Post 172--Why These Crummy Tax Forms?

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?  

Post 95--Trudeau: Due Diligence? (2)

  

More “Spontaneity” and Populism?

The same issue arose in my mind with respect to the PM’s announcement that his government was going to accept all the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee—and, if my memory serves me right—they are up into the 90’s!  Again, that mix of spontaneity and populism.  Again, what seems like a serious lack of due diligence. All 90+ without careful analysis, even before he was enthroned?  I loved and still love the composition of his Cabinet, assuming that the Ministers are all fully qualified, but even that I am beginning to wonder in view of this pattern of spontaneity and populism without due diligence. Did he and his advisers possibly practice ethnic and tribal politics by glad handing Canada’s various races and religions, including recent immigrant arrivals as well as more settled non-Caucasians?  In view of already mentioned instances of seeming spontaneity and populism, the question of due diligence refuses to go away, even though I have no doubt that there are people worthy of cabinet appointments among all of us.  Once you have the suspicion of lack of due diligence, rightly or wrongly, you begin to look for it everywhere. 

Andrew Coyne’s Take

I have great respect for Andrew Coyne, one of Canada’s most prominent and, perhaps, most popular political commentators in both Canadian press and TV.  He recently published an opinion column under the title “Maximum political mileage with minimum thought.” The subtitle was “Promises: After three months in office, Trudeau big on smiles and symbolism but short on substance” (Vancouver Sun, Feb. 6, 2016).  Wow! Coming from Coyne, this is like a bomb shell. Under a picture of a smiling, waving Trudeau, the editor comments “A tendency ‘to announce policy first, then figure out the consequences later’ is the modus operandi of PM Justin Trudeau’s government….” 

In case you haven’t caught on yet, I want it understood that the suspicions I am airing are pre-Coyne. That is to say, they were raised in my mind before I read any commentator on the subject. They popped up immediately I first read about the 25,000. But Coyne strongly confirmed these suspicions and he buttresses them with more facts at his fingertips than I can muster.  So, with your permission, here’s a little more of Andrew’s take. I promise that tomorrow I will move on to another subject.

Apart from their tragic content, namely a seemingly light-hearted playing with the destiny of 34 million plus people, Coyne’s article contains so many pithy and humorous quotables, that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Here are some samples about Trudeau’s government:

It is one part not being Stephen Harper, one part symbolic gesture, one part wriggling out of campaign promises, and one part saying yes to everybody. … Get used to it.

For a government that makes much of its…forward-looking credentials, the Trudeau crew are unusually obsessed with digging up the recent past. The platform itself was filled with promises (my colleague, Bill Watson, puts the number at 50) to reverse this or that Conservative initiative.  … What was common to all was their relentless symbolic focus, achieving maximum political mileage for least expense.   

Is it to be supposed that the “evidence-based” party had any research to support its claim to be able to safely admit 25,000… refugees… by December?

Referring to the announcement of a tax increase for high incomers that would precisely offset a tax decrease for the “middle tax bracket,” Coyne asks, “Was there any basis for the party’s claim?” The original $3 billion income from the increase was subsequently whittled down to $1 billion.  Any basis?

Of course not: they gave…about the same amount of thought as Trudeau did in announcing…that he would implement all 94 of (the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s) recommendation. Which is about twice as much thought as he and his advisers gave to the implications of abolishing party caucuses in the Senate. Or, for that matter, than they gave to their pipeline policy.

You have no idea how hard it is for me to refrain from just reproducing Coyne’s entire article, but I have to watch copyright restrictions and may already have transgressed them.  I plead for mercy from the Vancouver Sun on the grounds that I am such a strong advertiser for them apart from being part of that rare breed of remaining loyal paper subscribers.

Coyne does not relent. Two weeks later, he published another article entitled “Liberals fooled by their own image” with the subtitle “Broken promises: This Trudeau government says one thing and does the other at the same time”  (Feb. 20, p. B2), also loaded with gems:  “It is one thing to say one thing and do another in sequence. But to do both at the same time is deeply worrying.”  But be comforted; things are not as bad as they could be. Andrew writes that he would not go as far as therapist Evan Solomon, who describes Trudeau “as a kind of psychopath, alternatively charming (‘the romantic’) and homicide (‘the killer’). I think…he poses no danger to anyone but the economy. Still a number of recent incidents give one pause.” And then comes another litany of examples.

If Andrew does not relent, I will, right here, before the temptation overpowers me. I am no politician, but I do recognize political irresponsibility when I see it, at least this brazen variety of it. And this is not a political column, but I have stated somewhere in the past that social responsibility is one of my trademarks that comes straight out of my Christian convictions. When I see that, whether political or not, I get my dander up high and mighty. I need time to cool off. See you next time.

P.S.--It’s February 28, 2016. Today the announcement was made that Canada received the quota of 25,000 refugees.