Open any newspaper and you’ll find umpteen stories about taxes — from Vancouver’s ongoing transit tax referendum to Alberta’s budget crisis to Toronto’s property tax increase.
“It’s probably safe to say that there was no golden age where everyone loved paying taxes,” says Alex Himelfarb, co-editor of Tax Is Not a Four-Letter Word. “Then again, there’s probably never been a time when paying the bill was our favourite part of shopping.”
Case in point: the 40,513 responses the Alberta government received to its online budget survey. Citizens were evenly split between reducing spending, increasing revenue (i.e. increasing taxes) (Read more…)