Topics · Money
Where does it come from?
Roads, parks and fire services cost money and nobody pays at the door. Different governments collect taxes, and that revenue helps pay for what a community shares.
Understanding where public money comes from is part of understanding where you live.
More ways into this idea
- Play with itReceipt LabFill a cart, turn the tax dial, read the receipt
Step into a storyWhere the Toonie GoesThe receipt says 26 cents. Where did it walk off to?- Make it a gameTax TrailFollow a dollar from tax to collector to community service
- Test yourselfA fresh mixed set, whenever you likeExplanations after every question. Nothing is recorded.
Common sticking points
- The big one is expecting each tax to pay for one thing — property tax for the fire station, say. It doesn't work like that: the taxes a government collects become one revenue, and that revenue helps pay for the whole list together.
- Another is a tidy chart with one government per tax. Most kinds are collected by more than one — income tax is federal AND provincial or territorial, and Ontario's sales tax has a federal part and a provincial part collected together.
- A third is 'I never use it, so my taxes have nothing to do with it'. Revenue isn't split up by who turns up — which is also why the service is there on the day you suddenly need it.
Try this together
Walk or drive somewhere ordinary and count the things nobody charged you for on the way: the road, the traffic lights, the pavement, the park, the library, the fire station you passed. Then ask one question and let it sit: if nobody paid at the door, how is all of it still there tomorrow?
1–5 minutes, no materials to buy, nothing to hand in.
Ontario curriculum details
- F1.6Describe the taxes governments collect, and explain what the revenue pays for
Plain-language summaries. See the full curriculum for every expectation and the official source.