It's that time of year again, Gentle Reader. Do you think I mean that the Spring has sprung? And of course it has and it is every bit as lovely as it is early this year. But no I am not thinking of the Season of Life. Think again. It is federal tax time. Every April 30 all the information about last year's earnings has to be in the mail or we face a fine. Never mind that the poverty line is up around twenty-five thousand a year and really ought to be higher. If you earn more than the federal exemption of $11,800 a year, or something like that, and if your employer has been negligent in their deductions then you will get nailed. We all have to pay our way, or almost all.
I have had to pay up to almost one thousand dollars in tax revenue on a couple of years even though I had earned no more than fifteen thousand. I am what is known as a low income earner, or working poor. I still have to pay. Even if it means that I have to spend a couple of months lining up at the food bank, which so far has never happened to me, I still have to pay whatever they want me to. We all do. No exceptions.
I really don't have trouble with this. I am glad, even honoured, to pay taxes, knowing that I am doing my part, no matter how little, to help maintain our infrastructure. I don't necessarily approve of the way that money is being spent. I still gag at the thought of even one lousy nickel going from my pocket to help fund the Canadian military (I am a pacifist Christian and any contentious or spammy comments that get posted will be promptly deleted from this blog! You have been warned.)
What does stick in my craw is that the good people at Revenue Canada don't seem to realize or care that housing and other costs of living have skyrocketed making it increasingly difficult for people on low incomes to pay their share of taxes. Meanwhile, international corporations, banks, kings, prime ministers, presidents and other people you might not want to have a sherry with are getting off scot-free through offshore banking and investments, shell companies and international money-laundering. Thank heavens for the recent revelation of the Panama Papers and I just hope that the vast majority of these wealthy scoundrels will get soaked for what they owe and that the infrastructures and poorest citizens of their respective countries will only benefit from their added largesse.
In the meantime the poor are taxed, even in Canada, and yes it is unfair since it still lets the wealthy off the hook. Yes, they already pay up to forty-five percent in some cases but, come on! Surely it won't break them to pay maybe five percent more so that taxes don't have to be imposed on anyone pulling less than the poverty line.
Sometimes I get money back. Other times I owe nothing. I never fully understand the baroque and byzantine explanations that are given and I have learned not to argue. I have ways of coping. I try to maintain a decent slush fund for such exigencies, such as taxes, dental work, sudden unemployment, creeping old age or my annual month-long foreign vacations. I am generally unable to get around to my taxes till the last month, April, since I am usually away out of the country for all of March. Here is how I cope. On the first week of April, just after returning from my annual holidays I go to the local post office, in my case in the back of a mom and pop store around the corner and pick up my tax forms and tax guide. Then I get to work, just twenty minutes a day, for maybe four days, just after dinner, relaxed on my bed with a dish of fresh fruit in easy reach. My math is terrible, I never get it right, and usually write the tax people a dear little note pleading with them to please finish the unpleasant job for me. They always do. It is well-paced and much less onerous doing it this way and I still get it all in the mail three weeks before the deadline. I used to wait till the final day!
These days I mail it in when it's done. I used to take it to the tax centre downtown but I no longer have time. One year as I was dropping it into the box in their lobby I turned to the security guard and asked her wryly "Shouldn't this thing be shaped like a toilet?" I think it was the best laugh she had all day!
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