University students and tax literacy: Opportunities and lessons for tax teaching

Financial literacy is important due to the growing complexity of financial products, increases in life expectancy and reliance on self-funded retirement support. Previous research has identified that there are aspects of tax and superannuation that form part of overall financial literacy and that there are gaps in the understanding of some of these concepts which could lead to poor financial decisions. This paper reports on a recent survey of Australian university students and their perceptions of the importance of financial literacy, the extent to which they had been taught financial literacy at school and their level of understanding of some basic tax and superannuation concepts. The results of the survey further highlight the importance of taxation as a component of financial literacy, opportunities for cross-disciplinary tax teaching and insights for tax teaching and advisor training more broadly.