What's being described isn't the ability to diagram a sentence, but to write above a certain minimum standard. That skill is certainly more important for the average person than understanding tax law as most jobs that would require you to know tax law have good writing skills as a pre-requisite.
As part of my previous work in education I did a lot of interventions for "unschooled" children in the Bay Area and can confirm the results of even well educated parents were almost uniformly disastrous.
There's a lot of value in:
1. Being well socialized
2. Having the standard set of skills that are a base requirement for being a white collar worker
If you're missing either of these (as most homeschooled kids are) it can be very difficult to find your way in the world.