I know, the tax season 2016 is history. We've done ours or had them done. We've moved on. Perhaps you've received your rebate and felt happy about that, something you might not have saved on your own initiative If it were not for that tax system, you would never been able to buy that big barbeque console you've coveted for solong.
But if you're anything like me on this subject, you dislike the system. I don't mind paying my graduated tax. You cannot expect to get all those government services free of charge--roads, schools, hospitals, protection and security, etc. etc., not to speak of pensions. All of that is good. Those who are opposed to taxes, they could be rounded up for year, put them together in some isolated place and leave them there without paying taxes and without any services paid for by taxes. I dare say, they would soon change their mind.
Now, we may have many questions. Why am I charged that specific amount? And how is it all spent? There is a lot of suspicion for good reason, for there is a lot of misspending. The media keeps reminding both citizens and governments about that. There is a lot of spending that can be defended on legal grounds but not on moral. The Senator Duffy affair is a shining example of that.
But my main question or, perhaps better put, my main objection is the forms citizens have to fill in to figure out and declare the amount they owe. Whenever tax season is upon us my blood pressure increases along with great annoyance and a deep sense of injustice--even though I am little more than a bystander. My wife is a natural administrator and record keeper. So, throughout the year she keeps and files the necessary documents. I only ask an occasional question. When the deadline is near, she rides transit for an hour each way to my accountant nephew who does the hard work for us and usually manages to squeeze a rebate out of it for us, without, I am convinced, any shady shenanigans, something he would not engage in.
But when he is finished and my wife brings the completed forms to be signed home, I usually page through the pile of documents to try to figure out how he has arrived at his figure. For the life of me, I feel totally dumb! I have a Ph. D., but I am left to feel a total ignoramus. Now, that's where my indignation kicks in. This is my money, for goodness sake. I should have the right to control its spending or at least understand why someone is charging me this or amount. I come close to yelling it out: "This is criminal!" And so it is. Criminal. I hate it with a passion. It may be government and it may even be legal, but I still consider it criminal. Legalized crime.
And sometimes it actually is. Quite a few postings ago I told the story of a BC citizen being totally abused by the tax boys for years on end till he was completely broke and a public appeal had to be made to bail him out and keep him out of prison.
Earlier this year, Jamie Golombek, dubbed a "Tax Expert" in the Vancouver Sun, during the height of the 2016 tax season in 2017, wrote a column "Why are we filling out these crummy tax forms in 2017?" Exactly my question and, probably, yours. Why, indeed? If a tax expert asks that question, then we should not be surprised that we are bothered by such questions. At the end of his two full-length column from top to bottom, he comes up with no acceptable answer. That's not a critique of him, but of the tax system.
So, here's your chance to be enlightened by a tax expert. Read it at https://www.pressreader.com/canada/calgaryherald/20170422/282196535836108 and see if you understand the why or wherefore--or it is makes you any happier. We owe Jamie a mouthful of thanks for his revelation.
Please do remember my earlier assertion that, even if I do not write overtly about religion, it is always there in the background. I wonder if you can detect the religious aspect in today's issue?
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