Your child does chores all week. You owe them $10. You hand them $7.
“This isn’t $10.”
“Right. I withheld the rest.”
“What does that mean?”
“I kept $3 of your money.”
“But it’s my money.”
“It was your money.”
Welcome to your child’s first tax lesson.
And honestly? It’s the best one they’ll ever get. Because the outrage they feel in that moment – that immediate, instinctive this isn’t fair – is the most financially intelligent response a human being can have.
Don’t talk them out of it. Let it land. Then explain it.
Because here’s what nobody tells your children before they enter the workforce:
The number on your payslip and the number in your bank account are not the same. They never will be. And you don’t get a vote on the difference.
That $3? It goes to meals, infrastructure, dispute resolution, nightlight maintenance.
“Dispute resolution?”
When your brother takes your toys and I make him give them back. Taxpayer funded.
“That’s just parenting.”
That’s the Department of Justice.
Funny? Absolutely. Also – completely accurate. This is how it works. Roads, hospitals, schools, politicians’ travel allowances, committees that investigate other committees. Your money. Their decisions. Zero input from you.
And here’s the part that really stings – you can’t see where it goes without filling out a form. Processing time six to eight weeks. Could be longer. They’re understaffed.
” There are 21,493 of them.”*
Yes. And somehow, still understaffed.
Your child will enter the workforce one day and receive their first payslip. In that moment they will either:
A) Understand exactly what they’re looking at, feel the familiar outrage, and know how to work with what’s left.
Or
B) Accept the confusion as normal, never question it, and spend the next thirty years wondering why money always feels tight despite working hard.
Column A people are in control of their finances. Column B people are managed by them.
The difference isn’t intelligence. It’s education and what money stories we teach our children. Specifically – whether someone sat them down early and said this is how it works, here’s what gets taken, here’s what you actually bring home, and here’s what you do with it.
I don’t have children (despite the lack of trying). But I sit across from adults every single week who are stressed, stuck, and starting from scratch – and almost all of them say the same thing: nobody taught me this.
Not about tax. Not about gross versus net income. Not about why their fortnightly pay looks different every single time. They were handed a life and told to figure it out.
Most are still figuring it out in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s.
You can do better for your children. Not with a lecture. Not with a spreadsheet. With a $7 moment that makes them ask questions – and a parent brave enough to answer them honestly.
Pay your children $10 for their chores. Then withhold $3 and hand them $7. When they object (and they will) – explain it.
Tell them this is exactly what happens every time you go to work. That the government takes their cut first, before the money ever reaches you, and you have no say in where it goes. That you can’t opt out, can’t redirect it, can’t choose the hallway over the hospital or the hospital over the committee that reviews the hallway.
Then tell them the most empowering thing they will ever hear about money:
You can’t control what gets taken. But you can absolutely control what you do with what’s left.
That’s where the power is. That’s where financial freedom begins. Not in fighting the system – but in understanding it well enough to build something real inside it.
The child who understands tax at eight is the adult who understands their payslip at eighteen. Who builds a budget around their actual take-home pay. Who doesn’t get to their first pay and think something went wrong.
Teach them early. Let them be outraged. Then channel that outrage into understanding.
Because the $3 is gone. It was always going to be gone.
The question is what will they do with the $7.
*Approximate ATO employees as of 25th June 2025.