to first-time tax filers.
The application provides middle school, high school, and community college students and instructors with hands-on experience through simulations and interactive teaching and learning resources. The IRS needed the LPS team to reprogram the UT Web site to comply with the IRS public portal site design, style guidelines, and application functional requirements such as HTML 4.01 standards and accessibility requirements such as Section 508 compliance.
IRS Understanding Taxes
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The LPS team reprogrammed the UT Web site according to the extensive IRS public portal standards and requirements. In addition, the LPS team has expanded the curriculum by adding additional educational modules, and has recently completed a comprehensive redesign and modernization of the site. Time-sensitive content on UT must be updated quickly in order to provide the latest tax law information to the public, in time for the school year (late October).
UT is interactive—it provides real-world connections to classroom instruction and includes lesson plans that can be correlated to educational standards for subjects such as social studies, mathematics, and civics. Educators can assign lessons to students about the history, theory, and application of taxes in the United States.
The application has been available on the IRS public portal since June 1, 2004 and is also available on CD-ROM. Almost 700,000 teachers and students have used the program and over 12 million pages have been viewed on the site, highlighting its extensive presence and popularity.
