What a Wonderful Morning

On Apr 15, 4:22 pm, "Morgans" wrote:

Bring on flat tax. I'll take my chances.
--
Jim in NC

Here in Alberta, Canada, we have a flat provincial tax (while the
federal is still graduated). There are hefty personal deductibles as
well, so that the lower-income earners pay little or no provincial
tax, so I suppose it's still not a true flat tax.

We also have something called "Tax Freedom Day," dreamed up by
the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (I think). It establishes the
theoretical date in any particular year on which you finally get to
start keeping the money you earn; the previous earnings for the year
all going to governments of various levels in one form of taxation or
another. Last I heard it was on or around June 21, which means that
the average Canadian pays out nearly half of his yearly income to
taxes. That's the *average,* not the wealthiest. There are some that
pay much more and a few that pay nearly nothing. The tax freedom date
has backed up a day or two in recent years, I think, but not so's a
man would notice.
National debt requires servicing, and until interest rates
dropped a few years ago a third of the federal budget was going to pay
the interest on that debt. It's the result of shortsighted borrowing
and spending. There are many other areas where vast sums are wasted;
we all know that the government does nothing efficiently. Lots of
overlap, lots of redundancy and lots of folks doing little more than
collecting a fat paycheque. Taxes could drop enormously if a
government had the guts to make the cuts.

Dan