The Starving Artist

A self-employed worker can't afford rent and a tax bill.

Start Dilemma

Preview

You are a self-employed photographer and it's your first year in business. When you do your taxes, you realize you made just over the basic personal amount (minimum income) allowed before you have to pay taxes.

If you keep the calculation as is, you will have to pay some money to the government and you will not have enough money to pay your rent this month. If you remove one payment from your income, you will not have to pay any taxes this year. You will even get a small refund. What do you do?

Keep the calculation as is and pay your taxes fair and square.
Remove one of your payments and hope you don't get audited.

Useful Language

Students can access a Useful Language drawer at any time during the activity. The key vocabulary and sentence stems will help your learners express their thoughts and opinions.

Keywords

  • basic personal amount: the amount of money you are allowed to earn before you have to pay income tax keep something as is: to not change something
  • refund: money that is given back to you because you paid too much or returned something
  • audit: to carefully check or look at something, usually money or records, to make sure everything is correct

Sentence Stems

  • I don’t want to risk getting in trouble later, so I...
  • I took the risk because...
  • Honesty is important in this case because...